The Life of My Daughter

My baby, welcome to this world. May I describe for you what life looks like for the majority of women in our society.

A poet once described the dilemma in fathering a baby-girl in Arabia. He knew she would be a source of distress for both of them either through the poverty of a poor husband or the humiliating abuses of a rich one. Finally he prayed:

I ask God to take her (life) soon,
Even as she is the best I love.

The experiences of women about life vary considerably. It is not possible to describe it for you in a single narrative. However, I will try to present the experience of the majority just to give you an overview of the likely problems ahead. Count yourself lucky if you turn out not to belong to this majority. We, your parents, cannot assure you of anything because as a girl, your role in the society has already cut and I alone cannot change it. Even to alter it a bit will require a lot of courage from both of us.

As a Baby

The lessons will start perhaps right now as soon as you cry in an effort to express your discomfort due to sickness, hunger or mere fatigue. If you are not fortunate enough and depending on the mood of your mother, she may beat you up or abandon you to go on with her domestic duties which she does not find amusing anyway. Undoubtedly, this will instill fear in your subconscious at this early stage. You will then be unwilling to share your feelings with us later in life.

You are entitled to a maximum of two years of breast-feeding as ordained by God. But you are most likely to be weaned off your mother within the first one year in order to give way to another baby that may come sooner than wished. What that means is that you are most likely to be impoverished and less immune against the numerous diseases in our surrounding. If only the newborn would be patient until you are three or four, you could have lived a healthier life, both physically and cognitively. I will not hide it from you. Most children give up at this early stage due to this fact. I pray you survive it. Also, your mother would not age prematurely once the new child decides to delay its arrival. But just as you came unexpected, so would it.

After weaning you, it is not likely that you will continue to enjoy the attention of your mother. You know she will be busy with many things: housekeeping, cleaning, gathering firewood and preparing our meals anytime we are blessed with one. She would trek long distances to sell the little milk we collect from the cattle we keep for others. She may go to the farm where she is paid a stipend after eight hours of hard labor daily. It is not my responsibility to attend to you. In fact, even when free, I will be at a gossip centre. You will be left at the mercy of other kids in the house who will then be free to maltreat you anyway they can imagine. May God save you, my little girl!

As a Girl

The difference between your fate and that of your brother will start as soon as you reach the age of six or so. There is a place called school where the wisdom of survival is taught. Your brothers will most likely attend it. You need to be very lucky to do so as a girl. Even if you do, their chances of success there will be better than yours.

You will most likely forego schooling for marriage. We also think that you will be spoilt at a higher institution, away from us, though your brothers may not behave better. They are men. The world is theirs. After all, we expect your husband to meet all your basic needs of feeding, clothing, accommodation, if you are lucky to marry a generous one. Know that in our society women are hardly entitled to needs other than the basic. So your success in school, according to the view of the society, may not be crucial to us. Again you are not entitled to wealth. So even if we invest in your education and no matter our level of poverty, you will not be in a position to assist us. Then, you will look up to your husband for assistance. But you may not be his only wife, and he may not be well to do or interested in assisting you.

Whether you go to school or not, as early as you are six or so, you must assist your mother in her petty trade (talla). Some people argue that this would hamper your education and expose you to bad habits. Well, how do we make ends meet, or where can we find the money to buy the provisions that you will need to use during marriage?

If you are fortunate to find us comfortable, talla could be waived for another duty. You will help your mother in all her domestic assignments. Such duties, I will be frank with you, are many. When they become overwhelming, as they often do, your mother becomes very quarrelsome. Do not bother. I understand her plight. However, it is a role that society expects her to play, as you will come to know and do later. Consequently, you will then hardly have the time to revise your school lessons or do your assignments. If you are lucky that we are rich enough to have a domestic maid and both you and your mother have ample time, you may most likely waste it sleeping in the morning, especially on vacation days and weekends, or watching videos and satellite stations.

Though your brothers will grow to have a space of their own in the house, you will spend your childhood squatting in the house from one room to another. The lack of personal space will hamper your individuality even at that early age. When you want to read or contemplate on issues, you have to do so amidst the noise of a radio, the gossip of your mothers and sisters, or while attending to the young baby that is constantly left at your care.

Here also, I will not be of any help to you. Any attempt to find you a space will be interpreted as corrupting, a waste of money or become a source of gossip. After all, your stay with us will be brief, just up to your marriage at the age of fourteen or so. As you begin to mature, I am expected to cut off all contacts with you and suppress all signs of affection. I am required to be harsh in voice when addressing you and stern in look whenever our eyes meet. And mind you, they will do so only occasionally. All your affairs will be vested in your mother who will start to prepare you for the role of an obedient housewife and motherhood.

In Marriage

You will one day begin to attract the attention of men who will approach you for different reasons that vary only on legal terms. To win your heart, each of them will shower you with gifts. He will sing your beauty, describing you as the first and the last. He will promise you that his house will be Eden for you.
It sounds interesting. Does not it?

If you are very lucky, the choice of a husband may be yours to make, otherwise it will be ours, depending on our prosperity. If we continue to be poor, we will have no option but to give you out to the highest bidder. That way, we gain and you gain too.

You may be lucky to sit down someday and make a choice of who - among these singers - will be your husband. Marriage, my little daughter, is the most important single event in your life. The choice of husband may be the most important decision that will affect you. If you pick a wrong one, you may be forfeiting all your happiness and freedom by virtue of this single act.

It will not take long for the love songs to cease, once you are in his house. You will realize that you were neither the first nor the last. The person singing those praises may soon turn into the monster that may ruin your life forever. After all, you are not allowed to make any contingency in form of an independent life. It is taboo. If you are lucky, life will be better, much better than this. But luck cannot be made or bought. It comes, once in a blue moon. So if you're lucky to get a good husband, never seize to count yourself lucky. Pray for him always. He is a jewel. The unlucky majority may be married to husbands whose hearts are as hard as stones.

My daughter, I should not frighten you. I want you to be optimistic. So let us pray that you will make the right choice that, according to your judgment then, will guarantee your happiness. You will then experience some happiness especially in your early years of marriage. However, going by history, it is not likely that this happiness will last long. Your beauty will start to fade with age. If your husband does not exercise restraint, you will soon discover that he is singing the beauty of another woman. Before your tears would dry, she will come to occupy your position, indeed a better one, in his heart and house.

This additional wife, whether good or bad, will obviously complicate matters for you. I expect you naturally to love your husband and become imprisoned in his heart the longer you stay in his house. This will make you feel jealous. But do not prejudge her. It is likely that she may be as good as yourself, my baby. In that case, you have to contend with only one thing: pray that your husband will be fair enough to continue treating you with affection and love, no matter how small that could be. If he is not, you will be thrown into despair and frustration. You may never see his smiles nor hear his sweet words, no matter how hard you try to appease him. Amidst such life of intolerance, ingratitude, abuses and denials, the society requires you to remain submissive to his whims, showing forbearance and forfeiting all rights of redress. May you be blessed with a good husband, my little baby.

Your husband will have the last say about your life, not myself, your father. As soon as you step into his house, you become his property. He is free to keep it at all cost, anyhow and for as long as he wishes. His destiny becomes yours. You have no right to independent thinking. He will think on your behalf, decide on your behalf and act on your behalf. You will have no profession except that which he permits. And that permission is hardly granted. Still, remaining in this state of agony in his house may be your best bet. You will be a nuisance if you return home. We never built a space for you. You will also stand a good chance of forfeiting your children. You have to stay at least for their sake as most women do. Life could be tough, but for members of your gender especially.

Let us remain optimistic still. Even if your husband tries to remain fair, caring and catering, that happiness may be brought to an end sometimes suddenly by economic or social factors. Do not expect everyday to be Friday. His business could collapse thereby pushing the whole family to the brink of poverty. That alone could turn him aggressive. He may even disappear to abandon you and the children, as is common these days.

During these hard times or whenever he chooses to be miserly, you will find yourself selling your possessions, one after another, to fend for your children, until your room becomes empty. It is something you cannot help. Both you and your children will need to feed, clothe yourselves and maintain an appreciable level of hygiene. Finally, before he could recover through another employment or contract or raise another capital, it may be ten years or more. In most cases, such recovery may never come.

At Old Age

As you face these challenges, old age will be catching up with you, naturally. By then either your mother or myself, or both of us, have tasted the bitter experience of death. You may be left alone with other poor sisters or brothers who would also be burdened with similar difficulties. Your husband then inevitably becomes your father. You will not be lucky if you survive him.

With all daughters married facing their own hard times; with sons living on their own most likely in distant places; with the body daily growing weaker; and with no enterprise to maintain and keep you busy, life could be unbearable when you grow old. You will start to recall life from its sweet beginning to how it gradually led to your sad loneliness.

As you recall the lives of all your loved ones including your mother, friends and myself; as you try to glance back at how each of us died, the imagination of your death becomes your closest companion. You sleep with it and wake up with it. While your brother may find delight in recalling his numerous lifetime achievements then, you are most likely to count only two: that you have propagated mankind, as did other women before you; and that you have handed over the baton of suffering to your daughters as you received it from your mother.

Death

I pray that by the end of this tough journey, you may find solace in the life beyond when your soul will rest in peace. May it be! Amen.

My little daughter, you can now understand better the story of the poet with which I started this narration. These frustrations were the reasons why Arabs preferred to bury their daughters alive as described by God in the following verses:

“And if any of them receives the news of his newborn girl, his face becomes darkened, burning with fury. Hiding from his people due to the bad news he received (he will contemplate): does he keep her (alive) in humiliation or bury her in the soil?” (16: 58-59)

Jos
15 July 1999

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Reprinted to mark World Women's Day, 8/32017