Brian Arthur Levene - Not Easily Washed Away: Memoirs Of A Muslims Daughter (Volume 1)

*Note* All names have been changed to protect the interest of the parties mentioned in this book
Chapter 1 The Second Class Citizen
My sister Maya was born two years and eleven months after my birth. We both were born in Hyderabad, Pakistan, which is approximately a two-hour drive from the main city of Karachi. After enduring a twenty-minute rickshaw ride through heavy Pakistani pedestrian traffic, my mother and Aunty Seema finally arrived at the broken-down maternity clinic. According to my mother, the dingy hole-in-the-wall was not even fit for pigs to give birth in. The clinic had shoddy roofing, no hospital beds, and paint was stripping off the walls, showing the concrete blocks. There was just a metal contraption draped by a white sheet with stirrups exposed for the birth of her newborn. When your sister was out of her womb, and the midwife told her it was a girl, your mother started to bawl as if someone died. My mothers younger sister, Seema, told me about the infamous day while laughing hysterically in our living room the first day after the thirty-day celebration of Ramadan in June 1991.Confused about my aunts remarks, I looked over to my sister to remind myself of how pretty she was. She was born with big brown eyes, a beautiful face, and perfect olive skin, but she was not good enough for either our parents or my fathers family. I was my parents first daughter, and because I was not a boy, I was no good for them as well. Yes, I am a daughter of Pakistan, and, therefore, in my society, I was born unappreciated, a second-class citizen, an unwelcome addition to my family.My mother Ammi was disdained because her first child was not a boy. It wasnt her fault. After a year of living with my fathers family and being told what they expected from her womb, it was hard to expect anything else. She looked after me sparingly because most of her time was spent being a slave to my fathers family, and the rest in depression and sadness. Ammi regretted marrying my father; he and his family were shameless in their iniquity. It was only a few days after her wedding day when her brother-in-law, Asim, tried to rape her.When Ammi told my father about his brother sitting on her bed, trying to touch her thighs and private parts, with porn movies playing in the background, my father just pretended he didnt hear her. Ammi knew my father and his family were beneath the very ground she walked on, but she had to respect them and spend precious time slaving for them. When was she to love me? Her husband was gone most of the time to Saudi Arabia, where he worked, and when he was not there, she was left to bear the wrath of his family.For the first two years after marriage, my father and his family forbade my mother to see her own family. My mothers family consisted of women who were educated and had strong opinions about the way things should be in Pakistan. Their opinions did not sit well with my father and his family.At the time, most of my fathers family did not even have a high school diploma. They felt threatened by my mother and her family, so to control Ammi, they isolated her from them and made her feel inadequate because she did not have a son.If only I had been a boy, she would have been treated a little better, not by much, but just enough to make her think I was important. She described how sad she was after months of solitude and deprivation of love. Her first pregnancy was extremely hard because she was left to face her fears with no one to support or comfort her, no one to tell her about what to expect during pregnancy.After I was born, she would put me down on the bed and weep for hours in her bedroom crying out, Allah, Why have you betrayed me!? Her weeping was the predecessor to my lifetime of weeping and crying. I would go on not only to ask Allah, Why have you betrayed me? but also, Allah, please take my life away!Although we were neglected most of our early childhood, my sister and I became well-adjusted and happy, making creative toys out of anything we could find. Our first source of fun was the water that flowed from a tap which stood in the middle of the floor of a roofless room on top of the house. The room, with a dull orange concrete floor surrounded by walls painted royal blue, was used to hand-wash soiled clothes. Instead, we used it as our waterfall on hot, sunny days. We became excited when the rainbows formed in the puddles that settled in the middle of the room as the sun hit the water.When it rained in Pakistan, we became very happy because it was time to play in the huge puddles of muddy water up to our knees on the side of the road, soiling our dresses with mud that was not so easily washed away. We continued to play until my mother came and chastised us, telling us how hard it was to wash clothes with bare hands. Maya and I danced together for hours listening to Indian music in our room on the radio given to us by Aunty Salma from Michigan, United States. When Ammi saw us, she made fun of me, saying, Fat people shouldnt dance. I would quickly relinquish my sisters hands and become self-conscious about my appearance, unable to continue to be happy.