Finding My Place Read online

  When my boys were in their early teens, I suddenly came to the realisation while chopping carrots that I too had neglected my parental duty to deliver ‘the talk’. I promptly marched upstairs, called together my sons and said, ‘Boys, you know how babies are made, right? I don’t need to explain stuff to you, right?’ They didn’t even look up from their video games. ‘All good, Mum, we’ve known for ages and we don’t need to hear it from you.’ Great! My job was done. Easy. I moonwalked out of the room, satisfied that I could tick that key performance indicator of good parenting right off my list.

  My mother’s delivery of ‘the talk’ was not such a simple affair – though it was needlessly complicated by her insistence on using Arabic metaphors that just don’t work well in translation:

  ‘A woman is like a flower,’ she would begin. ‘And when this flower blossoms, all the men want to sniff this beautiful bloom. They take one sniff, two sniffs, three, four . . .’ At this point my mother would hold an imaginary flower to her nose and take long, hard sniffs, one after the other and then screw up her nose. ‘After many sniffs, the flower has lost its beautiful aroma. So they throw away the spent flower and look for another.’

  And with that, my mother, satisfied that she had successfully communicated the delicate intricacies of male–female relations to her daughters, concluded ‘the talk’ for another year and we were promptly dismissed – confused, dazed and utterly clueless.

  When my sister and I finally realised that ‘the talk’ was not, as I had suspected, coded script for the art of flower arranging, we could not hold back our amusement. ‘So, Mama, if a man has a big nose, does that make him better at sniffing flowers?’ I asked, stifling laughter. ‘Enough!’ my mother shrieked as she chided us in Arabic and stormed out of the room. That was the last time we got the ‘woman is like a flower, man is a sniffer’ talk.

  I had grown accustomed to a hybrid life where I played along to perceived expectations and navigated my path away from the stormy waters and towards the sheltered calm of a life without conflict. It was not until my sixteenth year that I finally understood what was expected of me as a woman, as a Muslim woman, as an Egyptian woman. For that was the year the stranger came to visit and his entrance into our lives became a strategic point in the battle for my identity.

  10

  The Year of Invisible

  There have been times in my life when I have felt that the most undeniable fact, the one thing that is as sure as death and taxes, is that women like me have little control over how we are defined. We are merely subjects of circumstance. We are positioned in relation to those around us, defined by the people who come into our lives, and then, for whatever reason, leave our lives, as matters of circumstance. Our successes are limited by their failures, and our failures by their successes. Our destiny, if indeed there is such a thing, is written, not by our own hands, but in the faces of the strangers we meet who become the company we keep or the encounters we have – some fleeting, some momentary and some lingering. Our parts and how we play them are dictated by the actors in our plays. We live our lives in and out of circumstance.

  He was supposed to visit. That’s all. He was going to come into our lives temporarily and leave again and that was it. Things were supposed to be strange for a while, but then they were supposed to go back to the way they were. That was the deal. That was how I would have written my story.

  As we prepared to break for the end of the school year, I looked forward with anticipation to my final year at school. My sister and I had just attended our first school ball – with partners – and I was preparing for a season of end-of-year celebrations with friends. I don’t quite recall when and how we were told that we would be hosting a visitor for the next few weeks, but just that the announcement (if there was one) mustn’t have been too significant because I really didn’t pay much attention to it. I probably should have.

  He was a relative from my mother’s town in Egypt. A qualified doctor who had come to Australia to explore his options, possibly looking to establish himself here. In the fourteen or so years that we had been in Australia, we were rarely visited by any of our extended family on either side. One of my mother’s sisters, Aunty Nafeesa, had visited for a few short weeks once many years earlier, but that was about it. Oddly enough, none of our extended family ever followed my parents’ lead to settle in Australia. I don’t know whether that was because they didn’t want to leave Egypt for a country that is so far away or whether my parents just never thought of it. As it happens, I have extended family scattered all over the globe, from New Zealand to Austria and places in between. Yet it was just us here in Australia – my parents, my siblings and me. We grew up without cousins to spend weekends with. There was no favourite aunt to draw you into her heaving bosom and shower you with wet kisses, or creepy uncle to tell inappropriate jokes and blow smoke in your face across the dinner table. I didn’t know my cousins, had never met my aunts or uncles (except my Aunt Nafeesa) and had no idea what they looked like.

  They say you never really miss what you don’t know, but I missed having an extended family around. I felt it most whenever the Greek or Italian kids at school would entertain me with stories of the antics they got up to with their cousins, second cousins and third cousins twice removed over the weekends. I often thought that having cousins with us here in Australia might have made things a little easier – not just for my parents (especially my mother, who seemed to miss Egypt more than my father), but also for us. As a family, we rarely socialised with other Egyptian families. We didn’t go to Egyptian functions and our parents’ attempts to send us to Islamic studies or Arabic classes on the weekends failed miserably. All the Greek kids I knew complained about having to spend their Saturday or Sunday mornings learning classical Greek. It is true that there are entire generations of Greek Australians who are connected by the simple fact that they were taught Greek by the same uncle.

  Our closest family friends were a Coptic Egyptian family with a daughter around the same age as my sister and me. There were other families that we got to know, but they had children who were either much younger or much older, and our parents’ friendships weren’t the kinds of friendships that are passed on to the next generation. I have fond memories of my ‘uncle’, who always called me Azza and told me that was because it was the female version of his name, Ezzat. Because it came from him and because his name was Ezzat, I never corrected him or insisted he call me Anne. Their daughter, Nevine, was the closest thing we had to a cousin, though she also had a whole network of proxy extended family from the church. Unlike the church, the mosque wasn’t really a place to socialise. We rarely attended, except on the occasion of the annual feast days and only if they happened to fall on a weekend or public holiday. Things are different now and the various festivals and events organised by community organisations around Australia offer plenty of occasions for young Australian Muslims to meet and socialise.

  So when a relative from my mother’s town in Egypt decided that Australia really wasn’t that far away, my mother set about preparing our home for our summer house guest. There was a long list of things that needed to be done: cleaning, adding a bed to my brother’s bedroom (Hosam would have to share his space for a while), airport pick-ups and meetings to organise. At the top of that list was to make sure that her daughters knew how to behave in front of the conservative doctor from the conservative town who would expect that my parents had raised us with the same conservative traditions they had been raised with. It was of utmost importance that those expectations should be met.

  I couldn’t comprehend it then, but I understand now why it was so important to my parents, especially my mother, to impress the stranger. He was their connection to a life they had left behind, a life almost forgettable here, where everything was so different and where they were so alone. They had been in Australia fourteen long, lonely years and had only managed to visit Egypt once in all that time. It was a big deal to have someone visit who would go back to Egyp
t and relay the news to our uncles and aunts and cousins there: Mahmoud and Hamida Aly have built a successful life for themselves and their children in Australia. They have a beautiful house with a swimming pool, two televisions and an alfresco dining area. Their daughters are good girls who follow Egyptian traditions, obey their parents and do not have boyfriends. They are a good family.

  The stranger was in his mid-twenties and had just finished medical school, but his education had not exposed him to the things that would have prepared him for life outside his conservative small town. It had not expanded his horizons or developed his ability to think critically about the world. He was, like many Egyptians, one of the masses of over-educated yet unenlightened: middle-class doctors, lawyers and engineers by profession with little in the way of job prospects and few opportunities for social mobility.

  As the weeks passed I grew more and more weary of the stranger and longed for the holidays to end and for our lives to return to normal. His traditions and expectations were alien to me and I challenged them in every way I could. Having him around reminded me just how Australian I really was. How bizarre that it should take an encounter with a stranger from the motherland to make me feel what I had longed to feel all these years: that I belonged to Australia.

  My sister and I, once as close as twins, had grown apart over the years as we made new friends and found different interests in high school. The stranger gave us something to bond over. We would meet in secret locations (my bedroom or hers) until late into the night and talk about this oddity that had somehow found his way into our lives. I found a sympathetic ear to listen to my complaints about how we were expected to change the way we had done things – having to pretend we spent our days sitting around sipping tea and making endless cups of coffee and cooking dinner for the men and boys in the family. Together we made a pact that we would defy all the expectations brought upon us by the interruption of this stranger. We would not make him cups of tea or coffee at his request. We would not fetch him a glass of water when he was thirsty. We would not prepare breakfast for him. United we stood. Divided we fell.

  I relished the thought of Rhonda and me standing side by side like Amazonian warriors fighting for our rights. I imagined us going on strike and marching around the house bearing placards with slogans like ‘NOT YOUR SLAVE’ and ‘MAKE YOUR OWN TEA’. I pulled out my dusty books on feminism and re-read the key passages I had highlighted, reinvigorating myself with a steely resolve to get up, stand up against male oppression everywhere – starting with my very own living room.

  I watched my mother’s face grow ever more anxious with each day. Each time she caught us giggling behind his back, she scowled at us. Whenever we refused to serve him, she scolded us. We were constantly under her radar lest we slip up and get caught out wearing skirts that were too short or talking too much about boys. I tried to protest to my father about my mother’s irrational demands and what I perceived to be a complete change in her character, but the only advice he could offer was to be patient with her because she wanted to impress her relatives and that was important to her.

  Had I known at the age of sixteen of traditions, courtships and Egyptian gender relations, I would have seen it coming. I would have understood that the stranger’s visit was not a coincidence but a deliberately executed plan to introduce my sister and me as possible brides for the good doctor. This was, for all intents and purposes, an audition. Should I pass, the prize would be what I was supposed to have been dreaming of – what every girl is supposed to dream of – marriage to a suitable (more-than-suitable) partner who would shade and protect me until death do us part. By the time the reason my mother was so anxious to impress the stranger dawned on me, it was too late.

  The decision had been made. He would marry one of us and it would be up to him to choose Rhonda or me. When my parents sat us down to tell us this, Mum’s face filled with relief and joy, they made it very clear that the ultimate decision would be ours. It was little consolation.

  Dad was especially cautious with his words and took pains to remind us that neither of us would be forced to marry him if we didn’t want to. Didn’t want to! Of course I didn’t want to. I couldn’t even begin to imagine being married to anyone with a whole year of school left and then university. I had no hesitation in expressing my disgust and said so loudly and clearly. I would not be getting married – not to this man, not to any man. Ever! I felt buoyed by the knowledge and comfort that Rhonda would back me up. After all, she disliked him as much as I did – she told me so. And though we hadn’t shared long conversations, or even short exchanges, about women’s rights, I knew that she too felt sickened to her core by this whole mess.

  Sometimes, even now so many years later, I still wonder why she did it. I don’t know how exactly it happened, whether Rhonda told them quietly that she was in love with the stranger and would agree to marry him, or if she insisted that if anyone was to be married it should rightfully be her as the eldest. I just don’t know. I am as confused about it now as I was then, but a lifetime has passed and it doesn’t matter anymore. At least not like it mattered then.

  Rhonda got married in January 1984 – a month after her eighteenth birthday. My parents arranged the wedding and invited all our neighbours and friends to the wedding of their daughter to a doctor. In a matter of weeks my parents had booked a hall, organised the paperwork, a wedding dress, wedding rings, flowers, photographer, catering and everything else to throw my sister and her new husband a proper wedding. I played my role as the younger sister, even making and decorating the wedding cake (a skill I had learned in home science, aka cooking class). When the day of the wedding came, I smiled at the camera, greeted the guests, hugged Rhonda and congratulated the groom.

  If I had thought that, with my sister now married and Mum engrossed in the role of meddlesome mother-in-law, things would return to the way they were before, I was sorely mistaken. In the final few weeks before I started my last year of school, the tension in our house was unbearable, made all the more palpable by the absence of my sister. Every day was a reminder that I was (and always would be) a second girl child.

  Rhonda’s early marriage and her compliance in the matter set me up as the next in line. The bar was raised (or rather lowered) and the expectations now made clear. There could be no more pleas of ignorance or protests – the precedent had now been set. From the day my sister agreed to marry the stranger, the marriage of their second daughter would be my parents’ sole focus.

  The urgency of Rhonda’s wedding shocked our neighbours and my friends at school. ‘Was she pregnant?’ they questioned. I heard the whispers behind my back as they speculated that Rhonda was forced into marriage. ‘Did she want it?’ her teachers asked. For some reason, I felt compelled to defend my sister and her decision. I dismissed their questions nonchalantly:

  ‘Of course she knew him. We’ve known him for years.’

  ‘No, it wasn’t forced. What kind of people do you think we are?’

  ‘Pregnant? No, don’t be silly. It wasn’t a shotgun wedding.’

  ‘He’s a doctor, you know.’

  How else do you defend something that you can’t even understand yourself?

  If I had to describe my final year at school, it would be one word – invisible. From the moment my sister fulfilled her destiny, I became ‘she’, ‘her’, ‘the other one’. I was no longer a whole and entire being of my own creation and with my own dreams and thoughts. It was as if Rhonda’s departure had stripped away all the layers of my identity that I had built up over the years. And here I was now – laid bare and naked.

  I immersed myself in school and school work – it was the only way I knew to take back control of my life; it was the only thing I felt I had any control over. I slinked in and out of my bedroom where I spent all my time studying for my final exams. School work became my distraction from a life which no longer felt like my own, and I prided myself on being able to study for hours and hours on end with only short toilet breaks
in between. It was lonely and, in my despair, I thought often about running away and starting a new life somewhere or just ending my life completely – but I have never been that brave or that cowardly.

  My parents’ new restrictions meant that I was allowed out only to go to school. They waited for me to arrive home from school every afternoon and questioned me if I was even half an hour late. I panicked if I missed the train, fearing my parents’ wrath when I got home. When the school organised an excursion to Canberra, I was the only student whose parents would not allow her to go.

  Nobody, not my friends nor my teachers, knew what it was like for me at home. I no longer had Tracey to talk to and Rhonda had turned into a complicit housewife. She no longer wore make-up or dressed up. She donned the hijab (head covering) at her husband’s request and obediently took her place in the shade of her man. We no longer giggled or talked about our favourite pop stars. Within six months, she was pregnant with her first child and her husband whisked her off to Egypt to live in the conservative village, where she has remained ever since. Could it have been that she was always like this and I just didn’t see it? All those dreams we shared and all those times we talked about what we wanted to be – all just words and impressions, all just a character she was playing to appease me?

  By the end of the school year, I was getting top marks in all my subjects. I was confident of earning a place at Sydney University studying law, and continued to hold tight to my dream of one day becoming a criminal lawyer. On the final day of school, my art teacher, Mrs Fitzgerald, hugged me goodbye with tears in her eyes. I smiled at her and opened the envelope she had given me. Inside was a blank card with a handwritten message:

  Do not be disappointed if life doesn’t turn out the way you thought it would in the heady days of being seventeen.

  As I gathered my papers and notes for my final exam, my parents revealed their plans for the new, improved, re-virginated me. I was to go to Egypt with my mother, where I would stay with my widowed aunt and cousins (who I had never met) in Cairo. Of course, if I wanted to come back to Australia when university started the next year I could, but I would spend at least four months there. I was not fooled by their false assurances, not convinced that they would suddenly hand me back control of my life and allow me to step out of the shadows. I was to leave the day after my final exam. There was no protest. No arguments. Only compliance.