My strict education.

iVillage Member
Registered: 10-19-2002
My strict education.
5
Thu, 06-14-2007 - 12:15pm
Hello, first of all thank you for your welcome, i really need to share with someone that not necessarily belong to my culture. It’s true, to understand situations like burqa-wearing you need to experience it you yourself, many women like me are condemned to file with no face like ghosts above all in the Arabic Peninsula and Afghanistan. As you can understand i was born in a very conservative family and i had a strict education, practically me and my sister were educated to be quiet as far as possible and to pass most of our time at home, besides of course to the precepts of Islam. Once when i was 17 i was secluded in my room for 3 days because i went out without permission. Since i was a child i might to wear decently, when i was 12 my father imposed me the chador but i knew that a day i would be shrouded like my mother. Any attempt to make my appearance distinctive - by wearing high-heeled shoes or nail polish – was discouraged, i was allowed only to be wounded of black, to have a gloomy appearance.
The only vent for me was my course in teacher of nursery-school that allowed me to have a job. I also followed a correspondance course in english that now is useful for me. Even my marriage was relatively free, i got married when i was 23 with a neighbour that pleased to my father and in that occasion i could wear a wedding-dress instead of the burqa. I can consider my marriage successful although also my husband insists on formal rules.
As you can see i was allowed to study and job, but i must follow formal rules very strict that manage me to see the world through a mesh. When i wear the burqa everything seem very dark and all the days feel the same, so i stay with more pleasure at home and at work where i can stay with my face uncovered and breathe freely.
I can sum up this situation with an Afghan proverb ‘there are only two places for a woman, her home and the tomb’
thank goodness my father didn’t follow it literally.
Aisha
iVillage Member
Registered: 03-26-2003
Thu, 06-14-2007 - 2:50pm

Thanks for sharing Aisha!

iVillage Member
Registered: 04-22-2003
Thu, 06-14-2007 - 10:47pm

Aisha, are you at risk by posting freely on this message board?


iVillage Member
Registered: 10-19-2002
Fri, 06-15-2007 - 1:43pm
Don't worry, i write those messages in an internet point near the place where i work and a friend of mine help me with your language, i don't risk nothing writing that. I add that my husband like these technologies so he doesn't make me problems about that.
I will write you again soon. Thank you.
Aisha
iVillage Member
Registered: 01-10-2004
Sun, 06-17-2007 - 8:19pm

I am so glad you are willing to share. For me it's hard to see the strict education and burqa-wearing as anything but a harsh undeserved punishment. Thanks for letting me see a little bit of a culture that is so foreign to me.

Will your daughter have to wear a burqa?

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iVillage Member
Registered: 04-22-2003
Sun, 06-17-2007 - 9:23pm

I was raised with the equality of women understood, even going back to my maternal grandmother who was one of the first women to graduate from Moody Bible Institute in Chicago, over 100 years ago.