Beyond Belief (25 page)

“
L
ook, I think we should ask your mom to come up,” my husband, David, says.

I sit on the floor next to the turquoise-and-green Fisher-Price bouncy chair. Looking down at our newborn, Eva, I stroke her forehead. Water comes to my eyes.

“God, I thought I could do this on my own,” I say, looking up at David. “But it’s just not possible.” My shoulders sag as I fold the edge of Eva’s pink fuzzy blanket.

Nothing in my life, not the marathons I have run or the one-hundred-mile rides I’ve cycled, nothing has prepared me for the intensity of the physical pain between my legs after the delivery. This pain takes my breath away each time I sit up to nurse Eva or stand to change her diaper. Everyone warned me about the pain during labor, but nobody told me about the burning and throbbing
that lasts for days after giving birth. Nobody told me about all the leaking, bleeding, and crying. No one told me that staying home with a newborn all day would be so lonely.

By the time Eva hits her two-week growth spurt, I am deliriously exhausted by the endless cycle of nursing, burping, changing diapers, and carrying her around all day while David is at work. In my sleep-deprived, beleaguered state, my inexperience and worry overwhelm me. But it’s her cries that get me by the throat each time.

During her delivery, Eva’s umbilical cord got wrapped around her neck, compromising her heartbeat and causing her distress. She had to be extracted quickly by forceps. Now, each time she wails waves of guilt and fear wash over me. I imagine the crushing pressure of the forceps on her temples, and her traumatic entry into the world. I remember the indentations on either side of her head when the nurse first placed her at my breast. I blame myself, and find myself praying silently to Allah.
Allah, please help me. Please give me the strength to make it through this.

I agree to ask my mother to come and help. When I call her to discuss the details, she says, “I told David you would need me after your delivery, but you never listen to me. You can’t do this alone. You need family, and you need Allah.”

I
GREW UP IN
a conservative Pakistani Muslim home. Although we never lived in Pakistan or any other Muslim country, our home visibly reflected our roots. Regardless of whatever country to which my father’s work took us, a clock from Mecca was programmed to play the call for prayer five times a day. Walls were covered with framed Koranic verses, rolled-up prayer mats sat in the corners throughout our home, and rosary-like beads hung from doorknobs.
Incense sticks glowed, teabags boiled for hours in water with cardamon and cloves, and our houses perpetually smelled of fried onions and cumin.

My siblings and I slept in a
shalwar kameez
, not cute pajamas with Disney motifs. We thanked Allah when we began meals and when we finished. We thanked Allah when we sneezed. We prayed five times every day, read the Koran each evening, fasted each year during the month of Ramadaan, and celebrated Eid with sweet-meats, new outfits tailored in Pakistan, and gifts of crisp new dollar bills when the month of fasting ended.

My mother constantly told us that Allah knew everything about us, even the dirty, naughty thoughts at the bottom of our hearts. “He is watching. He knows when we sin,” she said. She warned us that punishment for our sins was always around the corner.

One Sunday, my mother decided to implement an idea proposed by the local youth group coordinators at our mosque. “Do you have a spare notebook?” she asked. I nodded. “Good, every day you will make a list of all your
sawwabs
and all your sins. At night, we can count up your sins and your good deeds. Then you can pray to Allah for forgiveness before sleeping.” She clapped her hands to stir us to action. “Let’s start now!”

Each evening after the completion of my prayers, I dutifully recorded the various Allah-pleasing activities I had performed that day, such as bringing my mother a glass of water or folding the entire family’s laundry. But I often lay in bed at night weighted with guilt and fear. I worried about having daydreamed about a boy during prayer, for letting a few drops of water drip down my throat as I brushed my teeth while fasting, or for hating my mother when she slapped me for making mistakes while reading the Koran. I worried because I hadn’t included these sins on my list and Allah knew it.

During high school, I became aware of how differently my non-Muslim classmates lived. My classmates wore shorts and bathing suits, had boyfriends, and weren’t worried about sin. I had to wear long-sleeved shirts and ankle-length leggings under my P.E. T-shirt and shorts. They talked about camping trips, bonfire parties at the beach, and going off to college. I wasn’t allowed to talk with boys on the phone or attend any of the formal dances. Even my classmates who went to church enjoyed their youth groups, overnight retreats, and Christian rock music. Their lives seemed light and carefree. Mine felt like a never-ending list of good deeds and sins, and the unwritten lies that went along with this daily reckoning.

B
Y THE TIME
I went to university, I yearned to break free. I was so tired of worrying about Allah all the time, and having my curiosity muzzled. Although my parents initially insisted that I commute each day the 120 miles from our home to college and back, they eventually decided to let me stay in the dorms in light of my three speeding tickets. Their decision came with a list of admonishments about sinning and Allah’s punishment if I misbehaved.

“Remember, Leila, Allah knows and sees everything. Be good and you will do well at university,” my mother said as she signed the check for my housing deposit. I always nodded my head in agreement.

A
T UNIVERSITY
, I
DID
what every good Pakistani Muslim girl does not do. I smoked Marlboro Lights and drank, tried recreational drugs, danced on countertops in dive bars, and lost my virginity to
my white, art-major boyfriend who looked like Flea of the Red Hot Chili Peppers. I desperately wanted to enjoy life, so I followed the example of those around me who seemed to be having such a good time. I wanted to stop being that girl with her arms folded tightly across her chest, a worried frown on her forehead.

My rebellion grew into an enduring rejection of the fear and guilt with which I had been raised. I soon rinsed my life clear of all religious practice and dogma. I stopped praying, reading the Koran, and fasting. The frequency with which I called out to Allah slowly diminished. I even pushed back against the marriage my mother was trying to arrange for me. I wanted a joyful, self-determined way of life.

My parents were horrified and distressed. They thought that, once I graduated from college, marrying me off to a Pakistani doctor or engineer would set me straight. “Leila, you’ll be turning twenty-one next year. We must start thinking about marriage seriously now, or you will get too old. I was eighteen when I married your father,” my mother said. “Rouksana, Auntie’s daughter, just got engaged to a doctor and she’s eighteen,” she added. Each time we spoke, she updated me on all the engagements and marriage proposals of the other girls in our community.

My mother’s efforts intensified as my graduation date neared. She called me one afternoon, breathless with excitement, “Leila, the Ahmed family is interested in you for their oldest son. He’s an
engineer
with a degree from
Stanford
. Oh, thank you, Allah, for your kindness. Leila, this is a perfect match for you. The Ahmeds are a
very good family
.”

I shrugged and agreed to meet him to appease my parents and to buy myself some time. A few weeks later Amir and I met for a coffee without parental supervision. This was his way of letting
me know he was somewhat progressive and modern. I listened to him tell me about his studies, his job in Silicon Valley, and what he wanted in marriage: “stability, security, and support.”

H
E WAS NICE AND
kind, and ready to settle down. But I had just started my personal journey. Several days after our coffee date, his parents came forward with a proposal. My mother was ecstatic. “Oh Leila, this is Allah’s reward for all your good deeds! Such a good boy. Such a good family. You’re a very lucky girl!” she gushed. I hesitated, arguing that I wanted to go to law school first. My mother tried to persuade me that I could do both, marriage and law school,
if my husband agreed
.

“Ma, please. I don’t want some man deciding whether I can go to law school or work as a lawyer. Please, try to understand.” I blinked back tears of frustration. For years I had watched my mother struggle with her financial dependence on my father. When his business blunders had cost our family all our savings and jeopardized our financial security, my mother’s feelings of powerlessness left a lasting impression on me.

“But it’s your duty to do as we say. It’s written in the Koran. You must obey your parents.” She glared at me as she tucked her ivory headscarf behind her ear.

“I don’t want to marry him. You can’t force me. That’s also written in the Koran.” I lowered my eyes, trying to soften my defiance.

“You listen to me, Leila. I know all about the things you have done at UCLA. You have disappointed us so much. If you refuse to marry Amir, I will curse you so that you never succeed in life. You will fail and fail, and when you come crawling back to me, begging for forgiveness, you know what I will do to you that day?”
She stared at me with unblinking eyes. “I will kick you so hard in your face, you will never be able to get up.”

“Ma!” I gasped, inhaling sharply. She stormed out of my room. I sat down on my bed, trembling with anger and fear. A mother’s curse is very heavy, and I was terrified of how it would affect my future. I was sickened by how she wielded our religion to force me to submit to her will. In my head and heart I wondered,
How can you have Allah in your heart and say such things?

I never recovered from the violence of her words. Although growing up I had gotten used to her harsh physical and verbal outbursts in response to my disobedience, the promise of this curse was irreparable.

H
ER WORDS HAUNTED ME
for over a decade. Rejection letters from my top law school choices, a broken engagement with an Italian Catholic man, living alone for five years during my thirties, and being laid off from my law firm job of eight years. As I went from one struggle to the next I would hear her, however faintly, repeat in my ear: “You will fail and fail.”

I turned back to Allah in these moments of despair, unfolding a prayer rug that I kept in the back of my closet or carrying
tasbih
beads in my coat pocket that I thumbed surreptitiously while sitting on a train or on a flight. I needed comfort but I also felt angry.
Ya Allah, would you really uphold such a curse? Am I such an awful person for wanting to live my own life? Have my sins been so great to deserve such heartbreak?
Even as I went through the motions, I punished Allah by questioning or denying his existence. My attempts to return to Allah were halfhearted and short-lived.

My relationship with my mother was similarly tempestuous. Reconciliations occurred every now and then because each of us
wanted harmony in our lives, but our differences always tore us apart. Long periods of estrangement followed, ranging from a few months to a couple of years. We often didn’t call each other on birthdays or Eid, and I rarely called her on Mother’s Day. No congratulations were forthcoming after I informed her that I was accepted to my dream graduate school in London, or when I ultimately succeeded in transferring to my law school of choice.

During a two-year stint for my law firm in Brussels, my mother and I did not see each other at all. But even if my life often seemed incomplete because I had such a barren relationship with my mother, was not married, did not have a child, and, for a while there, did not have a job, even if my headscarf-wearing cousins seemed to have abundant lives with their arranged marriages, proud parents, and several children, I wouldn’t submit. I didn’t want to return to Allah and my culture simply because I had been beaten down by life outside. I wanted to do life on my own terms.

W
ITHIN HOURS OF HER
arrival, my mother has spread out the religious paraphernalia that had adorned the houses in which I grew up. A prayer mat lies open in the corner of our living room, a small, thick Koran sits on our long oak dining table, and recitations of Koranic verses my mother finds on YouTube play on my MacBook. A few days into her stay, she resumes her campaign to convert David to Islam. Although she is relieved that I finally met someone, she still has trouble accepting a non-Muslim for her son-in-law.

“David, did you have a chance to look at the Koran I gave you? The English translation is very good,” she says, eyeing our tall, wooden bookcase stuffed with novels and old textbooks.

“Yes, yes, it reads a lot like the Old Testament,” he mumbles.

F
OR THE MOST PART
, David takes my mother and her religious accessories in stride. Other than celebrating a bar mitzvah to please his paternal grandfather, David grew up in a secular household. His father was Jewish and his late mother was Christian. David is unfazed by the Koranic verses my mom coos in Eva’s ears to soothe her, or the way she rhythmically pats Eva on her back to “
Allah-hoo, Allah-hoo
.” When my mother panics after seeing the pits of “holy” dates from Mecca in our compost bin, David apologizes, explaining he didn’t know they were holy or that she saved them. The only thing that visibly irks him about my mom’s stay is her headscarf.