By Wazhma Frogh

“Pari! Shame on you! You are still playing outside! I will  complain to your father tonight; you are such an idiot. Why don’t you understand that you are a girl and girls don’t play outside the house, its very shameful for a girl to play with boys outside the house!”

This was my own mother who had become so tired of my boyish behavior and playing with other boys of my age outside the house. According to my mom, I never looked or behaved like a girl since I was two years old. Therefore, you could only see cars, guns, and spiderman toys in our house; all brought by my father who had a very different mentality about girls from my mom. He thought that girls should be confident enough to face all the ugly faces of life.

Since childhood I had the desire to be a pilot and fly high in the sky. But, I could see gulps of fear in my mother’s eyes and I started to feel that fear myself after a certain incident. One fine afternoon, I was playing “catch me if you can” with my neighbor’s son, Atif, around our silent neighborhood. Suddenly I felt tied with the steel ropes of a man’s hands. It was Atif’s father, who was trying hard to touch and cuddle me wildly. I felt uncomfortable and I resisted. He seemed like a wild animal that just got hold of its prey and was restless to tear it off into pieces. I was finally free from his trap when Atif got there. He had heard my voice shouting for help. But then his father looked at me and said, “Thank God, my daughter, that I caught you! If you had fallen down this pitch; you would have badly hurt yourself.” That was when I felt a very bitter hatred against him and at all men in general. How mean could a human being be in the hands of his wild inhumane desires?

I ran home without saying a word to Atif and looked for my mom. She was cleaning the dishes in the kitchen. I shouted, “Mom where are you? I needed a shelter, a place where I could hide myself so no one look at me.” The silent fear of that incident was growing inside me , although until today, I never knew what did that old man wanted to do when he held me strongly in his arms. My mom gave me a warm and confident hug and looked at me with a worried expression.

“What happened to you dear?” she asked.

I was speechless. But, my mom knew what had happened to me. She knew that after that day, I would never go out and play with our neighbor’s son.  She felt the pain and fear that I had in my eyes. This incident happened to me when I was around 10 years old. I never thought that just because I was a girl I  should stay home so that I could keep my honor and dignity. This meant that I should sacrifice my freedom because of society’s devils who were also the gate keepers of my honor and dignity. That single incident massacred my courage until today. I am 40 years old now, but I never got the answer to my questions.  Why did I have to change myself because of the thousands of devil’s like Atif’s father around the world? Is it because I am portrayed as weak? Is it because I cannot fight back the way a man could? If I am that weak, then why am I sent to be compared with a stronger one? Can a weaker half be an equal to another half? Let’s compare nature around us. We have the moon lighting the night and we have the sun warming the whole day. Can we say the moon is better than the sun because it lightens our dark nights? Or can we say the sun is better because we would have been frozen and paralyzed if there wasn’t a sun? None of them can replace another and both of them have their own errands assigned. They are signs of diversity without being superior to one another. That same theory applies to men and women. They are different but none is superior or inferior because they are not the same.

Getting back to that incident that changed my personality and my viewpoint about life; it transformed me into a stererotypical Asian women. I got married to a man of my parent’s choice and have behaved like an upright wife for more than 15 years now. But, I wish that my mom had given me the courage to face the devil and the world with confidence. I may have not been another weaker woman of this era. The lesson that I learned during these past thirty years of my life was that I should not devote my being and identity because society can not control their evil intentions. 

I shared this story with my daughter when she was 8 years old and I  have taught her to fight back and stand against brutalities that happen to a girl and changes her motions and ambitions in life, without hiding herself from the society and devoting her self being. As a 40 year old mother, I want to tell all mothers that we should not allow our daughters to be another set of weak women.

This story is about a woman who is a successful mother but to be super mom she had to pay a bitter price… I met her during my struggles  advocating on gender rights.

Tags | Afghan Women, Gender Equality, story