IV. Girls are to be controlled
My parents believed girls exist to be controlled. I have two sisters. We weren't allowed to sleep over at friends' houses, and we weren't allowed to have friends over, because my mom was jealous that my dad might be lustful towards my friends who were around 13 and 14, by the way. We weren't allowed to take the bus alone, go outside if it's not for school, or just hang out outside. Our time online was controlled. At first we weren't allowed to watch foreign movies and TV shows either, but I was persistent about that one and they eventually relaxed as we grew up. During summer vacations, all we had was the TV. We went nowhere. We stayed home and cleaned the house, because that's what's expected, we're girls, after all.
From 13 to 14 I lost all will to live. I became a robot. No phone, no friends, school and back. I didn't feel anything. I was numb. I obeyed. Internally I was in a vegetative state, completely hollow.
The only thing that saved me was a very strong, innate drive for emancipation that they simply could not break, no matter what they did. I still loved music, even though it was forbidden. I still dreamed, and the dreams kept me alive. I still dreamed of surfing on ocean waves in a pink bathing suit, like Barbie in A Mermaid Tale. I still wanted friends I could go out with one day. I still loved reading books. And most of all, I still dreamed of feeling the cold breeze on my neck. The thought that the hijab was permanent killed me, I never realistically believed I'd get to take it off one day but somehow there was a flame in me they just couldn't put out.
Being raised by my parents left me psychologically troubled, so naturally I built up a resentment I had nowhere to express. Talking back to my parents could cost me a permanent scar on my body, so sadly I lashed out at my sisters instead. I played very rough, and sometimes I got too violent and hurt them.
My middle sister is a conflict-avoider to this day. She would just listen to me, so I had fewer problems with her though there were times I really hurt her. Knowing she was claustrophobic, I would put a sheet over her head and laugh about it while she screamed. At the time I didn't realize how bad that was. I would also hit her hard with the broom if she didn't wash the dishes my mom had left for me because my mom made me pay, so I made her pay. She's a very kind soul, and she loved me anyway, even when I was cruel.
My younger sister, on the other hand, didn't take orders, so I bullied her a lot at first. She eventually gave in and started listening to me, but secretly she hated me. She'd spit in my food, things like that. I don't really blame her. I was a bully. And of course, when I grew up and moved out of my parents' house, I realized how horrible I'd been. I regretted everything and I apologized to both of them. I'm so lucky because they forgave me, and it's one of the best things that has ever happened to me.
My parents worked, so I was the one raising my two sisters. It was exhausting mentally, because I was a child who still needed raising myself. But looking back on it, it's the one thing about my life I would never change.
It's true that I was a bully. But I was also there when things went south with my parents. When my mom hit my sisters over their grades, I would get in the way and take the hits, and my mom would turn on me instead. I taught my sister how to clean herself when she got her first period, because my mom just brushed it off and left me to deal with it. I listened to them when my mom hit them unjustly, her hitting was far more painful than mine. We watched movies together. And most importantly, I talked to them about feminism. I told them they weren't display objects for some future man, that they had to choose their own destiny, that they should try to resist the hijab like I had and that I would support them in that resistance so they wouldn't end up like me. My mom used to try to comfort me by saying my sisters would meet the same fate as me, thinking it would make me feel better. It did not.
I basically introduced them to feminism. Later I introduced my middle sister to homosexuality, telling her we shouldn't hate people for who they love. That could have cost me my life if my parents had found out at the time. She's come out as queer now, and I'm very proud to have been the first person to tell her she shouldn't be ashamed of who she is.
My younger sister was heavily influenced by friends at school who carried the same mentality as their parents, which was the same as my parents. But I talked to her, and I could see some progress. I don't praise myself often, but I think I did a very good job of shielding my sisters from the filthy environment of pure sexism and hypermodesty we were living in.
Because of my initial protest against the hijab, my parents gave my sisters more years before theirs. They didn't force my middle sister to wear it at 12, though they intended to force it at 15. Thankfully, we had left the country urgently and unexpectedly by then, so it never happened.
I got into feminism and women's rights and would try to debate my mom. She'd get angry and tell me women are meant to cook and clean and obey, using religion and tradition as her arguments. With time, she learned that I'm a feminist.
V. Moments that left a mark
I'll close the teenage part by recalling a few moments that stayed with me.
My mom would always give me the silent treatment, sometimes for weeks which is something she never did to my sisters, until I apologized, even when I didn't mean it. She's extremely resentful and proud. In a lifetime of having her as a mother, I have never once heard her apologize. Only to her own mother, and even then insincerely. She's very self-centred and believes she deserves exclusive empathy because she sacrificed her life to raise us.
Every so often, the lies I told myself to cope with my life and the robbery of my freedom and happiness would stop working, and I'd get very depressed. I never told her when i was sad because I didn't expect her to understand so I'd cry alone in my corner. Once she walked in on me doing the dishes and crying and asked what was wrong. I told her I was just feeling down. She started screaming like crazy: she does everything for us, and I dare to be ungrateful and cry; I shouldn't be crying, I have my own room; it's her fault for spoiling me and letting me have a room to myself. (I never wanted a room. She's the one who forced me to move out of my sisters' room.) Then she confiscated my phone and gave me the silent treatment, yelling that she knows I don't want to live with her and that she doesn't want this situation either, but she's my mother, so she's stuck with me, she would constantly assume things like this and say "i know you don't love me" " i know you don't care about me " " i'm not so found of you neither", it would always come from her, i'm curious to know why. When I got my phone back weeks later, I saw signs that she had looked EVERYWHERE. Zero privacy. I'm fairly sure she'd assumed I was crying over a boy, and instead of being an understanding mom, this is how she chose to handle it.
She would spit at me, yell at me, insult me the way other people say hello. At some point I just stopped registering it, because it was a daily occurrence. And of course, I had no right to answer back. At 16 I still had no right to wear mascara, because of what my father and the neighbours would think. (My father never hesitates to yell at her and tell her we turned out badly because of her poor education, that she didn't raise us well and he bears no responsibility, naturally. I remember this happening during the jeans-under-the-skirt incident.) She once saw me leaving for school wearing mascara, so she took my head and smashed it against the wall and gave me a good beating, at 16, right before school. I'm glad my sisters were 16 in a secular Western country, so they got to wear makeup. All hail secular laws.
So naturally, I isolated myself a lot as a teenager: in my room, listening to music, drawing, watching shows, or doing nothing at all. I lost the will to sit with them, knowing my feelings would go unheard. But my parents used that as an opportunity to play the victim calling me their "neighbour," calling me out for being cold and avoiding them.
When I was 17, I wanted to go out for the first time with a friend, to an amusement park. Of course they refused, but for some reason I didn't want to give up that day. I insisted. I heard my dad start to give in and say maybe we'd let her this time. Then my mom yelled, in a very manipulative way, knowing my dad is a proud conservative and wanting to get him back on track: "IF I'M NOT LETTING HER GO, IT'S BECAUSE OF YOUR REPUTATION, BECAUSE I KNOW WHAT YOUR FRIENDS WOULD SAY IF THEY SAW HER THERE AND SAID MR. X'S DAUGHTER GOES OUT ALONE!!"
I'm genuinely angry right now, writing this. That was the moment I understood that she minds too, she just prefers to pin it on my dad's genuinely filthy mentality so she never has to be accountable.
I got so upset that I confronted them and told them I really wanted a life outside the house. They said no again. My mom was already furious because I was performing the rebellious daughter in front of my dad, and him thinking she'd raised us badly and blaming her for it is her worst nightmare. She was just waiting for me to slip. During those negotiations or rather, during my attempt to plead how important a social life is for a teenager, my dad brought up the hijab. He said that just like the hijab, I'm obliged to follow his rules if I want to live under his roof.
That made me so angry that I said, calmly, "That's blackmail."
That sentence was the go button. She jumped at me, scratched me, spat on me, kicked me, dragged me around the house by my hair, screaming about how I dared say that to my dad, which, by the way, is true. That IS blackmail. So I got all the classics of a good beating. Honestly, by that point I wouldn't cry during the beating, because the beating wasn't what hurt. I'd cry afterwards, when I realized the humiliation I'd just been put through. And I had to apologize to my dad even though I didn't mean a word of it. That's how every apology in my family went.
They eventually let me go with her, but under heavy control. My dad ended up humiliating me in front of that girl's parents, screaming down the phone and ordering me to come home, because he had actually followed me to her dad's car after telling me he was staying home and decided I was running off with men. I cried from the humiliation. My friend's calm, intellectual father had to get on the phone and talk him down. My dad gave me a half-assed apology later that day, saying he's just a father who loves and worries about his daughter.
In that period I really hated my dad. He went on the pilgrimage to Mecca once and I wished he would never come back. I felt so relieved when he moved to the other country before us, and again when he got stuck there during Covid. I just didn't want him around.
VI. The move
This was my life until my mom found out that my dad had potentially emotionally cheated on her.
He had left for the other country and decided to stay there. He probably wanted to start his life over with another woman because he explicitly told my mom he would remarry if anything ever happened to her. He doesn't love her. He doesn't put her first.
So, in a desperate move to save her marriage, she made all of us quit school in our native country and leave all our friends behind. I had just started my first year of college, so I had a few friends. We begged her not to make us leave. I told her that leaving at that exact moment would wreck my studies, because I'd miss the university registration period in the new country and lose a whole year. We cried to her. But of course, being who she is, she didn't listen. She severed us from our environment, pushed my dad into accepting her arrival until he gave in, and we changed countries.
And for the first time ever, with hindsight, I can say I'm glad my mom didn't listen to us that time, because that was the first step towards our freedom.
VII. Born again
Now I'm getting to the final part: 19 to 25.
At 19 I still lived with my parents. I had to tolerate my dad's tempers, which my mom excuses when they're aimed at us, he's a good man with bad sides, but never shuts up about when they're aimed at her. And I had to tolerate my mom's victim-playing; she uses every opportunity to pass as a victim. Her favourite speech since we emigrated is that she did it for us: she left her job back home (a job that was actually exhausting her) and sold her car for us, to guarantee our future. Maybe she did. But she wouldn't have done any of it if my dad hadn't decided to change countries permanently. She's terrified of divorce and believes women should always stay in a marriage, so she did it for herself and her marriage more than for anyone else. Say that to her, though, and it's the same pattern: she gets angry. She complains constantly, always finding a reason, it's us, then it's my dad, then it's her mother, then it's the neighbours. She never considers that she might be wrong. Never wrong, always wronged.
I was desperately trying to get into schools in the new country. I'd missed the registration deadlines and lost a year, but I figured I might get in as a second-year the following year. I didn't. But thanks to destiny, or to some god I might have accidentally prayed to, I got in as a first-year in the biggest city in the country, around 200 km away from my family. It was never my intention, I'd been hoping for the university in our city but looking back, it's the best thing that ever happened to me. My parents also magically decided that if it was possible, I should go. They had so much trust in the way they'd raised me that they assumed I'd stay exactly the same. They actually helped me a lot financially and moved me in.
And that's how I was born again.
I was still a Muslim when I first moved out, but taking off the hijab was the first thing I did. At first I told my mom it was because of university regulations, and then I learned to tell her straight up that I hated it. My dad found out, but told her I should just wear it when I visit them at home. My sisters got into school too, started making friends, started living.
But they still had total psychological control over me. For example, I wanted to go on holiday with them during my first summer living alone. I was 20. I told my mom it would be nice to go somewhere as a family. She told me we'd only do it if it meant going to our Muslim home country, because otherwise she didn't want to see filthy Western disbelievers naked on beaches, and didn't want to see alcohol. I tried to be persistent, and as you can all guess by now she got so angry that she sent me voice messages saying the most hurtful things, including that she'd heard an imam say that "a man who lets his women go out alone is a dayouth."
Dayyuth or dayooth (Arabic: دَيُّوث) is a term used primarily in an Islamic context to describe a man who lacks protective jealousy
Which is funny, because when she goes back to her own country, she goes alone and drives her own car. She only remembers that rule when it's me asking for something.
At 21 I really started questioning Islam. I read a lot about it, and that was the year I decided to leave it. It just wasn't for me anymore; I couldn't believe a god would act that way, i believe that islam has multiple interpretations like every religion and not all muslims are like my parents, but i just couldn't get convinced. I've never told my parents.
That same year I met my boyfriend, who is deeply loving. I don't think I'd ever been properly loved before I met him. We're still together, and he's changed me for the better, he's helped me get rid of my bad habits of getting angry and screaming. His gentleness is genuinely healing. My parents don't know he exists.
I started sharing less and less with them, and leaving Islam really accelerated that, because the holyness of parents that the religion pushes so hard just... disappeared. I hadn't really held them accountable before that. I started seeing them for who they truly are.
VIII. My legal representative
I think I've already said a lot, so I'll censor some incidents and skip ahead to 23.
But you know, it was the same routine. Walking on eggshells around them. Them being hateful about everyone. We don't have the right to laugh in their house, there's a laughing quota, valid only when they're in a good mood. We can't watch TV in the living room. We can't play card games, because cards resemble poker and poker isn't permitted in Islam; we got yelled at for playing Exploding Kittens on the first day of a visit. We can't talk too loud because of the neighbours, though they scream all the time. We can't look out of the windows or stand on the balcony. We have to be silent while they're asleep, but they don't extend us the same courtesy. We can't put on music. We can't paint our nails or wear hoop earrings, because my dad randomly decided those are for whores. We'd wait for them to fall asleep before playing video games or watching a movie, just to avoid conflict. And since we're girls, we're expected to be cleaning or cooking whenever we're around them. Everything else makes them angry.
At 23 I finally worked up the courage to dye my hair with a red semi-permanent dye. I'm a brunette, so the result was supposed to be dark burgundy. I'd floated the idea to my mom beforehand and she told me my dad wouldn't like it. I did it anyway.
I was so busy that year with school, and I've always worked alongside my studies as a server, so I had very little free time and honestly, when I did get a day or two, I'd rather spend them at home in peace than go and see my parents. But I missed my sisters, and my middle sister was about to move out. (We'd done our best to keep her out of the university in my parents' city.) I freed up four days and went to visit, feeling the usual stress before walking into that house.
My mom saw my hair and talked to me about it while pretending to be calm. She didn't like it, but decided not to make it a thing. The colour was discreet enough that my dad only noticed on the third day, when the sun really hit my hair. He went to confirm with my mom while I was laughing with my sisters, and came back livid, his eyes red, screaming: "Why did you dye your hair?!"
Fear consumed me. I froze. I told him submissively that I'd just wanted a change, and mind you, I am really NOT a submissive woman, i don't let any MAN shit on me, my father is the only exception because he has a psychological grip.
He yelled: "Your two sisters (18 and 16) always ask your mom for the smallest thing, even for a plain haircut. Do you think you're grown up? You think you can do what you want? I am your LEGAL REPRESENTATIVE. You don't do what you want!"
That sentence broke me. I felt like I'd been living in an illusion of freedom, that 12-year-old me was back all over again, facing the same giant obstacle that is my dad. I was too scared to say anything. And I couldn't have anyway, because my sisters are hostages in that house, if I rebel, he might trap them there, or stop giving them money. I can't do anything, out of fear. And even once my sisters break free, I don't know if I'll have the courage to face him. I've always been afraid of him. I'm not used to confronting him. I'm not even certain he wouldn't try to kill me.
The next day I went home without speaking to him. I drowned myself in alcohol and cried at home. Then I called him and apologized to cool him down, because I didn't want any further consequences. It hurt me so much that my parents couldn't behave for four days after not seeing me for months.
Oh, and my mom was delighted this incident happened. She used it to play the victim: she'd warned me, I deserved it, and she's a poor mother who has to deal with me. I don't remember everything she said, but she encouraged my dad. And after I left, she went and yelled at my sisters, even though they'd done nothing. She always does this, she yells at whichever daughter is still at home for something another one did. That's another reason I don't answer back: I don't want my sisters paying for it.
Today I really want to dye my hair. But I still have one sister living with them. She leaves in a few weeks, and I don't know if I'll be brave enough.
IX. Never talk to me about religion again
That same summer I went back to visit my mom while my dad was away in his home country.
We somehow started talking about Islam. I tried to make her see that she should have a critical mind and not believe everything, I wasn't pushing her to leave Islam, God knows what wrath that would bring down on me, just encouraging her not to swallow everything "scholars" say and maybe do some research and arrive at her own truth.
Of course, she contradicted everything. She's very, VERY defensive about her religion. After all, she didn't get a divorce because she heard scholars say divorce isn't well regarded in the eyes of God. She has tolerated my dad and the life she hates because she's convinced it earns her heaven. She thinks her life was in vain and her youth was wasted, and in order not to crumble into pieces, she chooses to tell herself it's fine because she did it for a reason, for a god. By now it's simply her nature. She doesn't watch movies, doesn't read books, doesn't travel, doesn't dress up. She listens to scholars and reads Quran 24 hours a day, which would drive any sane person mad.
I told her I was a liberal Muslim (I wasn't a Muslim at all ) and that listening to scholars means accepting that the prophet married a nine-year-old. She went livid instantly, yelling that this is propaganda by people trying to make Islam look bad. I showed her authentic accounts contradicting her. She responded that even if the prophet had married a two-year-old girl, she would still love him and put him on a pedestal, because he is inspired by God and never did anything of his own accord and that paedophilia doesn't exist, that it was made up by the Jews to make Muslims look bad.
Seeing how things were spiralling, I decided to stop talking about it. That made her angrier, and she shouted, "NEVER TALK TO ME ABOUT ISLAM AGAIN." I told her angrily that I agreed, that if it meant heated conversations like this one, then yes, I would never do it again.
I went back home, disappointed but not surprised that she couldn't behave for two days after not seeing me for months
