Identity

The inevitable

Osama told Parveen on their wedding night he'd seen her in Kashmir when she was seventeen years old, visiting Pakistan for the first time. He said ever since he'd prayed five times a day he'd marry her, even though she was betrothed to someone else. So it was no wonder things didn’t turn out the way we had wanted. Osama, a religious man who'd never done any wrong in his life, praying five times a day compared to us, falling in love and doing everything our religion dictated was wrong. How could we have ever won against that? Perhaps it’s stupid to think that but it’s certainly what we felt at the time.

Wedding Preparations, Part two

After Parveen agreed to marrying Osama the wedding preparations began. I'd forget about Parveen's heartbreak and get drawn into the excitement of the wedding preparations, then remember who she was to marry and feel bad for worrying about the detail of my outfit. But it wasn't me who was kept awake at night and dreaded the countdown to the wedding day. It was only Parveen who went through that.

We'd go shopping with Osama’s family, who'd buy anything my parents asked for the wedding. Parveen would get drawn into the wedding preparations, from choosing fourteen different outfits for her wedding trousseau to the designs for her wedding outfit, to the gold jewelery sets she was to have.

But my parents new found approval and the material things didn't make up for her still being in love with Feroz and heartbroken. She was going to marry a man she didn't know, would never speak to until the night of her wedding and didn't want anywhere near her. I don’t know how she did it, as it was exactly these reasons which would lead me to stick to my guns in about ten years time, when I'd face a similar situation.

In the meantime she had every material thing she could want for the wedding, the most fashionable clothes and more gold jewelery she could ever wear at one time. These items at weddings are given by parents and future parents-in-law to the bride and historically are linked to the dowry system.

Now it's a materialistic custom and signifies status and wealth, done to show the community what had been given and by whom. As is the norm in our culture, where gossip rules, everyone would want to know who had given what, the weight of the necklace and earrings she was wearing and how many outfits she had.

Only Parveen knew what she'd lost, only she knew what she was going through and how different her life would be from what she'd imagined. She still doesn’t talk about it but I know the difference in her, it was immediate after she got married. She'd been prepared for the wedding to Nadeem, had expected it all her life despite falling in love with Feroz. To then have the chance of marrying Feroz, taken away from her against her will and instead married to a man who she'd never known...well, it's as if part of her died.

She knew the type of life she'd have with Osama. She'd have to stay in Pakistan until he got a visa to Britain which would take at least a year. Sometimes girls returned to England to stay with their parents or the family of the man they'd married but given Osama’s strict nature, this would never happen.

Osama’s family lived in a village in Kashmir, not in Islamabad like us. She'd have to cook and clean and be a typical Pakistani wife. If that wasn't bad enough, there was Osama's family she'd be living with too, which was made up of nephews, nieces, sister and brother-in-laws, all living with her in the same house, to be looked after by her and her sister-in-law.

As a British Pakistani girl she was open to scrutiny from everyone as they'd be comparing her with other Pakistani girls to see how she coped. She'd be a source of gossip for the women of the village. Gossip comes second only to religion in our community.

The wedding took place in November, I was miserable and spent most of the day crying in the storage room. It was awful to think Parveen would leave the family, and even worse to think she'd now be part of a family I didn’t know. Worse still Osama had a younger brother who was now being lined up for me. The only person worse than Osama was his younger brother, a carbon copy but shorter and although almost impossible, more unattractive.

After the wedding I returned to Britain to continue studying for my 'A' levels. I couldn't live the restricted life i'd seen in Pakistan. Experiencing Parveen's forced marriage, our lack of general freedom and the chauvinism of men in our family made me realize I wanted to live away when I went to university. It was the only way I would be able to live my own life. The only country where that would be possible was Britain.

Desperation central

Parveen was desperate. This was her chance to marry the man she loved and it was slipping away from her again. From the beginning her chances with Feroz had appeared slim but after the refusal from Nadeem she'd hoped she may be able to marry the man she loved. Now, for the second time it looked as if this wouldn’t happen, this time due to my father’s hurt pride and stubbornness. We didn’t know what to do. We called Sameena in England, who had no influence over my parents, desperately trying to think of a solution. There were few choices. One was to get Parveen married to Feroz secretly and tell my parents afterwards. During these times it was brave to even consider this, as my parents would go mad and we imagined they'd do something extreme, like throw Parveen out on the streets of Islamabad and she'd have nowhere to go. Eventually we decided this would be too foolhardy.

The alternative was to call my brother. We've never had a good relationship with him, he’s always felt my parents favoured us, the girls, over him. As a result our relationship, as well as that of our parents with him was strained. But in our desperate state we asked him to come to Pakistan. During those times no-one traveled to Pakistan spontaneously, plans were made months in advance and it was considered a huge expense. My brother had his business and family in Britain to consider as well. Fortunately, he came and gave us some hope for a short period of time. Unfortunately, it became apparent early on he wasn’t on our side. I still don't know why he came, perhaps to find out what was going on so he could use it against us in the future, as he would.

With my brother in Pakistan the next step was for Parveen to ask him and my father to allow her to marry Feroz. I was scared just at the thought of the enormity of what she had to do. Marriages were decided upon by the head of the family, with little or almost no input from the women and certainly not from the unmarried daughter. Parveen too was terrified, but she had to do it.

When she did so my father immediately said no, she'd already made his decision she'd marry Osama. Parveen then asked my brother for help and he replied with how unthinkable it was that an unmarried woman would raise the issue of her own marriage in front of her father and brother, it was completely unacceptable and showed how little shame she had and a clear sign of how unrespectable she was.

My father then delivered the same line he would use on me about ten years later: "Look at my grey hair before you do something like this". It means, consider the respect I have and the person I am before you shame me. My sister, weaker than I would be in the future, buckled under the pressure and told them to go ahead with the wedding to Osama, crying as she did so.

My mother in the meantime was screaming and shouting about what kind of unrespectable girls we were, how we did nothing but bring shame on the family and disrespected her and our father. I went into the kitchen and she had a knife in her hand and said to me "why don’t you just kill me now?" It’s something I'll never forget and a sign of how my family react in such situations. Instead of discussing things clearly and rationally to find the best solution for everyone, they prefer to let loose with their emotions and imagine death, shame and disrespect when really, if Parveen married a different cousin no-one would have batted an eyelid.

Clash of the suitors

The potential suitor for Parveen my father was keen on was a first (half) cousin called Osama. We didn’t really know him, as we'd never been close to my father's side of the family. He'd lived in Pakistan all his life, was about four years older than Parveen and studied somewhere in Kashmir. He'd been studying all his life, and at 27 or 28 had done the equivalent of ‘A’ levels, cushioned by monthly financial support from a brother in England. For my father, Osama was perfect, religious, educated and didn't have a roving eye for women. To us, he was unfriendly, chauvinist and couldn’t have a roving eye because he was ugly. The fact that he didn’t speak to women unless he had to, was considered a big plus for my father, it meant he was a decent man.

If you go out in Pakistan at anytime, you will be struck by how many men are around and how few women. Women are almost always chaperoned by a male, either her husband, father or brother. Only in the most modern of families is there socialising between the sexes, if they're not related to each other.

As a result men are starved of female company, which means whenever they see one they stare as if they've never seen a woman before in their lives. This isn't an exaggeration, it’s embarrassing to experience and even more embarrassing if you're with your father or brother, as they too are aware of it but can’t do anything to stop it. Parveen, twenty three at the time, was stunning, at her most beautiful. She was by far the most beautiful girl in our family. She had long, dark curly hair down to her waist which she wore loosely in a plait. She was a size ten, with a classic hour glass figure and five foot four. Men would fall over themselves staring at her.

People in Pakistan don’t just look for a few seconds and look away, they stare for as long as they want and don’t care who notices. There are no rules on etiquette, as in Britain. Women are expected to be modest and not look at any man yet they stare at any girl over the age of thirteen to their heart's content. The reasons for segregation are usually steeped in religion, yet it causes very non-religious behaviour.

It’s quite normal and even encouraged in our family for one half of a potential couple to be from Pakistan and the other from Britain. As we almost always inter marry, it's a way of getting more of the family to Britain, and often the deciding factor for the family in Pakistan. Unfortunately these matches have their inevitable problems, such as Pareveen's would. Although we're very traditional in the way we live in Britain, there are still things we are used to which don’t exist in the villages of Kashmir. At the time, these included basics such as toilets, showers and electricity.

At the time, if the British half of the couple was a girl, she was expected to stay with the husband in Kashmir until his visa was approved, which used to take between six to nine months. Alongside an arranged marriage, with a man she barely knew, the girl has to deal with village life, the heat, looking after and living with a new family and a complete lack of privacy. This is exactly what would happen to Parveen.

By contrast Feroz was good looking, friendly and only religious when it suited him. He too was supported financially by a brother in England, which was the norm if the whole family wasn’t living in England like ours. This usually made those supported lazy, as they received monthly financial support without having to do anything. He did have a business for a short time, a shop of some sort in Kashmir, which my father approved of. In this sense he was no different from Osama.

Feroz’s family came to our house in Islamabad to ask for Parveen’s hand in marriage. My father refused, citing the situation with Nadeem’s side of the family. He wasn’t happy they asked and started to view Feroz’s constant visits to our home with suspicion.

The marriage refusal and aftermath

My whole family was in Britain, ready for the wedding between Parveen and Nadeem. Clothes and jewelery had been bought. Parveen, still in love with Feroz, had convinced herself marrying Nadeem would be better for her and easier.

But nobody could have predicted what happened next. Nadeem told his family he didn’t want to marry Parveen. His mother told my parents on the phone and we were all in shock. There was nothing anyone could do, he had simply said no. His family had tried to persuade him, but what influence could they have over a man in his mid-twenties, raised in Britain who had a good job and had lived way from home for a few years?

His mother and brother came to our house in London to apologise. They listened to my father’s religious lecture about how they would suffer in hell for what had happened. Although I was upset about the situation, I felt sorry for them. My father was really angry, he felt he'd been shamed and humiliated by my aunt's family and Nadeem in our community.

The community (which includes anyone outside my immediate family) are quick to latch onto anyone's misfortune and gossip about the reasons behind it. It wouldn't be unusual for them to assume Nadeem's refusal meant there was something wrong with Parveen, perhaps she had had a boyfriend, or  worst still, had been pregnant. For my father, respect within our community is essential and is more important to him than anything else. He  places a lot of emphasis on what people say and think about him.

The big confusion in my family was why Nadeem had said no. My sister was attractive, ours was a good family, how could he say no?

The answer was simple: whilst my parents had been playing hard to get, reluctant to let their unmarried daughter go, Nadeem had fallen in love with someone.

In my family this was not an acceptable excuse. There is no understanding of love or personal choice when it came to marriage. Decisions regarding marriage were taken by parents in the best interest of everyone and had been successful for many years. Love did not exist in our culture, it was something we saw in films but was a Western characteristic which caused nothing but trouble and bought shame to families.

As is normal in our family we couldn’t just leave it at that. Bad luck, Nadeem had said no and we should have started looking for other suitable men for my sister. Instead, the family started meddling, wanting to get to the root of the cause whilst not accepting the obvious.

Sameena, married to Yousef, whose relationship with Nadeem was the same as ours went to his house with him to try and change Nadeem's mind. Nadeem kept saying no, he didn’t want to get married and eventually ran out of the house, with them in pursuit. They eventually found him at a bus station, but they didn't get anymore answers from him.

Sameena came back to London, having failed what she'd set out to do and had but one answer to everything: he must be gay. I'm embarrassed by how backwards we were at the time, but it's the truth.  Falling in love was not deemed important enough or a viable excuse to say no to a marriage, there had to be a more significant reason, and the only excuse anyone came up with was that he was homosexual, so of course couldn't marry. 

This was a difficult time for Parveen. She felt like an old spinster who no-one would want. Being twenty three and unmarried was considered old at that time (it was 1990) and an embarrassment in our community. She'd left work, thinking she was going to get married and was now stuck at home, with nothing on her mind but the embarrassment of the refusal.

If my parents had said yes earlier the situation would have been avoided. But they lay the blame at my cousin, now labeled gay and unwelcome ever again in our house, as the reason for everything going wrong, not that they'd left it too late and he'd met someone else.

So we were left with suitcases full of wedding clothes and no wedding in sight. My father, in his irresponsible nature when it came to his family, left the country for Pakistan. His ‘business’ was suffering and had to be tended to.

My father is a successful businessman, although illiterate he's built himself up out of nothing. Although he did it for good reasons, if he'd spent more time with us instead of attending to his business perhaps some things would have been different. He might have notice earlier Parveen was getting older and should get married. Perhaps the whole dynamic between us would have been different. Instead, he spent a lot of his time in Pakistan and we grew up without him being around.

Now, after he left for Pakistan again, it was just Parveen, my mum and I. Parveen was desperate to go back to Pakistan. After the refusal from Nadeem she'd started to hope there may be a chance for her to marry Feroz, who she was still in love with. We followed my father to Pakistan, in the summer of 1991. It was a perfect time to go, Parveen could get married, I'd finished my GCSE's and could start at a college in Pakistan. I was sixteen and Parveen twenty-three.

But there were problems with Parveen marrying Feroz. My father was now on bad terms with my mum’s side of the family, after he had, in his eyes, been insulted and shamed by them. In Urdu this is called ‘naraazgi’ and means there's been a dispute or disagreement and the two parties involved aren’t speaking to each other. Although the dispute had been with Nadeem’s family my father was not feeling charitable with any of my mum’s family. He'd decided, without discussion and as was his right within our culture, to give Parveen’s hand in marriage to his side of the family. Sameena was married to my mum’s side of the family, so this would make things equal in his logic. This was more important for my father than what my sister wanted, or what kind of life she would have with whomever she married.

Secret love

Things are never straight forward in my family, and Parveen's impending wedding to Nadeem was no exception.
Whilst living in Pakistan she had a relationship with another cousin, called Feroz. I have no idea how she achieved this, as both she and Feroz were of a similar age and not allowed to spend time together. Luckily for her my parents had a soft spot for him, he would make many trips from Kashmir, where he lived, to Islamabad, where we lived, with the excuse of having to attend to some business in Islamabad and would stay at our house.

Our house in Islamabad at the time was huge, it had two levels with six bedrooms and bathrooms, two lounges, a dining room and kitchen downstairs and the same upstairs. He'd sleep upstairs and late at night, Parveen would creep upstairs to his room. It was very brave of her considering she was doing it right under their nose and the consequences if they had found out. Lucky for her that house was so big.

My parents followed the same routine every night after dinner. Parveen would take them hot milk after their evening prayers, after which they'd get ready for bed and retire. She'd listen outside their door to make sure they'd done so. She'd then check my grandmother, who slept in the same room as her (another chaperone) was asleep. She'd lock her bedroom door from the outside – I’m not sure what this achieved but we always locked bedroom doors from the inside at night.

She'd creep across the huge hall in the dark, lit only by what moonlight came in through the windows. When she got to the stairs she was pretty much home free. She'd spend a few hours with Feroz and creep back downstairs before my parents awoke for early morning prayers. I have to give it to her for bravery as I could never do that, in my parents house. She saw Feroz like this for about two years before she went to Britain for the wedding to Nadeem. As she had been betrothed to Nadeem since birth, there was no way she could say she wanted to marry someone else, albeit another cousin. It would have been unthinkable at that time. She accepted she had to marry Nadeem, regadless of being in love with Feroz.

The before marriage process

Unfortunately for Parveen my parents were being difficult when it came to her marriage proposal. When Nadeem’s brother came to ask their permission, they gave cryptic answers and never said yes. There was no reason for them to do this, it’s just the way my parents were and still are. Nadeem's brother would sit in my parent’s room, whilst they sat on their prayer mats, enjoying the power they had as he wanted something from them which, although they had to give, they were going to make sure he would have to fight for.

He would ask them to do the honour of giving them their daughter's hand in marriage to his brother. My parents would say, "Allah will take care of everything". They would stretch this game out for as long as they could. It would go back and forth between the two parties. I would enter the room, at thirteen years old I was deemed a harmless nuisance who didn’t understand what was going on. But I had been sent by Parveen to spy on them and report back to her what was said, which each time was the same thing, "Allah will take care of everything".

This continued for a long time. The irony was my sister didn’t have many suitors lined up at her door,  as everyone assumed she would marry Nadeem. He was her best choice, well educated, he had a great job and wouldn’t make her live with his family and was British born. Most parents would have been begging them to take her off their hands.

Eventually, after at least two years of hanging onto Parveen my parents gave in and said yes. They were in Pakistan, made preparations for the wedding and came to the UK where Parveen and I were, where the wedding would take place.

Sisters

When I was seven or eight years old, my eldest sister, Sameena, was dating my cousin, Yousef, without my parents knowing. She was betrothed to marry him, but any contact with him was forbidden, as was any contact with all men.

I remember being seven or eight years old and Sameena using picking me up from school as an excuse to meet Yousef. He would bribe me with sweets to not tell anyone what they were doing. I didn't understand what they were doing anyway, all I knew is they met each other when she picked me up from school, I would get any sweets I wanted and would sit in the front seat of the van he drove whilst they would roll around in the back. I didn't understand why rolling around in the back of his dirty van was something they wanted to do and as long as I had my sweets I didn't care.

My parents found out, which wasn’t surprising as Sameena’s excuses of picking me up from school so she could meet Yousef weren’t well thought through. My school was a ten minute walk away and she would meet him for an hour. Other similarly bad excuses were she was going to the launderette, and again would take twice the time of a normal wash and dry cycle.

It's my first memory of my parents being unreasonable, although I wouldn’t realize their unreasonableness until years later. Sameena was seeing the man she had been betrothed to marry since birth, so did it really matter? It wouldn't affect her life in the future, or prevent her getting married to him.

But what mattered was that she had been with a man, albeit her betrothed, before marriage. In my family and community women only interacted safely with their brothers, fathers and uncles. All other men, if the same age or older were considered potential husbands, so women were segregated from them, including cousins after a certain age, usually mid-teenage years when we were considered of marrying age.

I remember parts of the day my parents found out, the whole family cramped into my brother’s bedroom, with my father shouting at Sameena and her crying. With the rationale of a child, I remember thinking that it was a day when everyone in the family got shouted at by my father.

But Sameena did eventually marry Yousef, as she had always wanted.

Then there was my second sister Parveen, seven years older than me. She fell in love with a first cousin too, although her story didn’t end as happily as Sameena’s. I'm the only one who didn't follow this pattern. Both my sisters lived with the family until they got married and so were restricted in the men they met, with cousins being the rare men they might interact with, although this was limited as well.

Parveen had been betrothed since birth to a maternal first cousin, Nadeem. It was something which was always assumed would happen. He was a little older than her, we would visit my aunt when we were young and play together and hang out. He studied at university and later worked in London for a big accountancy firm. Although they were betrothed to each other they were still not permitted to meet or talk to each other unless other family members were present, but they had got to know each other a little as from when they were very young and both had been happy with their wedding plans.

For the wedding to go ahead, Nadeem’s parents had to formally ask my parent’s permission. This is how it works within our family and community. The boy’s family, usually the parents or the eldest sibling asks the girl’s family for the girl’s hand in marriage. At this time there is no consultation with either the boy or girl, they are told after the offer of marriage has been accepted. In Parveen’s case she had got to know Nadeem a little, due to frequent visits when we were younger. Very often the couple would only have caught glimpses of each other, and would have rarely said more than a greeting to each other.

We were living in Pakistan at this time and I was thirteen and Parveen was twenty. She was dying to get married. What else was there for her to look forward to? She had left sixth form at seventeen after her ‘O’levels, as the family hadn’t been comfortable with her studying beyond the minimum age in Britain. Within our family and community people weren’t comfortable with girls being away from the watchful eye of the family for any reason, including education. These were the ages when girls started to be attracted to boys, and is why usually girls in our family can be married from as young as sixteen.

After the age of seventeen Parveen had been acting the part of a good Pakistani girl waiting for her wedding day. This involved cooking, cleaning and praying. She had worked, which was considered very modern and a big risk, as during those times few girls in our family worked, but that was the extent of her freedom.

This transferred to Pakistan, where she wasn’t even allowed to work, may father deeming it unnecessary as she would be in contact with men outside the family. Again, too much of a risk. In my family, people always think about the what ifs. What if she meets someone? what if she does something with a man (translate: have sex)? what if she runs away?

Whilst I went to school and had constant exams and homework, she passed the days thinking about her impending marriage. During the mid eighties in Pakistan, a woman didn’t leave the house unless chaperoned by a male family member. It wasn't safe, even in Islamabad, for a group of girls to be out alone during the day or early evening.

Parveen had few friends in Islamabad, and she was reliant on my father allowing her to go to their house, taking her and picking her up.  This was not allowed often, perhaps once every three months, if my father agreed. So she'd be stuck at home, with only my parents for company. Really, no one can blame her for wanting to get married, I would have wanted the same in her position. Spending more than a few hours in my parent's company drives me mad, never mind all day, everyday.

Cultural background

In my family it’s traditional to marry first cousins. Although this is normal for us i'm embarrassed to admit it as I know non-Pakistani people will view it as incestuous and very backward.

Inter-marriage comes from a long tradition, related to us being from villages where traditionally we were landowners. If you married within the family, the land the family owned would remain within the same family, rather than being transferred to another. If you were married into a family which already had a close relationship with your own, the couple had more invested in the relationship and more reason to make it work. If there were matrimonial problems, both families could intervene and ensure the couple stayed together.

It's always been considered far better, particularly for a woman, to be in a bad marriage than be single or be divorced. A single or divorced woman, without a man, causes our community to feel nervous. They are not understood as there is no role for them. They are a problem for parents, who constantly worry about what they are doing, or what the community thinks about what they are doing. They are the object of constant gossip and speculation, and are considered disrespectable, because they aren’t married.

My brother is married to a second or third cousin and both my sisters to first (half) cousins.

The restrictions my family placed on us, and the way my sisters in particular reacted to those restrictions influenced me a lot in the way I would deal with the opposite sex in the future. This will become clearer as I explain more about my own life in later entries. My sisters though, would say I’m trying to shift the blame for what I did onto them. That’s the last thing I want to do as I realize I’m the only person responsible for my own actions. But from writing and through thinking about the various things which have happened in my family I can see why I made certain choices and held onto certain beliefs for a long time.

 

Beginnings

My hearts beating fast as I write this. I've been trying to write this blog for over a year now, but haven't managed to face up to it. That probably sounds a little strange, what’s the big deal about writing a blog? So many people do it, and out of all the thousands of the blogs out there in cyberspace, only a proportion are read.

I wanted to blog because I wanted to share my experiences. I thought it would be therapeutic for me and beneficial for others who've been in or are in a similar situation, or for those who wonder what it's actually like to go through what I've experienced.

I'm a British Pakistani Muslim woman. I was married to a Caucasian Scottish man, and in doing so, was disowned by my family.

Whilst going through the process of being disowned I faced many different emotions, the choice was my family or living my own life.  Although I don't regret my decision, it has been difficult, although with time and therapy I have come to terms with how things have turned out.

I use the term ‘disowned’ loosely. What I did and how things turned out with my family are not as straightforward as I married someone my family didn’t like and they never wanted to see me ever again. There has always been some type of constant dialogue with them, before and after I got married. In some ways it’s made things harder. Hopefully it’ll become clearer as I write.

I'll start at the beginning and give some background about my upbringing and my family, to show the influences I had when I was young and how they affected choices I made later in life. It will also help explain why being with a Caucasian man was deemed so wrong, given the traditions and cultural beliefs of my family and why wanting to live my own life and not have an arranged marriage is unacceptable to my family. 

I was born in Pakistan and came here in 1977 when I was two years old. We lived above a shop, fulfilling the typical Asian stereotype of being corner shop owners, although the shop was a grocery and butchers, not a newsagent.

My family are strict Muslims, with the men in the family being dominant over the women. This extended to all men in our community and family, you listened to and respected any man if he was older than you, whether what he said made sense or not. It's a typical Pakistani family in that sense, men know best and work hard to support the family, whilst women bring up children and take care of the household.

I'm the youngest of four in my family; I have one brother and two sisters. The age gaps between us are huge, my brother Mohammed is about eighteen years older than me (I'm not sure of the exact number) and my sisters, Parveen and Sameena are seven and twelve years older, respectively.

I had two other brothers who died when I was very young. It was only very recently I found out my mum suffered from a deep depression after my second brother died. I remember at the time my mum was sick a lot, and we kept calling the doctor out at night to treat her. But at that time we were relatively new in the country, handling the the shock and devastation of the death of a second son in the family. My father had a business, a grocery and butcher’s store we lived above which had to be kept going, and there was no understanding of what depression was in those times. My eldest sister, Sameena, about seventeen years old, took over the running of the household during this time, cooking and cleaning and looking after Parveen and myself.

Sometimes I think about my brothers who've passed away and how disappointed they must be in what I've done to my parents and the way I've turned out. After losing two sons my parents had more expectations of the rest of us, especially of myself as the youngest. I took the place of my dead brothers in my father’s eyes and he placed ambitions on me he had wanted for my them.

When I feel guilt about what I've done, I think, why did I have more expectations from life, why wasn't I satisfied like the other girls in my family, who've married men they didn't know until the wedding night, hand picked by their parents?

But somehow I grew up wanting more than what I saw other girls accepting around me. It would have been much easier if I had given in, had done as my parents had wanted when it came to marriage. But I couldn’t and still can’t, so I live with the choices I made and in doing so became estranged from my family, lost a part of myself, but gained my freedom. But it's hard to live with and I wish I could escape being me, escape the guilt .