Nayeema Ahmad Mahjoor
She was not in a mid-life crisis; she was in crisis all along.
The crisis had begun the day she evolved as a fetus in her mother’s womb, the crisis turned her father into a stranger when he looked at her growing feet, and the crisis became humiliation when she was rejected by every boy in the vicinity.
She writhed with the pain while giving many births at a tender age.
She was renamed as “crisis woman’ as if she had no birth name. She had no identity as she had no memory of it. Either, she was the daughter of a stranger or a wife of a brute man or had a shoulder of a Malamasa to lean on.
She had tried hard to recollect if she was ever called by the name, even doesn’t remember mother calling her. She would place her hidden from everybody like a stolen sack of rice or dried vegetables saved for the winter.
Was she a plague for her family, society, and neighbourhood; no one even mentioned her or bothered to look at her?
“My life has been a riddle…..rather a puzzle…I was born with a birthmark on my left thigh. My mother had become anxious the day she noticed it. Marriage, relations, or childbirths….all impacted by this birthmark only …every phase of my life got shrouded in birthmark mystery……my mother was advised by the local saint to be watchful of this mark if it fades away. He must be informed so that he might recite some suras from the Quran to protect from the calamity this mark had left hanging over us. My father had given this gift to me in inheritance but he never owned me….some matters are beyond our comprehension”. She would whisper many times to herself….she had no answers, not from mother, or father or from relations who were like strangers around her and not from the God she thought was watching over her day and night.
There was the only suspicion that had entangled her in a web of shame beyond her imagination.
Is every woman’s life just veiled in dark mystery? The mirror studded in the mud wall would taunt her often. She would change her stare at the ceiling……..a fly circling the bulb would make her dizzy and she would shut her eyes, dreaming not to open them ever again.
She would despise herself the moment she would hear the cry of her babies.
It was after so many years of shame and disgust, a single moment of joy just changed her life when a little “him” was placed onto her lap, the most beautiful and the only gift of life. She had to pinch her arm to find if she was dreaming. “No, I am awake. I have been blessed by the God”.
She had five such gifts like him before but their being “she” brought shame to her, family, and society. She would witness brooding and crude faces around her. Not a soul had uttered a single word of joy at their birth. She silently swallowed pain with an ache of shame and guilt.
This little being “he” really brought a moment of pride for her….an elevation of status in her crisis-ridden life, hope and admiration swelled like Dal Lake in her eyes. That single moment compensated the life-long pain of shame and guilt. She felt being human for a while when the man she had married came close to sit by her side. Life had changed altogether. All of a sudden, she was treated as a human and her heart started beating faster like a new bride.
She nurtured this little “him” like Mother Nature nurtures its wild forests. She let him suckle every drop of milk and cried hours later on with the pain in her nipples. But, she felt she was touching the sky. Either, she had landed on the moon or theworld had changed altogether.
Such times often brought back memories of her mother, her only soul mate who left her at the mercy of her ailing father in the middle of her youth. At the age of forty-four, her mother had suffered nine labour pains, one stillbirth; two deformed babies, and delivered six ugly girls including her. Her neighbour, Malmasa would relate stories about her weak, timid and meek mother.
“She was born without a tongue or her tongue was cut like boys are circumcised in our families. Girls without tongues become good wives and boys with circumcision become good Muslims so that they can keep their women under feet.”
There was hardly any girl left in the neighbourhood who had not listened to Malmasa’s sermon. Men would listen to her and send their girls to her before being sent to in-laws. Malmasa, the elderly woman had become the agony aunt of this neighbourhood. But, her tongue would speak so bitter that the bite of the serpent was easy to bear than her talk.
Each time she would mention her mother; Malmasa would get emotional and scold her.
“Your mother was a tongue-tied hag who died of repeated childbirths; she never cried or sighed. She suffered in silence. And, that was the quality your mother was known for in the neighbourhood. Your father was a spoilt son of Khan’s, very short-tempered and volatile….he would only bother to buy wild weeds to feed her during pregnancy. After delivery, she was left on her own as if she had become a leper. Your mother had become so frail and white that I thought she would not cross her fortieth birthday”. Malmasa would speak in contempt and without pause in her breath.
Looking deep into my eyes, she would start taunting, “Time has changed since girls are now moving towards waywardness and promiscuity. Look at college girls today; they are now throwing stones at men, police, and security forces. Parents must lock them up and stop sending them to college. I think me and your mother never belonged to this age”. Malmasa issued fatwa like men pronounce Talaq three times.
Malmasa had come as a child bride in this close-knit neighbourhood. since then, she had become the mouthpiece of the whole community though more close to men than women who are said to despise her more than they despised their cruel husbands…..the structure of our society makes every other woman dear than your wife. She has become the promoter of early marriages in the vicinity. And, spends every evening convincing Imams to elders to parents to girls.
The community had a shared secret that Malamasa’s husband was famous for stealing horses of maharaja in the early thirty’s. “He went for stealing horse but got his hands on Malmasa”. The men would laugh uncontrollably while gossiping about neighbourhood women.
After her first stillbirth, ‘Crisis woman’ had never crossed Malmasa’s path. She had no courage left to listen to her ridicules. It was only after the birth of her son and the opening of school in the backyard that she would look at Malmasa with pride in her eyes. Malmasa had avoided her since she had looked straight into her eyes.
Crisis woman had no one to confide in except one person who was double her age when she was handed over to him. Since then, it was either him or God (both invisible) she knew in her life. She thought she was safe now with this man who had turned into taskmaster in the house. The sense of safety waned soon the day she started to give abnormal births or girls or ugly creatures or deformed species, stillbirths and tiny stinky tangled in their umbilical cords. Her body could not bear the weight of deformity, still or ugly five girls. She got drowned with shame and guilt.
The man she was married to became wild with rage like an animal pouncing on his prey, tearing apart. She cannot cry as her eyes had no water left. Dal Lake has got dried up with filth and sewage. She cannot feel the pain as she had become stone covered in moss. She followed Malamasa’s advice to stay quiet or she would lose shelter, food, and womanhood.
Sometimes, the inside ache would make her restless when her stock of eggs was turning into an army of tongue-tied species. All of a sudden the same egg produced the species the whole universe loved. She had a moment of joy; she thought she was a real woman. She will also be remembered after her death as if all dead are remembered, an illusion we all live with and cherish.
She had a long wait; her boy was getting bigger and bigger. He was getting manly to comfort her from life-long crisis. The time has come when she will be free as a bird and live like without the man who despises her. She will live with hope and admiration for the world. The world needs her to give hope to her species that were abandoned by their fathers like her. Dignified life is all she wanted and dreamt throughout her long, arduous and hard life spread over fifty-nine years. At last, she would see the day when her offspring would not be mistaken for ugly creatures.
And, the moment came….
Yes, the moment she waited for fifty-nine years with the weight of pain, guilt and shame.
It came with a big bang like an earthquake. It was a loud and forceful thud; the bang was a big punch on her face, strong enough to knock out all broken and leftover teeth in her mouth, that punch bled her to death. She writhed in pain and cried in humiliation.
That punch was from the little “he” she had nurtured by her blood, the same boy who had warmth under her bosom. She had shame and humiliation welling in her eyes. Alas! How could she believe in the society which elevated her at the birth of little “he”? Her cries were silent,begging God to create a crater in the earth and swallow her in one gulp.
The same toothless hag, covered in tatters, surrounded by tongue-tied five girls, was crying her heart out on the main road of Srinagar asking for justice. I was trying to come close to her when there was a deafening sound of a blast across the street close to River Jhelum.
I saw a cluster of girls carrying stones to throw at men, police, fathers, brothers, sons, security forces and gunmen.
And, I took a stone from a girl who had pointed it at her brother but I had no idea whom I will throw this stone at. My world had no men in it.
Nayeema Ahmad Mahjoor is a senior journalist, Ex News Editor in BBC & penguin author, currently, columnist, independent.
