(disclaimer - please request my permission before using this story elsewhere)I am reposting this because it appears to have vanished from the archives:
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Childhood
I was born second female child, to a man who craved for nothing more than a son. A man so bound by patriarchal laws that my birth as a girl was such a blow yet again to his precious manhood, that he didn't even bother to visit me in the hospital. My father was a Muslim, typical of most Muslim men he cared nothing for females, except as brood mares and slaves, to be held in trust and sold on to the highest bidder when they became ripe enough.
He came over to England in the rush of 70's immigration laws, as a student looking to make some mark in the world. Maybe back then, when he first stepped foot on this land, maybe then he felt free. I like to believe that once he was normal, a human, someone who had a dream that wasn't controlled by eternal submission to such a demanding god. I will never know though, those are the musings of my own heart and my father is unreachable to me now, not dead in body, but dead to me so I shall never be able to ask. It matters not I suppose, what he became far outweighed whatever good he may once have possessed.
He was young, only 16, which had required him to forge papers proving he was 18 and old enough to be accepted on the student immigration. Ironically he fled from a tyrannical father who abused him mentally and physically through his short and hard 16 years. Going back further, my father's mother died delivering him in the mountains. I guess his father blamed him, for nothing my father ever did could ease the hate that man felt for my father. I know as I saw them together whenever I was taken to Morocco, and there was no love lost. The same hate between father and daughter that runs in my veins, flowed through his for his father. It's that cycle of violence that millions of families all over the world become trapped in. Not unique to my family, but the weeds of violence were wrapped tightly on our family tree when I was a young worthless little girl.
Muslim men have two sides to them, the young side, the one that the PC brigade thinks is the modern Muslim, and the real side, the Muslim side, the one they grow into. My father was the first side when he first came. Out drinking, partying, having sex, smoking drugs. He was as western as they came at first glance, even at second glance to outsiders. He meandered along like this for a few years, no thought to religion, except as a guilt that he pushed back into the recesses of his mind, to be dealt with when he was older because he was having too much fun.
Until my mother came into his life, 5'5", blonde, cheeky English rose. My father was 19 and she was 16. She had run away to join the circus, full of hopes and dreams of her own, running from something bad that happened to her. Something that ruined her enough inside that over the years she was unable to stand up to my father. Only damaged women would put up with what she did, I should know as the cycle was destined to be repeated by me.
My mother tells me that once it was good between them, I wouldn't know from my own memories of when I knew her and him together, my mind doesn't stretch to those first four years of life. Only snippets here and there, feelings of memories so to speak.
My father did the one thing he thought could tie my mother down, he married her, and by the time she turned 17 she gave birth to his first child. A girl child, my older sister who in turn became an apostate, long before I ever dreamed I could. My father didn't want his little girl around to remind him of his failings, so took her to Morocco and left her there with his stepmother and his hated father and returned to England minus my sister.
The beatings started then, my mother had failed to produce his son and his pride and primitive 7th century beliefs laid the blame squarely at her feet. She was his brood mare, and she would breed again, only maybe this time he could beat a son out of her. It took him a just over a year to get her to conceive again, she told me the beatings didn't stop then in spite of her advancing pregnancy.
This time round she was pregnant with a boy, not that she knew, for her trouble was that as in some very rare cases, she became pregnant with me whilst already pregnant with him. It is very rare that this happens, but this is what she told me when I finally met her. That the second baby sometimes aborts the first baby, and that this is what happened with him and me. She miscarried my brother at 5 months, and at the time they believed it was normal twins, and that one was clinging on still. My father was devastated yet elated at the same time; he was convinced that the twin would be a boy also.
When I was born I was nothing as I said before, female, no one, not even worth one look. If I sound bitter it is because I am, thanks to his callous treatment of us as females I grew to loathe being a female. I grew to learn shame for my gender, to hate other women who were at times complicit in helping to keep other women enslaved. I digress though and wander to thoughts I would rather close with.
On a plane my father hopped and dumped me with my sister, as he returned to my mother empty handed yet again. It wasn't a happy marriage, but what did I know of such things at that age. I can only tell you what I have learnt since.
For me I was in Morocco, just a baby with a sister who thought the colour of my skin was catching. A feeling she has never been able to really rid herself from, and one that ultimately cost her any chance at having me in her life anymore. Her racism wasn't rare or unique yet again, it was a by product of Arab racism, I look like the traditional Berber, and she the Arab princess, snow white and highly desirable in marriage because of it. When Arabs pretend to not be racist, ignore them, they prize white skin as much as all the races have at one stage or another.
Three years passed, them in England, me and my sister in Morocco. They came to bring us back to England when I was 3. My mother was pregnant again and my father was again on the male heir dream train riding into some idealistic future that this miraculous boy would create with his presence alone.
They had a new 2-bedroom house and maybe in their naivety they believed they stood a chance, that his religious and cultural differences weren't so great a divide. As she was trying to be a good Muslim woman harder than before, the beatings had cowed her sufficiently enough that whatever fire had once burned inside her, no longer gave off even a flicker. It wasn't a home of love we returned to, it was just a better house, with the same story being played out under its roof.
My mother said she couldn't be sure if it was the beatings that caused the haemorrhaging or just a natural problem in birth, for her it was all a haze as she gave birth to baby girl number 3, and lost her womb in one night. The thing she will never forget is my father calmly telling her that now she was barren, he would be divorcing her, as he needed a son.
Not long after that, when my younger sister was 6 months old, my mother left our house never to return again. She left him, and us behind to a man who couldn't love his daughters well enough to raise them healthily or with love. She says that she left us with him because she thought he would never physically hurt us, which is strange considering he had no qualms hurting her. The anger I feel at her, although tinged with a deep understanding, has never left me and understanding was something I gained when I grew up. As a child she was just the mother who left us behind because she didn't care enough about us to take us with her. Not only that but she made no attempt to contact us, and for the next 15 years I often fancied my father had murdered her and buried her in the back garden, or another one, that she ran off to Hollywood to be a star. The first scenario always seemed more realistic, especially if you knew my father.
The next thing we knew, we were packed off to a children's home, and it was a year before we saw our father again. It was a great time though, the children's home was lovely, the staff were kind and caring, full of warmth for all the kids behind their doors. I was lucky; many more children who have been through the system have discovered a darker side than what I had. We were pretty messed up kids, and my baby sister was just that, a baby. Still I cherish the 3 years we stayed at that home; probably the only time I was ever a child allowed to be just a child.
As I said it was a year before we saw our father again, he turned up and started acting like a father, he would take us home each Friday and drop us back at the children's home on Sunday. He was a good man during this time, and although we lived apart it was as I said the better part of my life. He started dating a lady who looked after us at the home and she started to come home with us on the weekend. She was lovely, and as a replacement mother you couldn't get any better. At the end of the three years my father took us home permanently and the lady from the children's home moved in with us. It was a wonderful time for us, my father was such a different man and it showed in his behaviour towards us.
Topic: My journey up from the abyss