Is It Too Late To Save Our Mothers?

Was I born out of violence? I’ve often tried to feel the intensity of that sharp, burning sting; the excruciating pain that struck you when you lay there like a corpse. Eerily still. With a brutal thrust, the blade made its way inside you, piercing through your flesh. You bled. You must’ve bled. But beginnings were supposed to smell of roses, not blood. The roses on your bed drew in the blood stains. Violence was bestowed upon you with festivity, disguised in scarlet hues and roses. Violence that you endured to prove yourself a goddess, bereft of all her powers except that of creation. 

You must have felt divine when you created life. And those piercing stabs must have felt like a prerequisite to creation. But, mother, wasn't love the essence of life? not pain, not violence. not even necessity. When deprived of pleasure, suffering became your pleasure. Your guilty pleasure. Inflicting pain on your body made you feel like a martyr. And who doesn’t enjoy the glory of martyrdom and the sound of bones creaking?      

"Why can't he just go to the kitchen and pour it himself. Chai is ready, he just needs to pour it, maa." Your rage was ubiquitous; even the cups smelled of it. You reprimanded our insolence. Your wrath was justified but misplaced. You knew we were right when we told you that you never retired. When father did years ago. He was living the ideal retirement life: no work, food served on the table, the charpai bent under his weight, and the whole house forced into listening to the drivel of a random YouTube guy.

While you were still stuck in the same round-the-clock cycle. Life around you changed; your kids' diapers were replaced by their kids', your daughters were now women afraid of their womanhood, and the old home in the hubbub of the old muhalla was replaced by the oppressive silence of the gated community. But you stood firm in your kitchen while the world revolved around you. And you were still busy picking up father's smelly socks from the dining table, dressing table, and all the places where they ought not to be, when your daughters came looking for you to trace the boiling blood in their veins and their putrescent hearts. You seem so calm taking care of the eldest to the youngest in the house, how come your uncouth daughters want to see the flames from the centre after burning down the whole world? Does it have anything to do with how constricted the blood flows in your veins?

'Why are you always so sad?' Maybe because my mother seems so happy.

'Why are you so enraged all the time?' Maybe because my mother is so calm. 

Sometimes I think that when our mothers gave birth, they screamed their guts out, only to remain silent for the rest of their lives. They gave away their screams to us. Didn't they stop when we first cried? Maybe this is the reason I've never stopped wailing since then. 

The reminiscences of my early childhood are replete with images of a woman torn between her home and school, always struggling to keep her brown lipstick from leaving marks on her teeth. But always failing. You never had enough time to wear the lipstick immaculately. Years later, you do have this privilege, but the muscle memory of your rushing hands always wins. 

Brother would often mock you and laugh at the sight of a school teacher buying sabzi from the cart vendor at the corner of the street. "I would lose all respect for them if I ever saw my teachers like this. Your students pass through the same street. They must find it hilarious."

“They must know that their teacher is a mother too. It's the same sabzi that feeds you.” You would dismiss his impertinent remarks. Your hands were always occupied with shopping bags, and you never complained of the ordeal of walking a long way under the scorching heat, all the way from your school to your home. “Tum logon ke liye chezen la la kar meri bazo latak gayi hain, and you're still so ungrateful.” Years later, you would rebuke brothers when they tried to tease you. 

I've no preferences in food, and I often skip meals. Maybe because you always went without breakfast with only a cup of chai in your hands that somehow always got cold. And you came home to 4 hungry kids waiting to be fed. How could a mother make herself a roti before making sure her kids are full? You all love sacrifices. Or maybe you were addicted to the satisfaction such sacrifices offered. Or maybe you had no other choice. You often tell us the tales of your constant dilemmas during our early childhood. The sight of your little creations begging you not to leave them when you left for school in the morning must have been heart-wrenching. You even tried to sneak behind once to see what we did after you left. 

Your motherly heart was broken into a million pieces at our muffled sobs behind the courtyard wall. But again, what other choice did you have? You couldn't possibly take four mischievous kids to a government school that was already swarming with kids and cows. Torn again between sacrifices, you had to leave us behind, for father’s 15th-grade salary was just enough to keep us afloat and not to pay for the private schools you wanted to send us to. So you persisted. Choosing one suffering over the other. And who took notice of skipped meals, the pangs of separation, and legs that always hurt? 

“Oho! You're gaining weight. Slow down.” You shifted on your charpai as I stood on your legs to massage them with my clumsy feet. Father had just recently given us a demo of his unnecessary, ill-tempered fits, and you told us that if it was not for us, you wouldn't have stood this man even for a second. Quintessentially maternal love. 

“All my trials and tribulations would be worth it once you all are successful in life, and then my duty would be over,” You used to tell us. If by success, you meant financial security, we did succeed. At least half of it was true. Now your sons earn well, but your BP still shoots up often because there's too much stuff to handle at home, only that there are now more members to look after, and you're gradually losing your patience. (Father's socks on the dining table have stood the test of time and are still found there.) Your daughters want to talk to you, but somehow the conversation never goes beyond the namaz-quran mantra. How you sought refuge in deen. How namaz has healing powers. But, mother, we're afraid of sanctuaries that numb our pain. Maybe we're stubborn, we want a head-on collision with pain. Either we get destroyed or the pain remains no more...

Years of incessant lectures in primary school have inculcated in you a proclivity for talking too much. But now you're home and there's no one to listen. Your children are busy conquering the world just like you wanted them to, and the radio set on father's belly has evolved into a smartphone. Everything else is pretty much the same. You're left alone with your kitchen and household chores. 

A while back, my friend (whose father didn't care to look back since he left the country) and was raised by a single mother, asked me why our mothers were so adamant about ruining our lives like they ruined theirs. We're ripe women, and each household follows the same story of a mother wanting to get her daughter married to some unknown man. 

Just because my fate was bad doesn't mean yours will be too. ye to naseeb ki baat ha. Mothers keep reiterating. But a woman is forever doomed, mother. At least in this world. But I told my friend that our mothers don't want to throw us in the same fire to seek revenge; they only want to keep repeating the cycle because they're waiting for their desired results. Keep spinning the wheel, and it might stop at your perfect ending.

They think their redemption lies in going around in circles until the centrifugal force wins and they find the happiness promised to them. But the endings keep being the same. Because the beginnings were. And because an object in motion stays in motion unless acted upon by an unbalanced external force. Your daughters are that unbalanced external force. But you're spinning so fast it would be madness to extend an arm; we'd be swallowed whole. Maybe then the only way to save our mothers is to save ourselves from our mothers? 

Laiba Ali is an occasional writer from Pakistan who sometimes turns her rage into words. Views expressed by the author are their own. This article is a part of our ongoing series Dissent Dispatch, in collaboration with Usawa Literary Review.