To Be A Woman

Where I come from, a woman's life is a journey of subordination. When she is young, it is her father who makes all the important decisions for her, from whether she would get an education to whom she would marry. After her marriage, it is her husband, or often her in-laws, who make the decisions for her, ranging from whether she would work to the number of children she would have. Later, in the declining years of her life, it is her son who decides her fate.

Thus, a woman never gets to be who she wants.

Since I was young, I have been disciplined and obedient, unlike my sister, Hina, who was somewhat uppity.

When she was fifteen, she fell in love with a young man, Omar. However, where I come from, dating is forbidden and marriages are arranged. But Hina was rather rebellious. She 'dated' Omar and went out every night to meet him, every night, when everyone else was asleep.

For a year, Hina and Omar kept their relationship a secret, until my father decided it was time for Hina to get married. That was when she told our father that she wanted to marry Omar.

Alas, she had miscalculated my father's love for her, and his obsession with the tradition. If she thought he would let her marry Omar for her happiness, she was mistaken. My father was furious, and instead of letting the two lovers marry, he took Hina to the elders of the village, who decided that Hina had committed a sin and should be punished: My sister was sentenced to death by stoning. That was her punishment for staining the 'honor' of our family.

I was only seven at that time, too young to understand what was happening. But when Hina came into my room the night before her execution, I knew something was wrong. That night, she sat and talked to me, and braided my hair, before I went to bed.

'I will miss you,' she whispered in my ear, pulled me to her bosom and cried.

She told me that she was leaving but forgot to mention that she would never return.

I still remember how she stared at the sky, the next day, as she was dug into the ground. She was buried up to her waist. Her hands were tied to her body which was wrapped in a white cloth. Soon, some men from the village circled her and started throwing stones at her, while the sound of 'Allah-o-Akbar' filled the air.

I remember yelling at the mob to stop, and trying to run to Hina, but I was stopped by a pair of arms as a woman from my family wrapped her arms around me.

Hina twitched and yelled in pain as the stones hit her. I was screaming her name, even though she probably did not hear anything. Blood gushed out from her cheeks, mouth and eyes, but all she could do was bend to her right or her left. Her movements slowed down, as the stones continued to hit her body, until she stopped moving at all. But even then, the showers of stones did not stop, although my sister could no longer feel any pain.

Gradually, the people around her stopped throwing the stones, and the chants of 'Allah-o-Akbar' died down.

My father approached Hina's body with a stone in his hand, and smashed her skull by throwing it at her. There was no need for this: My sister was already dead. Her heart that once beat with love had now stopped. Her giggles that once sounded heavenly were now no more. Her eyes that once tinkled were now forever shut.

Hina wanted to marry the man she loved. What she wanted was a wedding ceremony with a lot of people who would congratulate her. In her imagination, songs would have been sung and flowers would have been thrown at her.

Yes, there was a ceremony, but it was not her wedding. There were a lot of people, but they were there to curse her. Instead of songs, the roars of 'Allah-o-Akbar' had filled the air. Flowers were not thrown at her, but stoned were.

Back then, I never understood what my sister had done to deserve this fate, but now I do:

She was a woman.

Where I come from, this is what it means to be a woman.