Identity

Leaving for Pakistan

Until my parents decided to leave for Pakistan, I had been asking my sisters regularly, when are they going? I felt bad asking and wishing for their departure, but I couldn’t handle the arguments, the tension and the disappointment anymore and just wanted them gone. It was affecting me in so many ways, i didn’t have the space in my head to stop and think about myself or where my life was going, because instead I was going over the same issues of the last seven years.

When they announced their departure they tried to persuade me to go with them. Whilst they ha given up on my living with them in Pakistan, they were now focusing on my going with them, assisting them during the pilgrimage to Mecca and that afterwards I should go to Pakistan with them, stay there for a month and then return.

As I was awaiting a job offer, I explained this wouldn’t be possible. They weren’t pleased, as they don’t take into account professional life and the impracticalities of telling a potential employer who wants you to start in the next few weeks that you are going to be abroad for a month.

I said I’d visit them towards the end of the year, to help my father sort out his financial issues and visit them.

They weren’t pleased but accepted it and started to make preparations to leave, whilst I counted down the days until they did so.

After a period of absence

After what seems like forever not writing this blog, I’ve forced myself to sit down and re-read the last ten or so posts, and write a new one. Why haven’t I been writing? I’ll explain gradually over the next few posts.

To provide a brief update, since the last time I wrote, my parents have moved back to Pakistan. There were many reasons for them returning, and I, of course was one of the factors.

I can’t describe how it felt when they said they were leaving. I feel ashamed to say I was both relieved and sad at the same time.

I was relieved because the pressure of balancing two completely different lives and personalities was becoming harder and harder. Constantly going back and forth between the same arguments, the same battles in my head, torn between wanting to please them but live my life the way I wanted to. Now I wouldn’t have to worry about making excuses for myself, my lifestyle and justify what I was doing every minute of the day whilst I wasn’t under their roof.

I was sad because they are my parents who I love. What kind of a daughter am I, who can only cope with a relationship with them if they are in a different country?

So my parents left for Pakistan and I breathed a sigh of relief.

Re-reading through my previous blogs I’m reminded of the constricted feeling I felt early last summer, when I tried to balance living my life the way I want it, with the way my parents wanted me to live it.

How my head ended up being full of their demands and their disappointments in me. How I ended up being torn between trying to satisfy their needs and my own needs in the way I wanted to live my life.

Now I’m not living with them, now I’ve regained my old life back, it seems ludicrous I even allowed myself to slip into that trap, after all those years of living away from them.

But it scares me it will be a repeated pattern throughout my life, because of their stubbornness and my unwillingness to give into them.

Lunch with an old friend

When did intelligent men become so small minded? I had lunch with a friend today, Hussein, who i’ve known for fifteen years. He works at a big bank, where he’s paid huge amounts of money to do something very important. This is an intelligent man, whose opinion I usually rate quite highly.

He’s married with two children. I recently told him about Alex and I splitting up, as we’d dropped out of contact after the birth of his first child. But he’d always been there for me in the past and was a huge help during our wedding.

We met for lunch and it became clear the person I am now wasn’t considered well by Hussein. Given we’d been friends for ages, I told him I’d started drinking alcohol. Hussein is Muslim, but given his colourful past I didn’t think it a problem to tell him.

To say he was shocked and disapproving is an under statement. He immediately told me about a friend of his who's now thirty eight, who broke up with someone and went off the rails, started drinking alcohol and eating pork.

I asked what that meant in relation to myself. He said I should move on and not leave it too` late, instead of enjoying myself, drinking alcohol and dating (I’d also told him I was doing that). Apparently the worst thing in the world is to be a single thirty eight year old woman, who drinks alcohol and eats pork.

At least my family have the excuse they’ve never experienced anything this country has to offer, staying within the tight family unit and shunning all things Western. Yet here was this young, modern and educated man, a British Asian Muslim telling me the same things they do.

Just because I didn’t fit into the category of married with kids, I was a bit of a risk, this unknown quantity hovering on the fringes of acceptable Muslim society who’d fallen by the wayside and now, after her marriage had broken up, had started drinking and dating unsuitable men.

He asked about Asian men – was I dating any? I said no and realistically, what Asian guy wants to be with me? He started to list my positive points and I said an Asian man my age is probably going to want a woman who’ll fit into his family and listen to him. I don’t have a good track record for listening to others, least of all anyone related to me, and did I forget to mention, I don’t fancy Asian men? I can’t help it, it’s like a man preferring blondes over brunettes. I just like Caucasian men. So shoot me. I think Hussein wanted to at that point.

I realised this lunch was not turning out the way I’d thought. I found Hussein to be predictable and boring. I made do by asking him questions about his equally boring and predictable wife and children and somehow got through the hour without him showing my anger and disappointment. Once again, I was hiding my true personality to avoid offending someone and to stop myself feeling like crap. Only this time, it was with a friend. 

Analyse me

I'm currently between jobs, having attended lots of interviews and am now waiting for that elusive job offer.

This should mean that in between i'm hugely productive, working on my blog and doing all those things you never have time to do when you're in a full time job. It's actually the opposite. I try and work, but in between spend a lot of time analysing things which, at this time in my life, are either not good for me to analyse, or are not worth analysing.

A few friends have said recently I think too much. One example is a date I went on and dissected to my flatmate afterwards. She said, "you had a reasonably good time, met someone new, just forget about it" or words to that effect.

But my annoying analytical nature meant I wanted to understand how my date had behaved during the time I was with him, his motives for being on a date with me and the way he said goodbye to me at the end. At least. That's why I like journalism, I guess, the constant questioning.

I'm wishing I wasn't like this. If I wasn't, I could probably cope with my family situation better, as i'd probably just make one decision and stick with it. Instead I keep analysing (that annoying word again) all the options and flit from one to another, week by week, depending on how i'm feeling about my family, if i've been shouted at, or if they've been relatively nice to me.

I'd like to know if I come across as particularly analytical in my posts - do I? Is it too much? I've always cared what other people think about me, too much sometimes. And I really care what my readers think of me - mainly because I want to make sure what they read is interesting for them.

The visit

I was surprised at my visit home. I think my mum must have had a talk with my father, as he remained fairly civil throughout our interactions. He even acknowledged me when I said hello to him, which is an improvement.

The worst I got was my mum asking me to go on pilgrimage to Mecca with them, en route to Pakistan. She was insistent, saying, you’re a Muslim and it’s something you have to do, to which I said, I’ll do it when I want, and why are we arguing over something which isn’t that important? She said as their daughter it was my duty to take them to Mecca and help them there, but as they’ve been on pilgrimage countless times and as a Muslim you only have to do do it once in your life, her argument, as I pointed out was redundant. She eventually let it go, although she was annoyed and said I wasn’t a good daughter, or words to that effect.

Luckily my parents had been invited to lunch at my cousins house, so I used this as my excuse to leave. They dropped me at Sameena’s house, when I got out of the car my father didn’t say goodbye, but I was so relieved my visit was almost over I didn’t care.

Going home again

I haven’t visited my parents in about three weeks, since my last fall out from them. They went to Birmingham to see Parveen and visit family, which meant I could avoid visiting them.

They returned last weekend and I called and spoke to my mum. She asked when I was going to visit and I said I'd do so at the weekend, although I didn’t want to. But I told her I’m not listening to any of my father’s rubbish anymore, he can’t tell me what to do, preach and lecture at me and expect me accept it.

As soon as I said those things I felt guilty and angry speaking to her like that. Guilty because she’s a seventy three year old woman and what kind of daughter am I, dictating what I will and won't put up with? And angry that once again, loose promises were being made that if I visit, no-one will say anything to me and it’ll be alright, and everything else must have been part of my imagination.

I said to her, I know that’s not going to happen, if he shouts or starts saying those horrible things again I'll stop visiting. Again I felt bad, using emotional blackmail but what else do I have? It takes so much for me to pluck up the courage to make the phone call to them. This is probably because when I make the phone calls I have to prepare myself to be upset, prepare myself to feel guilty as well as prepare myself for their questioning and justifying myself. 

I've been feeling upset this last week. I put it down to the instability of not yet having a job, going for lots of interviews and feeling alone. But after the third consecutive night of dreaming about my parents, dreams where we argue and I feel so very scared, the same way I used to feel scared and sometimes still do when I was younger and hiding my double life from them, I realised, for the last three weeks when I hadn't had any contact with them, i'd been happy and felt settled, and as soon as I called them early this last week and made rough plans to see them today, at the weekend, I've been feeling awful ever since, and it seems because I try not to think about it during the day, it manifests itself in my dreams, my subconscious mind trying to make sense of all this upset which I can't deal with.

Today is Saturday and I’m going to visit them in a few hours. I’m expecting the same routine, I don't think my not visiting for a few weeks will have had any effect on them at all or made my father change the way he approaches me.

I have to be stronger. In the last few weeks, after house sitting for one friend, I’ve moved into another friend’s spare room. Seeing that I have options apart from relying on my family has given me some strength and I won’t fall into the trap of thinking without them I have no-one. I have to rely on myself and I can see that thinking I could get any support from my family which was unconditional was stupid.

 So I’ll visit, I won’t give into their demands and I’ll maintain control of our relationship. I’ll block out the bad words or let them bounce off me.

I wish I was less affected by them. I’m convinced, if I didn’t have my family situation, I'd be much clearer in a lot of other areas of my life.

But I’m still scared, or perhaps more correctly, anxious. I know my father’s going to be exactly the same, demanding to know why I haven't visited and giving me the same lectures.

I was meant to meet some friends for a birthday drink, before I went home. In the end, I was feeling so anxious and upset I called and canceled, because I couldn't handle putting on a social face when I knew I have to go and face the music afterwards. My friend was understanding, but it made me see why my family situation had a negative effect on my relationship with Alex.

MSN interruptions

I was on MSN chatting to a couple of friends when Parveen suddenly came on line. I usually keep my status to ‘appear offline’ to avoid my family on MSN, as the kids always tell their mums (my sisters) that i'm online, which usually results in my being questioned about one thing or another.
Parveen said my father wanted to know where I was and the usual crap, they’re your parents, they just want to be there for you. She said I didn't know what it was like to be a parent and how hard it is when your child won't listen to you.

My reaction to sudden interference from my family is interesting, to the say the least. It's like someone who is allergic to nuts and accidentally eats one - the allergic reaction sets in immediately (I assume, as i'm not allergic to nuts). I was sat on the balcony, enjoying the sun, chatting happily to my friends, when just a few lines from Sameena appear on my screen and screw up all my thoughts, taking me from normality to fear of reading the next line which appears on my MSN screen.

I got upset quickly, probably because she caught me by surprise and because the conversation inevitably came back to my parents being upset and me being the bad daughter, not doing what she's told. I tried to tell her that my parents tell her one thing, saying they just want to amke amends withy me but are completely the opposite in their attitude towards me - in that they just tell em what to do and are not very nice.

My father no longer wanted to give me money for a deposit on a flat because he didn't know for sure that I wasn't going to run off with someone in the future. That means be with someone they don’t approve of. Apparently, if he gave me the money, everyone (the family) would know about it and he'd be even more embarrassed when I inevitably disgraced them again.

It was Parveen's next words which really pissed me off. Apparently Sameena had told Parveen I have a boyfriend in Spain! At this point I almost lost the plot....

At Christmas time , when I'd visited from Spain, one of my male friends, David from Spain had been in London for a day and had asked me to show him around. Of course I did so. I'd considered pretending he was a girl to Sameena at the time, as i'd been staying at her house and had said I was going to show him around, because I wanted to avoid the inevitable questions, but then thought, why should I? He was just a friend and there seemed to be no point. Besides, they know I have male friends.

But apparently it did matter. I couldn't believe it, it's seems that when my sisters have nothing else to talk about, they resort to speculation. This can cost me dearly, because if Sameena mentions it to my parents, then i'm under fire. If I had a boyfriend, or ten boyfriends for that matter, whose business is it? In my family, everyones, it seems.  Parveen even tried to justify it, saying, well when everyone's lying about things, we get all confused, but I said, this is just making things up! If David was a boyfriend, I  wouldn't have mentioned him at all, I would've made up some other excuse for going out all day.

At least it's been a good reminder that I can never truly be honest about my life with my sisters, because they'll always draw their own (incorrect) conclusions from what I say and land me with more problems, where I end up having to explain myself even more, creating more tangles of lies and cover ups, over something so innocent and simple.

Gaining perspective

When I don’t visit my family or speak to my sisters for any length of time it’s like I can finally breathe and get a proper perspective on my whole life, not just the parts which include or are affected by them.

When i’m around them I get drawn into wanting to please them, because I think there might be some resolution to the mess which is our relationship and because of my unease at the thought I’ve caused them pain, regardless of their demands.

 Since I left my parents' house a couple of weeks ago, after the most recent argument and haven’t been back, I’ve not only felt much happier, I’ve been able to get my life on track far more than I have in the last couple of months since I returned from Spain. I’ve finally made some decisions regarding my career, moved into my friends’ flat and realised I have a lot of options, regardless of what my family tell me. I’ve also realised how lucky I am to have friends who are there for me unconditionally, unlike my family.

When I’m around them, it’s like I’m a child again, wanting to please them by getting the highest marks in school and proving my worth. Instead now I try and convince them I won’t embarrass them by living with a ‘gora’, I’ll work, be a good person and a good Muslim and visit them as often as I can. All the time I know, deep inside, no matter how hard I try and what I do, they’ll never be happy until I’m either married to someone they approve of or living under their watchful eyes.

I can’t believe just a few weeks ago, I let my sisters shout and tell me I should find someone Pakistani, marry him, start a family and stop doing all the 'bad' things I was doing (i.e, going out and seeing my friends).

Around them I lose all perspective, but now I’m alone and have the space to breathe I can think clearly and decide what I want to do and how I want to live my life. No doubt I’ll make mistakes and perhaps even screw it all up, but at least they’ll be my mistakes and my screw ups.

Fighting for marriage

Alex was hard to convince when it came to marriage, i'm embarrassed to say. I realise now, if you have to convince someone to marry you, you probably shouldn't be getting married at all. But at the time, being naive, I thought everything would work out. I was so in love with him, I was too scared to think about what it would mean if I lost him, that I didn't face up to the fact that if he didn't want to marry me, then we should break up.

It's all down to the situation with my family, they were so inside my head with their demands and expectations, it scared me that if I broke up with Alex, what would I have? There'd be no support for me, there'd just be them, telling me, "so it didn't work out with the gora, did it?" Which is exactly what they've said to me now, three years later. And at the time, I just wasn't strong enough to lose Alex.

Alex, having seen how inflexible my parents were in their beliefs and customs, didn't want to be pressured into getting married because of my family. He also didn't believe in marriage, for his own reasons. I'd always known this, but like the stupid female I was, and like countless others before me, thought we'd manage to reach some kind of compromise.

I promised him after marriage things would be better, my sisters at least would see he'd done the right thing by me and i'd have some of that ever elusive family approval which was so important to me. I also hoped i'd find it easier to live with my guilt, as if he converted to Islam and we had an Islamic marriage we'd be doing the right thing in the eyes of God at least.

Despite cultural beliefs and interpretations, Islam dictates Muslims can marry other Muslims regardless of race. So although I was hurting my parents I comforted myself that Islamicaly what we were doing was acceptable. I needed to believe I was justified in doing what I was doing, and looked for the acceptance I couldn’t get from my parents from my religion instead.

That's a typical behavioural pattern for me, looking for acceptance.

But I underestimated how hard the process of getting married would be. My sisters, who'd wanted to see commitment in my relationship were now horrified by the implications of our marriage. They kept saying, but what about Mum and Dad, what will people say?

My family has always been more concerned with what other people would think, instead of what was important for themselves. It’s very common, an obsession with reputation and appearances. It doesn’t matter if the whole family is miserable, in unhappy or violent marriages, as long as to everyone on the outside it looks as if the right thing is being done.

So what I wanted, or what would make me happy was of no importance. This is what I find the hardest, my parents were more concerned about what other people thought than if I was happy. If they'd only have stood up to these people, said this is what their daughter had decided and was acceptable in Islam, no-one could argue on religious grounds and surely that was most important?

But my parents couldn’t let go of their beliefs, so began again an endless cycle of phone calls from Pakistan telling me I was killing them, i'd betrayed their trust in me.

My sisters went back and forth between themselves, my parents and myself, repeating the same things, what would the family say, what would happen to my sisters who were married to first cousins, would it make things worse for them, what would their in-laws say? My eldest sister, the more accepting of the two, was torn between her loyalty to my parents and myself, should she come to the wedding or not? My brother, with whom I had never had a good relationship with, what would he say? And what would each of them say to each other?

 

 

 

Reasons for getting married

Did we get married for the right reasons? I don’t know. I needed a commitment from Alex to break away from my family legitimately and we'd been together for almost five years.

As an unmarried Pakistani girl I “belonged” to my family until I was married. So until then I still had to visit them and was technically tied to them, an invisible bond broken only by marriage. Although my parents were in Pakistan Mohammed and his family were in Britain and he took their place as head of the family.

Being unmarried and living alone in our culture is not acceptable, you either live your life with your family or your husband. It's like a woman is never allowed to be just herself, she can only legitimately exist behind someone else's guard.

I saw marrying Alex as a way of breaking this invisible bond and gaining complete freedom for my life.

My sisters, who’d given up trying to convince me to leave Alex now turned their attention to our living arrangements. They didn’t understand why we were living together and kept asking, why won’t he marry you? I didn’t have the answer. No matter how British I was, I was still a traditional Pakistani girl when it came to my views on marriage. Or just a traditional girl full stop. I wanted to get married and have children.

At the time the situation was so consuming I could see no other way out, so I allowed myself to be influenced by these expectations, not strong enough to say no, sitting on that fence again, trying to make everyone happy.

I pushed for Alex and I to get married as I knew some things would change within my family situation, i’d at least get some approval from my sisters. I also hoped, as Alex would convert to Islam, my father might come around eventually, as Islam dictates one Muslim can marry any other, regardless of race or background. So although it would be a big deal in our community, in the eyes of God I was doing the right thing.