Nobody can replace her
By Mohammad Jawad
YWC- male advocate
Nobody can replace her
My loving mother died on the 25th of November 2012, leaving after a huge family mourning. Her principles in life were not to live for herself but for others. Her family, and everybody who lived around her, benefited from her kindness and her love.
Her compassion for her family, as I believe all mother’s compassion for their families, were amazing.
This is to cherish her memories, remember her for the good that she did throughout her life.
My mother lived a hard life. since she was a kid, just like other Afghan girls, she was thought not to speak, not to do anything out of the culture’s boundaries, with those boundaries being sky high for girls and a short wall of cark for boys.
Girls from a small age here learn to cover their self, learn to bow their heads down, learn not to speak, learn to obey and learn that men, as the more favored creature of god is to rule them and it is to them to take all brutality that men endure on women with silence and thank god that they are being fed.
When my mother got married to my father, she became the farmer of the family. Day after day and year after year, at that small age where girls should be allowed to play learned how to work hard and provide for her family. She would go out during dark night to irrigate the lands while my father was either out of the district or out of the country somewhere trying to earn a living for us. Her fear was not the wolves that might tear her skin or eat her, she would walk out with gusto and with bravery. Her fear was that her kids would not have enough to eat.
Throughout life, at least my life, she was always the admin of the family. She would control all finances going out and coming in. she would not let a penny go to waste and would argue for no matter how long it took to save one.
Once, after several arguments with my father that she was not eating much while going to the city, in Quetta, Pakistan, during the 90’s when I was a kid, and she was getting scarves for women who did embroidery, bought 6 bananas, eating half of one, and bringing 5 and a half for her kids home, not daring to eat the others because she couldn’t bare eating while her children was staying home.
Now I want you all to imagine, a mother, no, a woman, with no education, controlling a family with a tight grip like that. What if she was given the opportunity to study and go after her dreams? What would than become of her? I firmly believe, if with no education, women can control a family, with it, they can control a country while being kindhearted.
We need kindhearted, we need love, we need compassion that only a women can give to her children or her country’s population.
For too long, we men have controlled the faith of this country, with guns, war, hatred, killing each other left and right for nothing. WE DON’T NEED THAT, we need the ideas of the other 50% of the population on the faith of the country or mark my words, our country will NEVER progress and NEVER develop.
IT IS ENOUGH.
LOVE YOU MOM, FOREVER, may your soul rest in peace.
Any views or opinions presented in this post are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of the YWC.