Longing For Paradise

Chapter 9

Who, I wonder, is going to save my body from the Hell Fire?
No one but yourself, they reply.
Then why do you keep commenting on it, I ask.
Because a woman should do as they're told.
Why must a woman do as she's told if women and men are the same?
It is God's will, they said, women are too stupid.
But there is nothing in the Quran about it. Aren't you lying?
Who, I wonder, is going to save my body from the Hell Fire?
Certainly not these people who put me in Fire.

- Makhami Al Layl

It was Makhami Al Layla who sent the first letter. Obsessed with the retelling of Layla and Majnun, she gushed about undying love to him. Her description of the characters she imagined and the various forms of dialogues were all meticulously recorded in her letter. What caught her off-guard was when she received a letter in return, Ghalbani bid Dhar addressed himself in the male participle. That a man could be behind those dreamy and steamy love scenes escaped her thought. Embarrassed, she immediately dropped the correspondence, knowing nothing proper could come out of it.

"If heavens above could have already designed our fate as such, why avoid it?" he had written her. "There is nothing more sobering than someone else writing my characters and story better than me."

She gave him her reason.

"And you believe that women should be restricted from engaging in intelligent discussions with their contemporaries because it would seem improper?"

"It's not that I believe women should be restricted, it's that they already are. Women are judged for engaging in political discussions, when men need them for reelections, it is always power to women, but once those men are elected, they write laws for those women to stay home behind iron doors. Tell me, who gave men the exclusive right to make such laws and rules if God Himself deemed equality between the sexes? These are the same men who claim themselves as Hakeem, when there's only one Al Hakeem? When there's only one Hakam?

"The worst is when you see scholarly, intelligent men who come up with actual notions of putting female equality forward but forget that most women, women of the common gentry don't know how to read or write, that all the ways the ways they wrote to women about empowering themselves is only going to be read by women. These women who don't even have the opportunity of learning the meaning of Quran, to be able to understand it, available to them, how much do you think they'll be able to empower themselves in society?"

"You do bring out valid points. You seem smarter than more than half of the Emir's court; perhaps you should join it."

"I just know you're making fun of me now," she replied.

"I absolutely am not! Your voice needs to be heard by more people. You know how to read and write and your arguments are strong and sound, you'll be able to crush most scholars these days. I've read some of you poems speak out on those subjects. How come you don't write more of them? Or publish a pamphlet on the subject? They're far better than the love poems."

"The love poems are a part of me. They're the reason I've sent you a letter in the first place. To me, love holds a more fascinating aspect to our short, mortal lives. It is that one thing we can take from this world into the next.

"While putting forth my views and encouraging discussions on those themes, I can't do that at the expense of my own self-expression. To me, it lends to my self erasure and the erasure of female desire, something else that everyone ignores as if it doesn't exist. It pains me when I think of what my mother gave up for the the life she's living, what my grandmother went through under my grandfather's iron fist."

"I've never thought of female desire in those terms. When we think of female desire, it's always sexual, yet you speak of your mother's desire to travel being forgotten and hidden away and your grandmother's desire for happiness. It reminds of something my tutor told me about my grandmother. He told he studied with her, that there wasn't a pearl more shining in knowledge than her. She was so gifted people scholars flocked from all over to debate with her. Yet because she was a woman, her life took a different turn. My tutor who studied with her and doubt couldn't reach her in talent, became the most renowned scholar among the lands, and my grandmother married and remained a wife, away from the political scene that my tutor engaged in, away from intellectual discussions on theology that rapidly changed the way people viewed certain topics. When I asked her about it, she said that the inner life was just as wanting of charge as the outer life was and that she was content, but my grandmother was also a bad liar, so I could see right through her."

"What about your mother?" She asked.

"I don't have any memory of my mother. She was someone who lived like a whirlwind and died before I could ever etch her in my mind. Everyone told me how brilliant she was, how the world needed people like her, that she was so beloved God took her early. But I don't know what to believe. I can only tell you this because I don't know you, I've never seen you. I tell you this because I hope I never do. You see, sometimes I hear whispers among the servants. She was loose, immoral; that she got what she deserved. I always wondered what on earth she did that warranted a mother being snatched away from her child in their eyes."

"I'm sorry I asked you something so personal like this. I'm sorry about your mother. I want to say she's in a better place as condolence, but I'm sure you've heard that before. The only solace I can offer you is to ignore those people's comments because they talk like that about everyone. Don't confuse the memory of your mother who loved you with the caricature they talk about; you'll only hurt yourself based on groundless rumours."

"You speak of her as if you've met her."

"Your love of her, your description of her, it was as if I could picture her in front of me. Maybe I did, maybe that picture of her told me the truth about her, what to believe and what not to believe, a truth that secretly runs in the blood of women that allows metaphysical bond."

"I know you say that in a half joking manner, but know that I believe you."

"Your belief in my nonsensical thoughts expounds me. Why would you choose to do such a thing? It's so stupid."

"Is it stupid if I breach upon our agreement?" He wrote. "With great deliberation I put this thought to pen and paper, and I must confess myself even when I don't understand it. We have never met, you and I know not what the other looks like and for all the world cares we could be the two most bizarre looking people and I wouldn't care much for any of it because of how fascinated I am with who you are and what's inside of your head. I'm in love with the witting stories you publish and the love that you put into them. I'm in love with every word of yours as if the language belongs to you and no one could supersede your command of it. I'm in love with every letter you wrote me and I'm in love with your ideas inside them. I'm in love with your poetry and the stanzas you create have power as that of a magician, and like a magician you have entrapped me in your cause. I am in love but I am too afraid of telling it you lest you detest me. So I do not love you so much as I love everything about you, so please don't stop sending me letters, I could possibly die of madness."

It was while before her response reached her and he was sure she had rejected him. He was just so sure of it, as he opened her letter with trembling fingers.

"I know not of love for I have never shared that kind of love with anyone. Perhaps I've seen it in the subtle glances my parents share, perhaps I've read about it in the books, perhaps I've heard about it from tales of the streets. But not one of them could relate the feeling of love, so I wonder if love is waiting for every letter to reach me. I wonder if love is hanging on every word of yours, devouring the slightest information to bring forth a host of questions I only wish I could ask you right then and there. I wonder if love is wondering at any given moment of the day what you're currently thinking and what you think of everything happening in front of me. I wonder if love is the constant state of dream that seeps in every night and wishes your arms around me. I wonder if love is wide enough to hold both our dreams of the future."