My Forbidden Face

I just finished My Forbidden Face--Growing up under the Taliban: a Young Woman’s Story. This story horrified me not only because it is true but also because the young woman is only two years younger than me. When the Taliban came to power in 1996 I was graduating from high school and starting college. At the same time that I was reveling in my ever expanding world and freedoms, this young woman was mourning as her world shrank to her family’s apartment and she lost all her freedom. The Taliban prohibited women from being educated, parents could not even educate their daughters at home; women could not work from working; they could not wear colorful clothing or white shoes; women could not show their faces in public and must be accompanied by male relative if they ever did go outside. Women were also forbidden from seeing a male doctor and with the prohibition on women working, this meant women were forbidden to receive medical care. Before the Taliban, over half the doctors in Kabul were women, including the narrator’s mother. The Taliban also mandated that all girls over the age of fourteen be married and if they discovered an unmarried girl she was forced to wed a Talib. For the next five years the narrator, her mother, and her sister became virtual prisoners in their own home afraid to even open the door in case it was the Taliban come to carry them off for not being married. The rare times the narrator did venture from her home she witnessed violent acts of the Taliban against the Afghani people. But locked in their home, the narrator, her mother and her sister tried to continue on. Her mother secretly saw women patients, and the narrator and her sister started a secret school to teach not only girls but boys so they could learn something more than what the Taliban distorted interpretation of the Koran.

Throughout the story the narrator comments that the Taliban’s agenda is the genocide of the Afghani people through the destruction of their traditions and the women. They seek to make the women nothing more than chattel whose only use is to bear the Taliban sons. She rightly remarks that have forgotten that all men are born of women. Many times the narrators also comments that the majority of the Taliban are not Afghani but Muslim extremist from other countries. What would it be like to come of age in such place? After reading this book I have new gratitude for being born in the United States and the freedoms that I enjoy not only as a woman but as a human being. I am grateful that I am can saw my face; that I can speak my mind, pursue education and learning, and even to choose whom I married.

After I finished reading My Forbidden Face I gave it to my husband to read. He asked me if it made me feel sick to read, I told him “Some parts, yes.” He nodded his head, “Yes, me too. How can people treat women that way?” My husband is the sensitive one in the family and I fell in love with him for his sweet and kind nature especially towards women. He is the son of a very strong woman and brother to six sisters. He respects women more than he respects his own life. He is also very forgiving but not towards those who mistreat women. This book disturbs him not only because of the treatment of women but because he wandered if in some ways he might be like Taliban. He also prefers women to dress modestly. I told him that is the difference: he prefers women to dress modestly he does not compel any woman, including me, to be modest in dress. Nor does he prefer modesty because a woman’s body is shameful or something to fear but because it is beautiful and should be respected. That, I think is the greatest difference.

Total Want of Talent

I usually reread "Pride and Prejudice" every summer but this year I decided to reread "Sense and Sensibility" instead. While it is not as well written as P&P or Persuasion, it is an enjoyable book. As I read this book again, I keep noticing all the references Austen makes to talent. Lady Middleton and her husband, Sir John, are described as having a "total want of talent" and other characters are also characterized by their lack of talent. Austen implies that "want of talent" makes one insipid (this is especially true about Lady Middleton), and inferior to the two main characters Marianne and Elinor. But I wander what Austen means by talent? Are Marianne and Elinor talented because they enjoy music, paining, reading, and intellectual conversation? Is Lady Middleton insipid because she enjoys keeping a nice home and caring for her children? Or is it that Lady Middleton is only concern with keeping house and rearing children and idles away her free time instead of improving herself? With the exception of Edward Ferrars and Col. Brandon (who naturally as the worthy matches to the Misses Dashwood) all the other characters in the story show a total want of talent that is characterized by the lack of inner resources and their dependence upon society for entertainment and enjoyment.

But what it is talent? Oxford English Dictionary (I love that it gives the etymology of a word!) defines it as: 1. an inclination, propension, or disposition for anything; 2. a mental endowment; natural ability; 3. mental powers of superior order; 4. special natural ability or aptitude, an accomplishment.

I think I wander about talent because I have always been at a loss of what my talents (if I indeed have any) are. It has always seemed to me that talent is an external accomplishment, something that can be displayed, like playing an instrument, singing, painting, drawing, designing...in other creating something. I do not have any of those talents. I cook well but that is because I can follow a recipe. I enjoy reading but should I consider that a talent just because I can read or because I enjoy it. While I still search for what my talents are, I flatter myself that at least in Jane Austen's world I would not fall into the class of "total want of talent" since do not lack in inner resources and do not rely upon society for entertainment.

New definition of talent: inner resources that does not make one a the mercy of society for enjoyment and entertainment.

Almost Just a Housewife

In about four weeks I will become 'just a housewife.' I am not sure how I feel about this change. I am going to miss my job especially since I finally have a job that I love and that actually uses my degrees. Yes, I am looking forward to staying home with my son and there are many other good reasons for staying home which is why my husband and I made that decision. But despite the good reasons, sometimes I feel like I am staying home to placate my husband because he does not like me working (that really had nothing to do with the ultimate decision but it feels that way at times). Since he is in law school, I have been the sole provider for our family, so quitting and relying on him to be able to go to school and work part-time has been hard for me to accept (granted his part-time job has better benefits than my full-time job and he makes almost as much).

I know that my people would quibble with my phrase, 'just a housewife.' I quibble with it, that is why I put in apostrophes but as I am on the verge of entering the ranks of housewives, that is what I feel I will become.

Don't get me wrong, I have great respect for housewives. My mother was a housewife and there was nothing 'just' about it. She was amazing in everything she did and work so much harder and longer than anyone I knew and she still found time to devote to her interests and developed her many talents. I have two close friends who are housewives and they are amazing and talented. Despite these good role models, I feel like I will be 'just a housewife' or 'just a stay-at-home mom.' I have tried to think of why I feel that way, why I who have so many interests (that are sadly neglected in the balancing act between work and family) should be 'just' a housewife. One reason is that in the grueling years I have devoted to school and work I have let a lot of my interests and talents slide into non-existence. The other reason is that I feel trapped. I don't understand this. I worked as a nanny through grad school and loved it! so why do I feel trapped now that I will be staying home to care for my own child? I have analysed further:

• we only have one car and twice a week my husband will take it to go to work 30 miles away.
• we haven't found any babysitters besides my two sisters-in-law who live nearby but they have work, school and lives of their own.
• my husband is very reluctant to leave our son with someone who is not family (he is even reluctant to leave him with family including our two mothers who between them have raised 16 children, I think they know what they are doing!!!)

So I am going to chronicle what my life is like as I learn to be more than just a housewife and to enjoy it. Especially after January when I temporarily become an only parent while my husband is deployed with his National Guard unit.