I cannot even imagine what it's like to be a woman in that horrible, violent, cruel and inhuman culture and religion. I pray for them, and I weep for them, those girls and women who never have hope or the option to escape it.
My mother was from Turkey. There was a big time gap between her sisters' births and hers. My aunts were all taught the Arabic alphabet so they could read the Quran, and then, at the age of 14, they were married off to suitors who'd been chosen for them. They spent their lives in the house, ignorant, beaten (when needed), and cranking out children for as long as the plumbing held up. If they ventured out, it was always under the hijab.
Women are each other's worst jailers; so, the neighborhood matriarchs were the despotic enforcers of the dress code and would subject one another to the most appallingly vicious gossip and shunning campaigns to maintain the social norms. My mother decided when she was young, that she wasn't having any of that shit; and fortunately, when she was a young teen, her parents died so she fled from home. She went from her hometown of Bursa, which was very conservative, to Izmir, on the Aegean coast.
It was an excellent choice, since Izmir was was a cosmopolitan city whose population was made up of Greeks and the US/NATO forces. She learned English, Greek and French, qualified for a driver's license, owned her own business, car and apartment, and began the process of emigrating to the US. She endured a Kafkaesque amount of red tape from both the US and Turkish governments, spent a fortune, and lost everything when she left Turkey, since the government wouldn't let her leave the country with anything but the clothes on her body and 75 Turkish liras.
She came to the US in 1959, got her citizenship in 1969, and lived till 2008. But she never spent one minute of her life under that nasty headscarf, which she always called "the rag".
Thank you for sharing that incredible story of your mother. What an amazing, strong, smart woman, who never gave up!
God bless you and your family, and may her story, and yours touch many lives as inspiration!
I cannot even imagine what it's like to be a woman in that horrible, violent, cruel and inhuman culture and religion. I pray for them, and I weep for them, those girls and women who never have hope or the option to escape it.
My mother was from Turkey. There was a big time gap between her sisters' births and hers. My aunts were all taught the Arabic alphabet so they could read the Quran, and then, at the age of 14, they were married off to suitors who'd been chosen for them. They spent their lives in the house, ignorant, beaten (when needed), and cranking out children for as long as the plumbing held up. If they ventured out, it was always under the hijab.
Women are each other's worst jailers; so, the neighborhood matriarchs were the despotic enforcers of the dress code and would subject one another to the most appallingly vicious gossip and shunning campaigns to maintain the social norms. My mother decided when she was young, that she wasn't having any of that shit; and fortunately, when she was a young teen, her parents died so she fled from home. She went from her hometown of Bursa, which was very conservative, to Izmir, on the Aegean coast.
It was an excellent choice, since Izmir was was a cosmopolitan city whose population was made up of Greeks and the US/NATO forces. She learned English, Greek and French, qualified for a driver's license, owned her own business, car and apartment, and began the process of emigrating to the US. She endured a Kafkaesque amount of red tape from both the US and Turkish governments, spent a fortune, and lost everything when she left Turkey, since the government wouldn't let her leave the country with anything but the clothes on her body and 75 Turkish liras.
She came to the US in 1959, got her citizenship in 1969, and lived till 2008. But she never spent one minute of her life under that nasty headscarf, which she always called "the rag".
Amazing story, may she rest easy and watch over you.
I urge you to expand this and push it to an outlet or just post it on medium.com. People need to hear this story. Blees you pede
Beautiful!
Thank you for sharing that incredible story of your mother. What an amazing, strong, smart woman, who never gave up! God bless you and your family, and may her story, and yours touch many lives as inspiration!
America is worse, though. Sometimes, a man explains something to them. Arab women just don't know how easy they have it.
Or men sit without their knees touching, bastards.
None of that matters, we all died from net neutrality being removed.
Women are some of the most fanatical adherents.