She was six months along inside her mother’s womb when she first heard her voice.
You will be my pride
My son.
She didn’t know what those words meant, nor did she understand the gravity of what they would come to represent, but the thought of her mother cradling her in her arms and gushing with warmth as she lay a delicate hand over her bulging stomach was enough to make the little fetus inside sigh in content and squirm with delight. And that affection was enough to carry her till it was time for her to appear on the other side of the skin.
They named her Adila, which meant equal. Adila had cried like any other baby cries at birth, but unlike any other mother, her amma had refused to touch her.
No no no no no, she’d chanted, hands clutching her hair, tugging at the roots, tear-lines wet and flowing. That is not my baby, that is not my son!
Her father, clutching his little girl to his heart, had been horrified. How can you say that about your own child, about your own blood?
Her mother had been adamant, fighting till her last exhausted breath, the look of a woman who thought she was winning but had lost. That is not my son.
That night left alone in the maternity ward with only her fingers to play with, Adila learned about a word called patriarchy.
But things weren’t always so bleak in her life. Her mother may have denied her, but her father hadn’t. Her abba ruffled her hair every time he came home at night after a tiring shift at the labor site where he worked, smelling of soot and smoke, skin crinkling around his eyes like aged leather as he smiled at her half-formed words and coos. And every time Adila turned to her mother for the same affection, she would see her standing there by the kitchen door, the light from the filament bulb dousing her in shadows and making her appear as an apparition from heavens above, her lips pulled to a flat line, eyes as hard and cold as stones. But Adila didn’t mind. She still remembered the warmth she had felt when her soul was slowly trickling into a barely formed miracle and her mother’s arms had pulled her into a loving embrace, and Adila was willing to be patient if it meant she could feel that love again.
But it never came.
When Adila was six, her baby brother was born. Curious about the form who made her mother gush again, she tried to prod his cheeks gently, but her hand was slapped away. Don’t you go touching him now, her amma admonished, like as if he was the fresh fruit and Adila was the disease that threatened to cripple him. Don’t you go near him. So clutching her throbbing hand to her chest, she watched from behind the door as women from their village come to bless her mother’s son, and it made her wonder. If a man himself can bless another, then what is the purpose of a God?
Eyes widening, she slapped both her cheeks with her grubby hands and reprimanded herself for her sin. Forgive me, forgive me, forgive me. She never understood who she was apologizing to, and what exactly was her crime.
That day, Adila learned that only a baby boy has the power to fill the gnawing hole in the family that a baby girl creates.
When Adila was thirteen, her mother took her along to the place she worked. Do exactly as I tell you, she instructed her on the way. And don’t embarrass me. Adila wondered what could be more embarrassing than having your mother sleep facing away from you from the moment you are born.
Not that it mattered in the grand scheme of things, because if guilt had the ability to seep through the skin and work its way past blood and sinew, she knew her life wouldn’t be as it was. So while she busted her back sweeping garages and filled her lungs with muck dusting ornaments in houses that made her home look like a mouse hole, her brother sat bored in classrooms and learned about things he had no interest in learning. But nobody asked her if she wanted to follow him down the rabbit hole of knowledge he had taken for granted. No one asked her if she wanted the last bite of the ice-cream or the good pillow; nobody asked her if she wanted her mother’s love if she craved the acceptance. Acceptance, that only came if you were born the right gender and not the wrong disgrace. Nobody even asked her if she was happy.
At the age of thirteen, Adila learned that either you are born a man in this world, or you are nothing.
Her mother’s next employer is a kind woman with a staunch heart and a strict code of justice. She has four daughters, but she feels no desperate ache for a son. She says she is happy with what Allah has given her, and she speaks of love as it comes to the best of them as second nature, something that is as natural as breathing. Her daughters aspire to be beings of their own, with no tether to hold them back like an anchor in the dead sea. The Baji sahib (as Adila is taught to call them) scolded Adila’s mother when she let it slip that she wanted honor in her house and not a burden. Adila tried to hide the smile that bloomed on her lips behind her black shawl, and coaxes her juvenile heart to beat again.
When she was seventeen, Adila learned that patriarchy doesn’t necessarily exist in every corner.
Her brother brings trouble to their household. Sometimes, when she wakes up during the night, she can hear her parents arguing like two carnivores, close to ripping each others’ throats out. She feared for them as she feared for the future that morphs like a nightmare in front of her eyes and grins at her in malice. He’s just a boy, is her mother’s justification. This is how boys are.
She wondered if being a boy gave him the right to come home drunk one night, slurring his words, speaking of red lights and broken glass and women who dance on mats weaved in jute. Her abba was angry, angry like she had never seen him before, the veins prodding on his neck and a tick so strong on his jaw that it threatened to shatter the bone, and he shouted at him like her amma always shouted at her when forgot to mix sugar in her chai. Her amma holds him back when he slaps her brother’s face, and Adila can see the skin bruising there, ripping with hurt and insult. Her amma cries. He is your son, your izzat (honor).
Her abba stood with his arms pulsing in anger and spat in his fallen son’s direction, He is no son, he is a disgrace!
Her mother glanced at her, and Adila wondered if maybe she would blame her for this too like she blamed her daughter for the bad thing that happened in this household. But she simply let her tears fall and went to help her son, running her thumbs gently along his cheek, whispering broken promises into his ears.
Standing behind her mother, Adila learned that sometimes the system isn’t held because of the men; sometimes it thrives because of the women.
They marry her off to a man as kind as her father next year. Adila catches her mother sighing a sigh of relief as she sat on the sofa with her daughter adorned in red and gold, and said You are the izzat of your family now, and ours. Then, glancing at her from the sharp corner of her eye, she uttered her final words of wisdom: don’t mess it up.
Adila felt a snicker crawling up her throat and felt her lips twisting to a conceited scowl. She thought of all the years she had simmered with the hatred for her own existence and lived with the hope that she would be good enough. But, she understood now that being good enough would never be good enough for people like her amma who damned their little girls to hell on earth and had them choke on the injustice of it all.
At the age of twenty-two, Adila knows she doesn’t want her daughter to feel the same way she did.
