Nuha Faiz
Bloodstain on a white sheet confirmed my chastity the morning I woke up from the previous night’s pleasure. A year since then, and I wasn’t able to give a positive answer to my mother-in-law, who started to check up on me every month after the first three months of our marriage if I had good news for the family.
She asked me one day, ‘Did anybody talk to you about contraception, dear?’ and that is when I realized that the more I delayed, the more eccentric and dispirited she had become towards me.
‘Should we see a doctor?’, I asked my husband when I thought it was time that I confess to him about the situation at home, and he refused. ‘What’s the hurry anyway?’, was his response.
So, two more years passed by and with each passing month, my mother-in-law grew disheartened and irate about my existence. Soon, she considered me to be a bad portent and convinced my husband that he send me off to my parents’ house and he did not repulse her. ‘She’s right’, he said. ‘My sister can’t pay for the sin that you spread in the house’, and I was soon dropped off at my house far away from my husband’s.
“On a planet where for thousands of years, even today, a woman’s worth has been judged exclusively by the productivity of her womb, what the hell is the point of a barren woman?”
― Elissa Stein and Susan Kim
From being a burden to my husband and mother-in-law to becoming a burden to my parents, I switched very soon. My mother did not lose hope for me. She knew I belonged to a very big family from all branches of the family tree and that there was no way that I would not be able to reproduce. She took me off to see a lady doctor. ‘This is normal’, she assured me before we spoke to the doctor finally.
‘Uterine fibroids’, she said. It did not sound alien to me, the terms were familiar because I have read in some books about it. It’s non-cancerous tumours that grow in the muscle of the uterus, or womb. What I had to do to treat it. This was my mother’s first concern. I knew already. ‘Watchful waiting’. The doctor said, ‘I hope your family supports you through this, Hyra. It’s all about the watchful waiting. This generally shall shrink as you approach menopause so there’s no necessity of medical treatment but you are free to see me after the waiting is over. Stay strong’. I nodded and walked my crying mother out of the doctor’s room.
Things were not normal after that. They weren’t before I met Dr Sama too but it got worse. My mother started losing hope as well. She counted me different from the family. I became the ‘ugly duckling’. Chuckle? I did not know what to do but ‘wait’, like I was told.
A few months after, I had a visitor. He had come to see me exactly six months after he dropped me here at my place.
‘I knew you would come’, my mother said grinning in a very pleasing manner, which I knew was out of excitement and hope that he had come to take me away with him. He took her excitement all away when he replied, ‘I am not here to take Hyra with me. She will stay here, I do not know if it is forever but at least until she is cured of what you informed me over the phone that day’. I chuckled. Chuckles. I knew he had more to say.
‘I am to marry my cousin. This had been my mother’s wish before I told her about our relationship and forced her into agreeing for our marriage. Now that you can’t continue the family, she wants me to marry her. I am not here for your permission, but I thought you at least deserved to know.’
And he left.
He left me broken. Pieces.
Soon, I was introduced to something besides the fibroids. Another doctor termed it ‘Persistent Depressive Disorder’.
All of that which actually was clear to me besides my deteriorating health was the time that started to fly by.
Soon, very soon before I even realized it became eight years since marriage. I was not divorced, but he was somehow religiously married to his cousin. Someone told me she blessed his family with a baby boy.
I can’t lie that I was happy for them. It only worsened my state of dysthymia.
I turned thirty-eight one December. Somebody had told my mother that I should have started seeing the symptoms of menopause already. I didn’t. I saw no symptoms. My menstrual bleeding was regular too.
One night I woke up from a bad dream. I had a dream that I had given birth to two beautiful boys. It was only a dream. I realized something more important that night. Say my fibroids shrink away with menopause, but what happens then? My husband is happy with his own family now. He will soon seek me for a divorce. What use do I have of my life? What is even the point of getting cured of these fibroids?
I walked out of my house. I did not know what time it was. I kept walking until I reached a cliff’s edge.
‘I’m sorry’, I told myself. ‘I’m sorry for all the hurtful words you heard from a hundred voices. I’m sorry you could not reproduce like normal women. I’m sorry you did not have a family that understood you. I’m sorry your husband failed to keep his promise. I’m sorry you failed as a woman, as a human. I’m sorry I can’t let you live any longer’. I took a step forward and felt the cold air freeze my skin. My body stiffened. My body and heart were hard by then.
‘I’m sorry we live in a chaotic world’, I heard a voice say.
Turning to look beside me, I saw another woman taking slow steps toward the cliff’s edge.
‘You too?’, I sighed and she laughed.
‘Three daughters. My husband left me because he couldn’t make an effort to afford to bring the girls up. I tried. I kept giving my best shots, but no. I can’t do this anymore. What brings you?’
It was an ironically awkward moment for me. I was on the verge of killing myself for my barrenness and there I saw another woman like me that wanted to kill herself even though she was blessed with three girls.
‘You should go home’, I told her. ‘It is the society that’s accountable, not your three girls. They need you’.
She took a step back and came close to me. I told her what had brought me to where I stood and she laughed.
‘I remember a quote. The children we bring into the world are small replicas of ourselves and our husbands; the pride and joy of grandfathers and grandmothers. We dream of being mothers, and for most of us that dreams are realized naturally. For this is the Miracle of Life. Miracles do happen. You just need the belief, the hope.’
She put a hand around my freezing shoulders and looked at me. ‘I’ve realized something that I couldn’t in all these years of dysthymia. Consolation and solution for our own struggles are best found in the advice we lend to the others. I’ve found mine in what I gave you. Miracles do happen, girl. Let’s walk through this mad society together.’
I was still freezing out of the cold breeze. Even more, because most parts of me did not know how to react to whatever the woman said. I took the challenge anyway. Why not give myself one last chance, I thought?
I walked away with my saviour. I was uncertain of my future, but I decided to believe. We went home to her three beautiful daughters who were fast asleep, unaware of the rebirth their mother had taken for them for the second time. I stayed with them and started my own nursery. Again, one December, I turned thirty-nine and I started too, to see an irregularity in my menstrual bleeding.
New beginnings, I chuckled. Chuckles. And more chuckles.
