I wake up these mornings thinking of ways to make my apartment more welcoming for my mother, Mama as I have always called her. Ours has been a roller coaster ride, kind of converging now after a tragedy. I lost Arshid at age 42 and I guess it is something she can't accept even for a wayward daughter, even though she has practically cursed me to hell scores of times. Today she gaslights and denies all of that verbal abuse and I have reached a stage where having made peace with myself, I have compassion for both my parents, realising they could be the caretakers of my child if anything happens to me.
I have always given voice to the voiceless. Now that I have a say in all things of my life, it makes sense to write for the ones who were never able to develop any control over their lives. Mama like the autumn leaves in the wind just drifted wherever Life took her and affected our lives in very drastic ways, something which my sister's isolationist behaviour is a visible evidence of.
I woke up with the image and sense of Mama bent on her prayer rug at dawn, beseeching her Allah for my long life till my son is settled and well cared for. She cries a lot for me these days, worried for my ageing bones and various ailments that come along with age. Her jealousy of my having had a son long dissolved in the years that she got to care initially for her first grandson (mine) and then for years for her second one (my sister's). I am always aware of the abuse she took for not having produced a son and us sisters in tacit agreement let her dote over ours until they were actually in the danger of developing that 'Nawabzaada' (superior) attitude that many Muslim men display and which permeates their lives and their circle of influence.
Mama is finally getting what was due to her all those decades ago, a secure home with her daughters settled and grandkids around her. She shuttles between Abu Dhabi, Srinagar and Delhi and is just about discovering what empowerment an "English education" brings to Muslim women especially if they are determined to live their lives on their own terms. I admit seeing my sister drive a car, deal with patients, and bring up her son in a very progressive way is far better than to see me do the same minus the driving and plus the speaking out against regressiveness in Islam. This is the only bone of contention between us and until Arshid was alive brought on sulkiness and temper tantrums from her.
But now that she has lost her "son", she is careful to just appeal to me through teary eyes not to endanger her grandson with what I speak out against. I listen and understand and nod, but she knows as much as I in my being - I am never going to be silenced. Life was never able to silence me. Life has never been able to silence me.
So I am jolted awake with the pressing worries of installing a geyser and English commode for her and make the apartment more friendly, sensitising my son on TV timings to reschedule according to Mama's favourite TV serials; and arranging of furniture - the sit-down carpet style of Muslim families really painful for my bones. I look forward to massaging her back, knowing it hasn't been soaped for a long time because she can't reach it and other intimate things that only daughters can do for their mothers. And I frame approaches and imaginary conversations in my mind about how to get her to tell about her childhood and teen years and youth, most of it having already heard but needed for polishing the chapters of my book.
For in telling her story, I not only will be able to bring closure to a tumultuous relationship I have had with her but also explore if Islam, as we know it, were brought up in it, and are affected by it through our men, has any chance of a reform or not. A Native American writer friend once told me - Listen to Your Elders - a common ritual in the traditions of the tribes, to gather around a fire and listen to the Ancients. As I start my chores, I imagine the campfire in my apartment in the coming winter months, when, to escape the severe Kashmir winter I am determined that she while it away with us in a milder region. Her asthma will not be able to take another severe one.
For the time being, we are happy to let her explore her new home which Baba finally built and decorate it, plan for it, care for it to her heart's content like a delighted little girl - an image I have firmly fixed in my mind from her countless descriptions. A reproduction of what she would have looked like taken from the net to inspire me - a common tool for writers.
She playing "sazlong" (hopscotch) with one of my Uncles balanced on her hip, one of her 6 siblings that daughters often ended up caring for in bog Muslim households. A once strong body doing endless chores for a huge household from age 6 right up till she walked out of her marriage with two daughters in tow. Her painful knees bent in the 'sazda' are what concern me, her swollen ankles a very familiar sight for me, having the same affliction. Despite repeated advice that there is a provision in Islam for offering prayers seated on the chair, she insists on the hard way. I figure it also some sort of penance, pilgrimage, that every believer exhibits in order to earn 'sawab' (brownie points in English) or as the illiterate pirate in one of the Pirates of the Caribbean movies retorts in a comic scene while turning the pages of the Bible, "You get credit for trying".
Image Courtesy: The Net
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