‘I have a past’, I said.
It sounded
strange, I felt awkward as soon as I uttered it, as if I was a fugitive or someone
with a juvenile offence record.
I met with a
group of single parents I found on Google meetups. The group is all about
single parents with young children meeting up at fun places in Dubai to keep
the little ones entertained and to provide support for one another, conscious
of the fact that a lot of single parent families are immigrants and in most
cases without friends and family in the city.
I was talking
to one of the single mothers and she asked me where I was from, I explained
that I was originally from Kuwait, but that I just moved here from the UK ‘I
didn’t want to go back to Kuwait, I sort of.. I sort of have a past there, a
past I don’t want to return to’. She nodded empathically and I felt
something in me break.
I looked at
all those single mothers; young, beautiful, highly intelligent, all leading successful
careers and all fed up! Fed up with the stupidity of men, the abuse in all its
forms physical, mental and emotional. Fed up with men’s laziness, their lack of
appreciation, the lies, the dishonesty, the cruelty, the endless lame excuses. Fed up after years of
being taken for granted, after years of juggling the responsibilities, the
house, the children, the jobs, the finances. Fed up with cultural expectations
and social conditioning, fed up with taboos and shame and stigmas.
We all had
to die a thousand times in order to learn how to live, I thought, as I watched
those young mothers take their children’s hands and play, carefree and happy.
We all had to say yes, be buried under a million wrong yeses before we finally learned
how to say no. But once we’ve tasted the power, the sweet power of saying no,
there was no turning back. Men suddenly became small, irrelevant, a boring
after thought not
worth the mental energy, a sad little play thing no longer of any interest.
worth the mental energy, a sad little play thing no longer of any interest.
