mommymasala

I’m cycling lately. Not like exercise on a two-wheeled, manpowered vehicle, but emotional cycling. There’s something people don’t tell you about being strong in the face of struggles- it’s full of periods of great weakness, moments when you just want to fall into your bed, pull the covers tight, close your eyes and find some way to get rid of the exhaustion. And apparently my generation is prone to a new phenomenon dubbed the Quarter-life Crisis that hits somewhere around the late 20s and early 30s. Gee, thanks world.  -_-

(See the following: The quarterlife crisis: young, insecure and depressed, The Quarter-life crisis, and How to Survive a Quarter-Life Crisis.)

It’s another taboo subject among Desis: depression and the big black hole that it truly is. Oh, everyone and his brother will say that they’re depressed or have high blood pressure or migraines, and it’s some kind of a fashionable thing in the Desi culture nowadays to faint out of some extreme emotional intensity. It’s like, oh my God, this is too much, I’m going to fall down unconscious all soap opera-style until I get my way.

But real depression, the drag you down, I can’t see any sign of hope, my whole body and brain and heart physically ache kind of depression? That’s not discussed with anyone. The maybe I should just give into this severe exhaustion because giving up is easier than trying harder suicidal thoughts? Never ever should a Desi mention that, not to friends, not to family, not to a therapist or a psychiatrist or anyone qualified to help you. That’s not socially acceptable or culturally comprehensible.

So if I say to you, yes, I’ve been depressed in the past and I’ve been close to the edge of it recently, I would once again be voicing something that Desis typically keep silent.

But it’s necessary. Speaking up, honestly saying I’m not okay, that’s the only true weapon against this almost supernatural monster of an illness. Because it IS an illness. It has symptoms and causes and a specific set of recommended approaches to recover from it. And like some illnesses, there’s no cure. The disease is always in you, able at any moment to take over and incapacitate you.

The trick is to expose the enemy, bring the hidden into the daylight and fight it head-on. Say to yourself and to the world around you that you can’t always be all smiles and confidence. That some days, some moments, some events are enough to have you withdrawing within yourself, tired, lonely, scared, and confused. That nights can become sleepless and the repetition of your daily existence becomes less a refuge from drama and more often the cause of it in your inner self.

For all my friends and family reading this who are about to start calling and texting and visiting to make sure I’m “okay”, please relax. Understand that my best form of defense against these feelings is to admit them and write it through. I know people like to tell me how strong I am…and I know when I look back on my life and what I’ve been through and how I got through it so far that I’m surprised, too by my own will to survive. I also know that I’ve done more than just survive. I’ve learned to be excited, to challenge myself, to enjoy and laugh and breathe deeply.

But like I said, depression is always in you. Our minds like to overthink and overreact and suddenly it feels as if nothing is how it should be. Like being divorced, working full time and being a single mom, and then trying to see where this path is going to end up. A certain amount of planning and intelligence is necessary to be successful, but for me, too much analysis of what might happen or what my life currently lacks leads to an emotional crash.

My therapy is sort of simple: first, what I’m doing right now and telling you. Second, retraining my brain to stop going over and over what I sacrificed or using the word NEVER for what may be in my future, and instead, repeating that I don’t need to have it all figured out. Third, going back to basics and remembering to make the small changes in my day so I can fulfill my responsibility to myself amid the things I do for everyone else as a grownup in this world. Fourth, and this is key if I want to truly stop cycling, I have to do something new to help me get and feel unstuck. I have some ideas on this and I’ll keep you updated on the results. But for right now let’s just leave it at this:

I’ve been depressed in the past and I’ve felt myself nearing that precipice lately. But I’m not going to just close my eyes and hope I can get around it. I’m going to walk a bit more carefully, pick out my path in the looming darkness, and find my way safely to the other side. And meanwhile, I’m going to continue to be the kind of girl who doesn’t care if it’s taboo to talk about it and who refuses to shy away from the topic. This is me, people. Wordy, honest, emotional, and real. That’s the side of myself I won’t ever change.

As many people are now aware, a recent ad campaign for popchips featuring Ashton Kutcher in a video for a fake online dating website has drawn a lot of criticism. If you follow this blog, you also know that I was one of many of the bloggers who was given the opportunity to “break” this story. We were not told who the celebrity in the video would be or what the content would be or even what product the ad was selling. Once we received that information, we had a limited amount of time in which to write a quick post and send it out in hopes of it spreading around the Internet. The rules were that I had to act as if I had just found Ashton’s real online dating video, in which four over-the-top, funny men also appeared to introduce themselves to potential dates. The catch is that all four characters are played by Kutcher himself.

The problem is that some people find the video racist, in particular, the character of Raj, a Bollywood producer played by Ashton wearing brownish-orange makeup to look Indian. The character has a deep accent, wears a bright blue short kurta (traditional shirt,) and has both laughable dance moves and horrible pickup lines. He is also the only character who isn’t white.

Okay, now before I continue, I unfortunately have to clarify something quickly that will be what some people will say as a response to this post. They will say, “Well, you’re Pakistani, not Indian, so you probably like making a mockery of the Indian race to get back at us for the war that never ends.” WRONG. I was born in New York, my parents were born in Pakistan, and my grandparents were born in India. I still have family in both India and Pakistan, as well as in America. I think the war between India and Pakistan is tragic and I wish it WOULD end, somehow pleasing the people of both countries as well as doing right by Kashmir, the disputed territory caught in this deadly battle for years. And I have friends from every race, religion, culture, and homeland and I am not biased or prejudiced against anyone.

Moving on. Now, the next jab at me will be that being an ABCD, American Born Confused Desi as those born in Southeast Asia say, makes me incapable of understanding the dynamic in play here. Um hello, I have spent my whole life being different, being a representative of the Desi culture whether I wanted to be or not and showing non-Desis that I do believe in Jesus but I don’t celebrate Christmas and I also don’t eat monkeys (true story- someone’s mom wouldn’t let her come over for a while because she was afraid of this.) I was also the first one in my entire extended family to be born here, so I spent much of my youth traveling to visit family “there” and represented Amrika to people who expected me to be cursing in English and disrespecting my mother and wearing as little clothes as possible. I’m not confused. I know exactly who I am and I always have. I also know exactly what bothers you most about this video.

It’s the gora. The white man. The white man making fun of us brown Desis while he tries to sell his chips and get away with it. Okay, I get it. India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh were under British rule for YEARS. History shows us that that rule ultimately led to the breakdown between Hindus and Muslims and the eventual development of both India and Pakistan as separate entities, and eventually Bangladesh as well. It was “divide and conquer” and it worked for the white man and the Desis went from being subjugated to winning independence to killing each other. The hatred, both outward and inward, has never really gone away. That’s why the countries still fight. That’s one reason why Western involvement in those countries is seen as interference and even a subtle re-subjugation.

I am not going to argue any of this with you. I took Social Studies and History and Sociology and Psychology and I am Desi and I am American and I get it. All of it. But guess what? That is not, in any way, shape, or form, what this video is about!

Ashton as Raj is a stereotype. Yes, a stereotype…ooooo. But so is the Rastafarian hippie dude who jokes about getting high. And how about the Southern biker with bad teeth and tattoos all over? And the Karl Lagerfeldesque Darl, who is just too much for me to even say? Three different white characters that satirically portray a bunch of different people: New Age hippie wannabes, Southerners and bikers in one, and fashion-loving, dog-loving, self-loving men.

Raj is a parody, the same character of FOB, Fresh Off the Boat, that we Desis portray often in our own television serials and movies. Why is it okay to do this to ourselves, but not okay when someone else says it? Okay yes, the gora did it, but so what? Can’t we throw off the chains of oppression and servitude that created all this resentment and self-loathing in the first place? Do we really have to pretend to think Ashton or popchips or the American society in general are being mean-spirited or hateful towards us? Or could we maybe just laugh at the stereotype and acknowledge that it is a stereotype for a reason, because there are people like Raj in our community and we ourselves make fun of those characteristics in our entertainment industry and advertisements and conversations ALL THE TIME.

You want to know why I say we hate ourselves? Because we are always trying to BE the white guy, the sahib, the ones who once ran our countries and our lives. The biggest selling products in our culture are things like “Fair and Lovely,” to brighten our skin, and our traditional style makeup requires layers and layers of foundation to look fairer. The community still remembers bowing down to this powerful white ruler, so now we are offended by “them” making fun of “us,” while simultaneously trying to turn into them?

You know what? I AM offended. By you critics who have made me feel like an other among a group I belong to. I was asked to be a part of this campaign like everyone else in our network. I was given my first chance at a sponsored post and I was excited and I did well and I was praised. And then you showed up. Claiming righteous indignation and the voice of a people. But you never asked me what I thought. You didn’t stop to consider that by making me a part of your outcry by saying we all feel the same way (or should,) that you actually forcibly removed me from the very people you are calling racist and exclusive. You essentially put a giant asterisk on my forehead, a bias-bhindi!

Instead of being proud of my culture and heritage and displaying it proudly, I am forced by you to offer this long-winded explanation of why us Desis can’t lighten the hell up. I’m forced to feel ashamed of the funny aspects of my community and guilty for having laughed in the first place? No! No way will I be ashamed or guilty! I have a sense of humor, damn it, and what’s funny coming out of a Desi mouth is funny coming out of Ashton’s or anyone else’s.

Once again, it’s me and a bunch of people who don’t quite get it because they aren’t Desi, and you, the Desis who are so outraged, on the other side. Once again, Sheba’s in the middle. And Sheba’s sick of it.

Raj is not a representation of Desis everywhere. He is the satirical performance we’ve seen in countless places before, in America, in Pakistan, in India, and beyond. YOU are not a representation of Desis everywhere. You are one piece of a culture that needs to move beyond the past and see where its place is now. We are doctors, engineers, and lawyers, leading in the fields of technology and computers. We are teachers and mothers and business owners and we are Americans, Canadians, Brits, Australians, living in the islands and living in Africa and living in the lands of our forefathers. We are not second-class or a servant class or a group to be controlled. But this is a commercial. It is making light of many, many different kinds of stereotypes. It is not a comment on who you are and you shouldn’t let the gora or your inner voice or anyone ever tell you that you’re anything less. We should be past all this already!

*****

The main person to begin the negative reaction to the advertising is a man named Anil Dash, a blogger, an entrepreneur, and self-described “geek” in the world of technology. His post sounds valid, but here’s what he says in a comment on someone else’s blog:

     Here in the United States, people of Indian descent actually have relatively less impact in all of

     those realms than would be expected, given the percentage of population that we represent, so

     we have less power… It’s fine to mock people in positions of power; It’s wrong to mock those

     who are not in power. This shouldn’t be that hard to understand — it’s the same reason adults

     don’t make fun of kids, for example. (Anil Dash)

Raj made me laugh, you make me shake my head in disgust. I am so unbelievably insulted by this- what you, the critic, have to say!

We have “less impact” and “less power” and are compared to children while everyone else is an adult?! Now that’s racism. Racism doesn’t have to be one race against another. You have shown here that you consider Desis inferior to other races, especially to whites, and that you think we’re mere children being bullied in this society. Please Mr. Dash, have the decency to not spread your self-hating, insecure, nonexistent self-esteem to the rest of us!

Ashton’s character never says anything as demeaning as what you’re putting out there as your explanation for hating his performance. He put on brown makeup? Actors ALWAYS wear makeup, whether they are playing their own race or another. He has an accent? So do billions of people, and so do countless characters in Hollywood, Bollywood, and Lollywood, because that is a reality and it can be an interesting quirk to portray. He can’t dance? Damn it, all you people with two left feet, get out there and join the movement against left-footedness!!

Seriously, this was supposed to be funny. Just say you didn’t think it was and move on. Don’t turn it into an us versus them. Don’t tell me we’re “not in power” and we should be hurt that those who supposedly are are making fun of us. I am one of the bloggers to break the story, just like my white/black/pink counterparts in the blogosphere, and I have an impact. I have power. Don’t take that away from me because you don’t like the joke!

For a few moments in this video, Ashton Kutcher was brown like me. And I, for one, found it hilarious.

“Each of us is something of a schizophrenic personality, tragically divided against ourselves.” -Martin Luther King, Jr., Strength to Love

Remember when I said in my first post that I’ve always had these two sides to my personality, the “American” and the “Pakistani” and that they are very often at war? Well, it’s a misleading statement, because I no longer feel like I’m at war with myself. I’m not two separate people inhabiting one space. I am, instead, a prism. I look transparent, but I am solid and multi-faceted. I am a sparkling soul, bending and reflecting what seems to be one simple beam into a fascinating spectrum of colored light.

And I do fascinate myself.

I have met many women since that first post. Women who are single by choice or circumstance. Women who take the shnizzle thrown at them and turn it into fertilizer and then the best Goddamn flowers you’ll ever see or smell. Women working, laughing, mothering, writing, pretty-fying, cursing, being honest with themselves and being honest with the world about who they really are and, most of all, boldly unafraid to be happy about it. Women who are winning and showing others it can be done.

I fascinate me because I am one of those women.

It may sound trite, but the last two years helped me meet myself. I didn’t know I had this much strength in me. I didn’t know I had this much love. I didn’t know I could be so positive and so outgoing and so carefree. And I didn’t know I could be an inspiration.

An old friend contacted me recently after she saw some of the media coverage of the past month. She is a kind, intelligent, beautiful woman I used to have sleepovers with until our early teen years. We would whisper about love songs and romance in the confessional air of nightfall and dream of an idyllic marriage and perfect life. It turned out we were looking through glasses so rosy, we got thorns in our eyes that are still being meticulously picked out.

She has been divorced for years now, but I never reached out to her about it because I was so unsure of what to say or how to react. Like I’ve mentioned in earlier posts, divorce in the Muslim community was almost unheard of a generation ago, and my generation is just starting to see a spike in “failed” marriages. People are uncomfortable and embarrassed discussing it. Divorcees, especially the women, tend to go into hiding for a while, not attending community or family functions where the questions and stares and pity would be too much to handle. Some go back to school. Some work. Some go on dating sites or turn to the traditional and ask their parents to look for potential mates. But few, if any, feel like talking about it. Few, if any, are ready to put their past out there and not care what others think.

I am one of those few. I never bent my head with shame or let myself get too discouraged. I hurt, I hate, I regretted and recovered. And I kept going, confident that if I chose what was right for me, that I would be okay. I was depressed that first year, but I had the baby and the job of keeping a smile on my face for her sake. But I never gave up on myself no matter how hard it got. And I never stopped living my life, because unlike others in our society, I don’t think these are “failed” marriages. There is no failure in finding your strength and satisfaction in the single life. There is no failure in getting out of something that threatens to destroy you.

My friend told me about other Muslim women she’s met who have or are getting divorced. She described their guilt and confusion, their feelings of suddenly becoming an outcast. And she told me how strong she thought I have been. She read this blog and was awed, because she knew me back when I was a Disney-Hollywood-Bollywood inspired lovesick in love with the idea of love little girl. Apparently, my transformation from that into a self-assured, single yet un-bitter woman makes me an enigma in this divorced desi world.

It is unimaginable to people that I can be so calm and secure. I question things and I over-analyze at times, I complain and I get overwhelmed. But I am happy. I’m okay. I do not shy away from the topic, and I am honest with myself and I’m boldly unafraid to be happy. This, for some crazy reason, is a new phenomenon in my culture.

Somewhere along the way, the many sides of myself stopped fighting and resolved to become one solid body. I stopped feeling like a bumbling, circus sideshow among the non-desis. I also stopped feeling like I was the only one playing the part of the old-fashioned saintly sufferer among the conniving, controlling geniuses in the soap opera dynamics of my changing community. I learned there are others like me, desi and not, and we can be our own, unique blend of spices, ground into a bold, unforgettable new masala paste.

I have more to learn about myself. I have much more I want to see and do and be. But I am turning shnizzle into fertilizer and the tragic, schizophrenic nature of my personality into a unified, sassy model for those who think it can’t be done. I want to do something to help those other women who are still divided. I’m not unsure of what to say like I was when my friend got divorced, because I’ve been there, I am there, and I am coming out on the other side in control. I want to be a voice for those desi women and I want to tell their stories. I want them to find their voices and their real selves and that feeling that they are winning. I want them to kick off the facade of failure and self-loathing, and join me in what I have become.

I am a prism. And Goddamn it, I love this rainbow.

My last post was a cathartic, therapeutic experience. Over the past 26 months, I’ve gone through all of the stages of grief I think, and that post was finally one of acceptance. It was everything I want to say about my marriage, the good, the bad, the way we loved and the way it ended. I can explain until I have no words left, but the questions will never be fully answered, the loss can never truly be understood. And the emotions, the anger, the bitterness, the desperation, the shame, and the guilt, it’s all too big to ever really put into words. So I choose now to stop talking about that marriage itself. It happened, it was whatever it was, and it doesn’t make a bit of difference now to even attempt to analyze where it went wrong.

That doesn’t mean I can’t learn from it. There’s plenty about who I was, what my life was like, and how I allowed myself to be treated and how I responded that was wrong for me. There’s so much I needed to finally see and change and I can do that now because I finally let myself face it. I accept that I will never know if that man became someone I didn’t like or if that was who he always was and I just didn’t see it. I accept that I was young and foolish and naive when I fell in love and that I wasn’t proud enough of myself to set limits to my patience. I didn’t respect and honor myself enough to be clear about what lines could not be crossed. I made myself weak and unhappy by not caring enough about my own wants and needs. And that’s just not a way to live OR love.

There is one last piece to my grief that I have yet to write about. Once I let that out, I will no longer write about those events because I choose to move on in my life now. I have to get this out, though, because it’s the last big thing that happened between us and it defined everything I’ve done since then and how I’ve chosen to be happy instead of being a martyr.

*****

I have always been so hyper-aware of what others expect and that has taken precedence over what I feel. I was happiest making others happy, but sacrificing my own joy was the wrong way to go about it. I’m worth the same amount of effort I put into others’ lives. Why not voice my own desires and, (gasp) MAKE IT HAPPEN?? I know I’m a good person. I know I don’t like to hurt people, to lie, to cheat or steal. I am kind and generous, sympathetic and empathetic. But I have no reason to fear that listening to myself and doing what I want will ever be the wrong choice. If I know I’m that good person, than no choice I make will ever be one that is truly hurtful to someone else.

And as a mom, I want to set the example for my little girl that taking care of herself is a priority. I want her to value other people’s opinions and feelings, but honor her own heart first. I teach her right from wrong, and I teach her to care about the community, her family, the world around her. I can also teach her how to be strong within herself, a lesson I think is the most important one a desi woman today can learn.

The generation before mine was conservative. The generation after will probably be comfortable in a settled balance between the traditions and the new ways of life. But my generation is one of turbulence, extremes of rebellion and obedience.

I’m a first-born American pioneer in my family, the guinea pig that tested out the strange and awkward thing that is growing up Muslim in America… a bit like straddling a spiked fence. The experience is painful and embarrassing at times. I felt like an outsider in both the “American” circles and my family’s. I was different. And I tried to be silent about it, to pass by unnoticed while I satisfied everyone else and attempted not to feel like I wanted something else. But countless times I wished I was one of the little blond girls, the ones who didn’t know where in the world their families were from, whose religion wasn’t a stamp on their foreheads labeling them one way or the other. I wanted so badly to blend in, not to be so pointedly unique while I felt invisible.

That silence was suffocating. My relationship with Zahara’s father was similar, not in such negative ways, but in the way that I quieted my discomfort for the sake of maintaining peace. I was silent, and I was sad. Like I said in my last post, there were some amazing times. But I needed more. I needed to go through the hell of the end of that relationship to truly be set free. I needed to learn how to love myself.

*****

The five stages of grief are denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. When I found out about his cheating 2 years ago, I went through periods of the first 2 stages rather quickly. He made it easy for me to get to stage 3, bargaining, by asking for forgiveness and expressing his love and desire to prove himself. I tried to remain objective, but really I was denying that his actions could be as bad as they felt to me, I was angry at myself for not being able to get past it, and I was ready to do all kinds of heavy lifting to make it work. I let him back into my heart and my arms too many times to count that first year.

I thought I was being strong, when in reality I was just trying to ignore my own instincts in order to get us back together. But becoming a mother had given me some new confidence, making me push against my own resistance to care about ME. I was confused and conflicted. I knew something had to change and (or because?) I knew that my daughter deserved a better example. On New Year’s Eve I realized it had been a year since I’d discovered the cheating and I was still just waiting for him to go through with his promises to make it up to me.

This is when he told me he had a week off and asked me to come to Thailand where he’d be for that week so he could finally win my trust back fully. He wanted to explore this random foreign place together while we explored a new kind of relationship with each other, one in which we would be wiser than before and stronger together because of it. So I did it. That was the moment my life really changed.

Sometime during my LONG flight from New York to Japan, his girlfriend got suspicious and made plans to see him and his parents called mine to tell them to tell me to turn around and come home because I was “pressuring” him. Meanwhile, I thought about my life and decided that I was tired of waiting for people to live up to my expectations while I inevitably let them get away with doing the opposite. This was going to be the end of this relationship or the beginning of a new understanding between us (with plenty of marriage counseling along the way, of course!)

I landed in Japan for a short layover and called him to say I was almost in Thailand. When he’d asked for the visit and convinced me it was necessary, I’d asked him three times if he was sure before I finally clicked the enter button to charge my credit card for the ticket. My parents were understandably worried but wanted me to make the decision that felt right to me. I think I was a little desperate at that point, too. I just wanted things to go back to how they had been, with the adjustments that I felt were necessary for Zahara to see in our relationship.

He had started describing the adventures we would have, the hotel and car arrangements he’d make, the tours we could go on. He sounded so excited and enthusiastic and romantic, it was infectious. But when I called from Tokyo after hours wide awake in a cramped airplane seat, he sounded different, abrupt and angry. He told me he wasn’t sure about all this and I told him the decision I’d reached about the visit and its implications. Now that I was almost there and so sick of waiting around and getting hurt, it was in his hands. He could do whatever he wanted, but I was done letting things happen to me. Whatever came next, I’d do what was right for me.

What came next was unexpected. I arrived in Thailand after he angrily ensured that he’d still be there to pick me up. I walked out, looked around, walked outside, walked inside, walked through that whole airport I don’t know how many times. I called to let my family know I’d arrived safely and to calm their fears. I called him and I called him and I walked and walked. I charged my phone by a nice security guard’s chair and I tried to shake off the numbness. And then somehow I did.

I got up, asked the airline about a return flight and found out I was stuck there for the weekend. I got a reservation at the airport hotel and I went there, ate dinner, and got in bed. I flipped through my IPhone pictures and videos of my daughter, of the reason I wanted to go on, of the one person that made me want to be strong. And I laughed at her silly infant dancing style and I cried at my lost love and I tossed and turned and slept.

That sleep only lasted a few hours and then I was awake and still in disbelief. I was struggling to understand how I was where I was, and then I chose not to even try. I had to get home to my little girl. I couldn’t fall apart in a hotel in Thailand with hardly any money and not a soul to rely on but myself. I got myself up.

    I swam in the pool.

I ate AMAZING food.

I got dressed up and I got information and I got on a train and I went to the main city. I met a kind older man who talked to a taxi driver for me to get him to give me a tour of the temples and monuments. I took pictures and I soaked in the beauty. And I ate some more. And somehow, I was happy. I was excited. I felt FREE.

On the way to the airport for my flight, my taxi got stuck in horrible, sit still for hours traffic. Turned out there was some sort of a Communist procession protesting the current government in Thailand. I negotiated and got my taxi driver to stop a motorcycle taxi and tell him to take me to a nearby train station. I grabbed my bags, hitched up the skirt of my maxi dress, climbed on the back of that motorcycle and put my arms around the first man since my husband. And then we flew.

I was flying.

It was the most invigorating, liberating, exhilarating feeling ever.

I laughed like a maniac and the wind cooled every last bit of heat from my stages of grief: the denial, anger, bargaining, and depression. Because I hadn’t realized but I had been depressed, functioning and smiling because I HAD to for my baby girl, but internally destroyed. I found my sexiness on the back of that motorcycle. I found my adventurous, fabulous, life-loving, self-loving self in those few moments. God, I felt lighter than I had in years and I liked it! And I wasn’t about to let that feeling go.

*****

When I got back from that trip I filed for divorce. Zahara’s father has spent this past year alternately trying to convince me to forgive him and trust him and then disappearing with his girlfriend for weeks at a time. I’ve never let our problems get in the way of his relationship with our daughter, but his sporadic presence in her life through phone calls and skype has remained sporadic. He’s barely visited, and is often out of touch for long periods. That’s his issue. I only want to make sure our daughter is happy and safe and healthy.

My trip to Thailand brought on the process of acceptance. And now, a year later, I wrote my last post about our marriage, accepting that there’s more to it than can ever be explained, and accepting that it is truly over. And now, I’ve written about the experience that finally changed my life.

I am no longer a little girl wishing I was someone else. I am no longer silently suffocating. But I will not argue the details of that relationship anymore. I won’t blame or defend. I won’t focus on that time. Because I am finally done grieving and I can truly say that I am free. And there’s nothing more that needs to be said about it. I am free.

DESI- of, or belonging to, a specific land; slang for Southeast Asians (Indians, Pakistanis, Bangladeshis) living outside of their own or their parents’ homelands.

In Boston’s Tufts Hospital at 7:48 p.m. on November 13, 2009 I finally met the baby girl I’d been carrying for 41 weeks. All of the movies and television shows around the world depict a woman suddenly glowing with pride and awe and love as she gazes at her fragile newborn and cries. It is an image universally portrayed, but in our case, it was my husband who sobbed as Zahara entered the world. I heard his half gasp, half sob, “My baby!” and then I saw her hair, her face, her body for an instant, before the nurses took her to the other side of the room. I didn’t cry. I was amazed by her and got caught up in trying to wrap my head around the fact that she was really finally here. This was my little girl and I had been waiting for what seemed like forever just to hold her in my arms. I know I’m a bit biased as her mother, but honestly, my daughter arrived as this curious little genius with an innate strength I marveled at, grabbing a nurse’s stethoscope as she tried to measure her. Then I was holding her, and I kept telling myself again and again so it would truly sink in, “I am a mother.”

********

I had been staying with my parents since November 25th in New York where I was born and raised. Desi women go to their mothers for the first 6 weeks after delivery to recover and learn how to be mommies themselves. And in my case, my husband’s parents had decided to hold their daughter’s wedding in New York exactly 3 weeks after my due date, which ended up being when my baby was only 2 weeks old. I was upset that they hadn’t chosen to have it in December, when the groom’s family wanted and when I would have been able to really participate and enjoy myself, too. December would have been perfect for my baby, too since a big gathering like a wedding is really not recommended for newborns.

In desi soap operas, there is always one saintly female character who sacrifices everything for her husband, his family, her children, because by loving, respecting, and caring for them she will eventually win them over and they will appreciate and love her, too. I’m no saint, but I was as close to this as humanly possible, with room for errors in judgment and unintentional mistakes, of course. Even though I was recovering from painful emergency surgery that I had to have a few days after Zahara was born, I was so happy for my sister-in-law and the rest of my husband’s family that I felt it was my duty to get us to that wedding no matter how much my doctor advised rest.

I continued to be the best daughter-in-law I could while dealing with a new baby and taking Percoset for the post-surgery pain. And when my in-laws expressed doubt for my love for them, I thought if I wasn’t able to help out with the wedding than at least my husband could. I told him he had to go be with his family 40 minutes away from me and Zahara, because once his sister left that house a married woman his relationship with her would change forever. I insisted he spend every waking moment with his family, because at the time, I believed in sacrificing for the family I felt was my own. Whether he ran around finishing wedding preparations or just sat on the sofa and talked with his parents and siblings, that was where he should be, I said. All I asked was that he come sleep with me and the baby, even if that was only an hour a night. I wanted him and Zahara to bond, and honestly, I craved that little bit of time when I could just fall asleep in his arms, exhausted but peaceful because I knew Zahara was in good hands. My in-laws erupted. My husband erupted. I told him to stay with his family until everyone went to bed and then to come be with me and our daughter when there was nothing going on there except sleep. I didn’t want him or his family to miss any special pre-wedding moments together, but I also wanted him with us, even if only for one hour out of every 24.

********

Cut to New Year’s Eve.

Zahara’s father was supposed to spend New Year’s Eve with us at a party my parents were having at home, but since we’d been arguing a lot recently he told me he wanted to be alone. He’s a pilot, and was in and out of New York with temporary duty in random states around America since Zahara had been born. Until I had the baby, I had moved around like crazy with him to support his career however he needed. But this New Year’s he was in St. Louis and I was on Long Island, and all evening I kept trying to call him because as mad as I was at him, I still loved him and thought it was my job to somehow appease him and make it all better.

As much as my “American” independent streak made me expect certain behavior and voice my demands quite loudly one minute, my desi upbringing including the need to pacify my husband made my voice soften, my words tinged with the calming notes of forgiveness and moving on. The two sides of my personality fought hard as they had done increasingly since I got married, but eventually I decided I had given the man enough of a cold shoulder and being together at midnight on New Year’s, even over cell phones, was more important than my anger. So I called and texted and became more and more uneasy.

And when midnight came and went, and my daughter slept with her head on my shoulder, unaware of anything but me, I got angry again. How could he not call? Not call me, not call his daughter, not be there as a last minute surprise? Didn’t he want to wish our baby girl her first happy new year? We had always said that whatever you’re doing at midnight is what you’ll be doing all year. Like if you’re on the tiny island of Jost Van Dyke in the Caribbean with friends (as we were 2 years in a row…oh yeah, there were some out of this world experiences), if you were laughing as the clocks hit 12, then your year ahead would be full of laughter and good times with great friends. So this, Zahara’s first ever New Year’s and what was supposed to be the end of my 6 weeks recovery at my parents’ house, what was this?

I fell asleep, troubled and sad as a wife, but genuinely pissed off as a mother for my child who was ignored so easily. I was more than disappointed in him. I was mad as hell, and although I didn’t know it then, the mother in me was turning out to have a backbone I hadn’t noticed before. There was a core strength in me as a woman, desi and American combined, to become exactly what I needed to be for myself and my sweet baby girl. That night will forever remain a turning point in my life as it was the end of my marriage, although I didn’t know that yet either.

On January 1st, 2010 I woke up so early it was still dark out. Some instinct was telling me something major was happening and I took out my IPhone to check if Zahara’s father had at last called. Seeing no missed calls, texts, or voicemails, I quickly started checking my email with a nervous, focused energy I have come to rely on. One email caught my eye, a notice from my bank for recent suspicious activity. Even as I opened it I knew. Even though I had never seen any evidence of it before, I knew. Even though in the desi community it is still the most scandalous thing, and no one knows anyone who it has happened to, I knew. There, in that innocent little email at some random hour of the early morning on the first day of the new year was a charge for a roundtrip ticket to St. Louis from New York on Southwest Airlines for a woman staying with my in-laws as a wedding guest. I hardly knew anything about her back then, but the one thing I knew, from somewhere deep inside me that was unwilling to flinch from the truth, was that this woman represented the end of my marriage.

Just like when I gave birth, I didn’t cry but was amazed at how life had changed so suddenly again. I reread that email so many times, and then something took over and I investigated in as many ways as I could online to see what other facts and information I could gather. There was something raw and choking somewhere in me, but I closed that off and found myself able to function. Even now as I write this, I don’t know what exactly kept me from falling apart right then and there. But I just couldn’t, I wouldn’t give in to the emotion that threatened to devastate me. Whether it was that American pride or the desi definition of a woman’s duty to her children, I’ll never know, but I found out what I needed to and I kept breathing. With my baby girl asleep in her bassinet beside me, I repeated to myself again and again until it would sink in “I am a mother.”