“Your Abbu is in the hospital,” Ammu said, the franticness on her face spreading out and suspending in the air around her.
I don’t remember how we got to Toronto General Hospital, but when we did we floundered through aluminum doors toward the elevator. I saw a herd of nurses barging through hallways and turning corners, some pushing patients in wheelchairs and others holding clipboards, making their rounds. Perhaps one or two of them smiled, rotated their heads to say hello to others, but most looked onward and forward. Like robots, they seemed preprogrammed and deterministic.
The room that we entered had two hospital beds, each sheltered by periwinkle-hued plastic curtains. We were escorted by a nurse with distinguished auburn curls, past the first bed to the second. When the nurse moved the bed’s curtains, I saw Abbu lying still and pale like a marble statue, his head angled toward us, the tip of his nose diagonal to his right toe. He had needles in the veins of his hands, masked by white tape and attached to a half-full drip. His body at the time did not do justice to the force of his character inside.
When Abbu realized we were there, the corners of his mouth became slightly upturned, and there was a glint in his eyes like the sun’s reflection in water. We moved closer to him.
He opened his lips slowly. “I almost died,” he said. “But I’m alive, Alhumdulillah.”
I could tell from the faintness in his eyes that he had been somewhere else, seen something that none of us had.
“Our lives, they are not long. We have to remember what’s important. Think about life, think about death.”
I picked up Abbu’s hand — once thick, large, durable, now limp and lying loose. Afterward, as a person who had almost faced death, Abbu would remember his one crucial priority: his duty as a father to protect his children through Deen.
Abbu became increasingly preoccupied with my online activity and phone chats, my trips to school and back, the way I spoke, and the way I dressed. How many times I prayed, or what I was reading.
“Did you read the news?” he would ask. “Have you learned about this … or that … What are you doing to play your part? There are terrible things happening in the world right now. I want you to think about them critically.”
In retrospect, at the time I didn’t know much of what was happening in the broader context of the world, let alone the country. What Abbu wanted me to think about specifically was my Muslim identity and what it meant in this new place we were in, how the world was shaping who I would eventually become.
Instead, all I felt was restriction. You can’t go here. You can’t do that. You have to protect yourself. Stricter curfews, more confinement, and monitoring. A type of informal surveillance of my behaviour.
Why are you monitoring me? I thought. As if I’m going to do something wrong. Have I done something wrong?
I didn’t know then that the whole of Canada is shaped like a panopticon, with law enforcement and the government at its centre. Muslims would be increasingly monitored without having information on who was observing and what they were concluding — leaving them with a heightened awareness about the perception of their behaviour. The surveillance of Muslim men and their families like a curse that removes the focus from the faith itself, and all you’re left with are delusions.
“Don’t text or publicly say anything related to religion because you never know who is watching or listening.”
“You should take off your scarf when you’re in this region …”
“No hijabs for photo identification.”
“Are you sure you want to keep a beard when you go for that job interview?”
“I think you should remove your experience at that Islamic organization from your resume.”
“Probably best you don’t travel at this time. You’re more likely to get pulled over at the airport with that last name …”
“If I were you, I wouldn’t share my family or marital problems with these white people. They might call the cops.”
“Don’t pray frantically in public.”
Years into my adulthood, I would go to Masjid Toronto on Dundas Street, often at lunch and after work. It was a special place for me, where I parked my preoccupations with everyday worldly life, the same way I put away my shoes at the entrance before going in. This was where, as I sat on the carpet cross-legged or put my head down in sujud, I remembered I was more than the mortal body I found myself in. It was where I met a Bengali Imam who showed me photographs of his first daughter, who had just completed her studies, gotten married, had a child. “This country,” he told me, “made dreams come true.”
On one particular day at this important place, I saw something different: ordinary Torontonians holding signs that read “Say NO to Islam!” They were crowding around the mosque entrance, fuming, loud. Everyday people for whom I once most likely opened a door or gave up a subway seat, maybe even a job, unconsciously. As I briskly moved past them to open the mosque door and enter, my palms became drenched in sweat and there were tears at the back of my eyes, waiting to be released. But I wouldn’t. This was once a place of safety; now it was where I’d be watched.
In Jungle and beyond, people watched Muslims, Muslims watched each other, and Abbu watched me.
During my adolescence in Jungle, the more confined and restricted I felt, the more intriguing the world on the other side of our apartment windows appeared. For most of my childhood, I retreated to the various planes of my mind, where I stored and pondered ideas I had read about in books and sketched characters and developed storylines for scripts. I played the stories out on the back of my eyelids like a film reel before I slept. Sometimes, if I fell asleep before a story ended, I’d physically act out the remaining scenes in the morning, with imaginary people, dancing with walls and talking to pillows. Ammu caught me smooching the wall once and scolded me for this very disturbing behaviour.
Now, in adolescence, this internal playground was just not enough. I remember the strong inclination to interact with the world and its people in a more tactile, physical way. The mysteries I started to become fascinated with were that of the heart, for I often felt mine tug, sometimes without explanation. My heart’s language was layered; its expressions quite particular but still in synonymity with each other. Like similar notes of music that were quite unique by themselves. Notes that needed a form of expression. Such is adolescence for most, I suppose.
Each time I did something unacceptable, my fate of confinement became more sealed. My middle school graduation night was one such time. I was the class valedictorian and had also won about ten awards. I was wearing a beautiful lavender silk dress and was excited to dance with my friends. When the after-party dance segment started, I was elated. The sounds of the bass and the twinkle of the fairy lights put me in a trance. I knew I couldn’t stay for the entire dance, and that I’d have to get home before ten o’clock. I’d enjoy the moments I had, for there was much to be proud of, and I had been good. I was surely deserving. I spun periodically, wondering if this would be when I could also dance with a prince.
After perhaps only about half an hour of being immersed in the magical fog of various hues that filled the place, I caught Abbu storming in with eyes that had a tint of red in them. Although the room was dark, I was certain everyone around me would see the interaction we were about to have. Abbu grabbed my wrist and escorted me out the door, without looking back. My peers stood still, just observing. He moved with such thunder, I struggled to keep up, my feet almost slipping out of the ivory-hued sandals I wore. The edges of my dress trailed on the floor as I left.
Outside the school gymnasium, some teachers and students hovered around Abbu and I in a circle. The new makeup from Zellers I had eagerly applied earlier, purple eyeshadow and blue tinted mascara, were wiped away by my distress. I fell to Abbu’s feet with my wrist still in his hands and cried “Why?” I was usually quite composed, but not this time.
The entire year leading up to this moment, Abbu had patrolled the school grounds before school
started and after it ended, to ensure I wouldn’t run off with troublesome friends. Sometimes my classmates would see him standing outside our classroom window just looking on, point and laugh, then shout, “Oh, look, your Paki dad is following you again!” The teachers would ask me later, “Is something going on at home?” My heart would pound, afraid of being taken away from the person I loved most, so I’d lower my eyes and pray for something else to divert their attention.
So, on my graduation night, when my teachers asked again if I was all right, suddenly I realized I was being watched like a spectacle. Oh, what they would deduce about Abbu, with their lack of understanding, and how they could hurt him with their ideas — and by hurting him, hurt me. As for me, I was also embarrassed that I couldn’t be normal. I eventually wiped my tears and left with Abbu, although I was enraged with him and would be for months to come.
So, that summer, as I was under continued lockdown, I watched from my window. I saw the sun leave, disgruntled, and I retreated to its shadows. It’s where I would now stay. The world, which I had imagined would become grander as I grew, shrivelled. The darkness trickled in.
Although my heart didn’t quite understand at the time why I had to experience what I did, something many of my friends hadn’t or wouldn’t, I learned that my confinement was meant to be a mitigation to the worst thing that could happen: me forming any kind of sexual repertoire with anyone. If a young woman had any sort of entanglement with a young boy or man before marriage, it would do great damage to the perception of not just her, but her entire family.
As a young girl, the connection between joy and family dishonour made no logical sense to me. I had only one desire: to explore the world and pursue what called to my heart. And I wondered, too, why it was that boys could follow this desire with less caution or discretion and I, who had always been more well-behaved than any of the boys in my grade, could not.
Regardless, I saw the implications of this unfold the very next day after graduation, when I sneaked out of my summer science program to see my friends because I had missed the graduation dance. Abbu called the father of a friend of Afghan descent, who was supposed to drop me home, who told him I had not shown up at all. The father went on to tell Abbu about my shamelessness, not out of concern for where I had been and if I was okay, but to reinstate his own accomplishment, given his own daughter’s relative obedience, clearly a source of pride related to his own self-image. As he told Abbu that he himself had done a better job of raising his daughter according to certain values, and that Abbu had failed, I watched Abbu’s eyes lower and his face wrinkle. This friend and her father weren’t particularly religious, nor did they seem to spend much time pondering mortality, afterlife, or ethics, like Abbu often did. Yet, they seemed to speak with such authority on these subjects. Furthermore, they didn’t even know Abbu the way I did.
Abbu said nothing to him or me after that discovery of my betrayal, even if my friends were girls, good girls, overachievers. Inside, I reflected on how I had once again disappointed him. To love him, to be loyal, I’d have to sacrifice joy, exploration, discovery, or find it in more acceptable forms.
I couldn’t understand how I was supposed to see the volcanoes, the moon, the girls and boys who unveiled interesting secrets, and the marvels of humans and the world, when all I could feel was shame for having unintentionally hurt others because I was pursuing the trajectory of my own curiosities and imagination. Is it in moments like these that young girls begin to lose sight of their inner desires and needs, because they become conditioned to focus on others instead? The precautions they need to take to not hurt other people, for they would be punished in some way. I would learn that this certainly exists across cultures, it just looks different.
As a young girl becoming a woman, I also learned the importance of restraint as protection. I studied the concept of taqwa, or God consciousness, so I could remember Allah more often and be more mindful of how I moved through the world. But still, my heart sometimes reigned on its own terms.
Javier, for example, who lived on the same floor as us with his single mother, sometimes rode his bike in the park in front of our building, his big black dog running loose behind him, all the neighbours complaining. We often stared at each other from afar, but never spoke. As we both gained years, I saw him less in the park and more often in the stairwells of the building, with the backdrop of graffiti and amid a strong stench of weed. His bloodshot red eyes and purple arm. I remember galloping down the staircase once, passing by him, when he looked up at me.
“Stop,” he said, and I did, my right foot hanging in the air until I brought it down, softly.
I thought then that I would tell him how I had felt about him since I first laid eyes on him years ago, which was intrigued. Now my lips trembled as I finally dared to speak.
“Do you want a joint?” he asked before I could say anything. He seemed dazed.
The little hairs on my arm stood to attention. I thought I saw an outline of the Shayṭān Bride hidden behind the smoke. Her wild black hair and a seductive poison-malachite green sari. Did she say to stay or to leave? I would do the opposite. I knew I shouldn’t spend time alone with boys, especially ones with purple arms. Abbu and Ammu were a few doors down. If they saw me there, they would panic, so I hurried away.
The pull was tremendous. What was he like? What music did he listen to? What books did he read? Why did he have a purple arm? How did he feel about the complaints he got about his big black dog running on the streets unleashed? So many questions.
I didn’t know then that a few years after that, Javier’s mother would stop me in the building hallway. She was a Latina woman who looked younger than her son. “H-have you se-seen m-my son?” she would stammer. “I haven’t been able to find him for days. I am worried about him.”
I would look into Javier’s mother’s puffy eyes. “No, I’m sorry,” I would reply.
She’d take her leave, mumbling, “I’ve lost my son.”
Javier never did come back to his mother, the building, or me.
In later years, the stairwell where Javier used to sit would become the spot where I would change out of my loose, modest clothing — baggy checkered shirts, track pants, and windbreakers — into short skirts and tank tops, as this is what most of the girls in the neighbourhood wore. This way of dressing only seemed normal. At the time, the modest fashion industry wasn’t popular or as easily accessible; social media hadn’t exploded. There was hardly any representation at all when I turned on television screens or picked up books from library shelves. Abbu would catch me one day and sternly say, “This doesn’t happen in Bangladesh or any other Muslim majority country.”
He’d point to an imaginary painting of a memory, a recollection of Dhaka as he had left it. Memories of migration that get a shrine of their own, that are worshipped, and that diaspora is expected to live up to, all while globalization washes up the shores of almost every country in the world.
At the time he was trying to explain haya, a particular bashfulness that protects you from the harm that comes from drawing too much attention to yourself, and which applies to men, too. A whole spiritual philosophy that in application is often misunderstood. It would only be years later that I would better understand this.
I would wear the hijab to ground my focus in the holy month of fasting and prayer, to instill in me discipline for spiritual endeavours. At the time, I was only wearing it when praying and during religious observances; however, I contemplated wearing it permanently and out of choice. I thought I would take baby steps, trial it. Perhaps it would help me reclaim my faith, given the prevalent ideologies about Muslims at the time, which were so shallow they might as well have been lies. I wanted to find a way to better connect to Allah.
One day at work, with this cloth on my head, my co-worker Scott had asked, “So, why are you wearing this? What’s the purpose?”
Scott was in his forties with a voice of deep slumber.
“It’s a personal que
st, to help me mentally and spiritually this month, and perhaps beyond,” I told him.
“I am curious to know what led you to this,” he continued to probe. “Certainly, I would hope it isn’t because you were forced to.”
I was telling him more about the holy month when Anna, another co-worker, moseyed into the meeting room. A tall Polish woman in her early fifties, she wore cat-eye frames and coral beads around her neck.
“What are you two talking about?” she asked, pouring herself a cup of coffee — the aroma of roasted beans settling in the air, all three of us straightening our spine to its sharp hit.
Scott and I looked up at her, and Scott said, “Just about the hijab and Ramadan.”
“Oh, yes.” Anna sat down at our circular table, one leg over the other, red mug in one hand and the other pushing back her glasses, which were gliding down her nose. “I find it interesting when Muslim women who don’t wear the hijab speak for the entire community of Muslim women.” Anna sipped her coffee and looked me straight in the eyes, as if either searching for my approval or questioning whether I should be speaking on the topic at all. I couldn’t quite tell just yet. She’d studied this stuff, she reminded us, her observations were educated.
“I don’t know if not wearing it makes you any less Muslim. It’s not as black and white as it looks on the outside. There are many reasons why women may or may not wear it. There’s culture. There is also the factor of choice. At the end of the day, no person can tell you what is in your heart,” I said to her.
“Regardless, I do this work in the community, and I just find it disturbing because you are more racialized when you wear hijab versus when you don’t. Those who won’t wear it are more passing.”
The Shaytan Bride Page 5