Beyond Belief: The Secret Lives of Women in Extreme Religions

by Cami Ostman

  “Mel, come here,” I heard Dave call again.

  This was odd. My brother would never call me into the bathroom with him. I cracked the door and stuck in my head. “Dave?”

  “Mel, I just don’t want to drown,” Dave whispered. His face was flush. I went in and knelt by the side of the tub. He was sweating. He looked terrified. “Mel,” he said, not sounding like himself. “I don’t want to drown,” he repeated. I was still trying to make sense of his words and the panicked look in his eyes when he started to breathe heavily, like a dog in a desert. Within seconds, he was gasping for air. This was when things started to go bad.

  A DOZEN PEOPLE HAVE filled my small bathroom. A police-woman bends down, shining a light in my brother’s eyes; behind her paramedics cram into the area. I retreat into my bedroom to give them space. I can see, through the crowd, someone strap a plastic mask over Dave’s mouth. After several long minutes of commotion, people start to back out. A paramedic tells me that my brother will be okay. He has probably experienced a panic attack, the paramedic says, which induced hyperventilation and then extreme hyperoxia. With too much oxygen, Dave’s body had started to shut down. I sit on the edge of my bed and only now start to shake.

  THE NEXT DAY, WHEN it is all over, after my brothers leave, the house is quiet. We had said few words to each other as they’d gathered their things. I think each of us felt exposed—the moment too blinding.

  I go into the bathroom to collect the wet towel I had used to cover my brother’s body. Standing near the tub, the place where I thought Dave was dying, I sink to the floor and cry the purest sort of cry—like at a death, like at a birth. Sadness fills me for what the world, people in the world, like me, had pounded into my brother, had planted in him, had established in him—a sense of unworthiness, a fear to explore his own inner world for answers, a silencing of any words of searching, seeking, questioning. And this oppression, I was certain, had just played out in concentrated, physical form—choking him, suffocating him, drowning him. I cry for myself, too: for the young girl who lost her own version of God, a God that lived in the trees, performed miracles, and granted all forms of abundant love. The cry flushes me. It is a cry of relief, a cry of rage, a cry of love—but mostly a cry of thankfulness that I had, I hoped, finally been able to be, after all these years, the right sort of witness.

  Eva

  Leila Khan

  “Look, I think we should ask your mom to come up,” my husband, David, says.

  I sit on the floor next to the turquoise-and-green Fisher-Price bouncy chair. Looking down at our newborn, Eva, I stroke her forehead. Water comes to my eyes.

  “God, I thought I could do this on my own,” I say, looking up at David. “But it’s just not possible.” My shoulders sag as I fold the edge of Eva’s pink fuzzy blanket.

  Nothing in my life, not the marathons I have run or the one-hundred-mile rides I’ve cycled, nothing has prepared me for the intensity of the physical pain between my legs after the delivery. This pain takes my breath away each time I sit up to nurse Eva or stand to change her diaper. Everyone warned me about the pain during labor, but nobody told me about the burning and throbbing that lasts for days after giving birth. Nobody told me about all the leaking, bleeding, and crying. No one told me that staying home with a newborn all day would be so lonely.

  By the time Eva hits her two-week growth spurt, I am deliriously exhausted by the endless cycle of nursing, burping, changing diapers, and carrying her around all day while David is at work. In my sleep-deprived, beleaguered state, my inexperience and worry overwhelm me. But it’s her cries that get me by the throat each time.

  During her delivery, Eva’s umbilical cord got wrapped around her neck, compromising her heartbeat and causing her distress. She had to be extracted quickly by forceps. Now, each time she wails waves of guilt and fear wash over me. I imagine the crushing pressure of the forceps on her temples, and her traumatic entry into the world. I remember the indentations on either side of her head when the nurse first placed her at my breast. I blame myself, and find myself praying silently to Allah. Allah, please help me. Please give me the strength to make it through this.

  I agree to ask my mother to come and help. When I call her to discuss the details, she says, “I told David you would need me after your delivery, but you never listen to me. You can’t do this alone. You need family, and you need Allah.”

  I GREW UP IN a conservative Pakistani Muslim home. Although we never lived in Pakistan or any other Muslim country, our home visibly reflected our roots. Regardless of whatever country to which my father’s work took us, a clock from Mecca was programmed to play the call for prayer five times a day. Walls were covered with framed Koranic verses, rolled-up prayer mats sat in the corners throughout our home, and rosary-like beads hung from doorknobs. Incense sticks glowed, teabags boiled for hours in water with cardamon and cloves, and our houses perpetually smelled of fried onions and cumin.

  My siblings and I slept in a shalwar kameez, not cute pajamas with Disney motifs. We thanked Allah when we began meals and when we finished. We thanked Allah when we sneezed. We prayed five times every day, read the Koran each evening, fasted each year during the month of Ramadaan, and celebrated Eid with sweet-meats, new outfits tailored in Pakistan, and gifts of crisp new dollar bills when the month of fasting ended.

  My mother constantly told us that Allah knew everything about us, even the dirty, naughty thoughts at the bottom of our hearts. “He is watching. He knows when we sin,” she said. She warned us that punishment for our sins was always around the corner.

  One Sunday, my mother decided to implement an idea proposed by the local youth group coordinators at our mosque. “Do you have a spare notebook?” she asked. I nodded. “Good, every day you will make a list of all your sawwabs and all your sins. At night, we can count up your sins and your good deeds. Then you can pray to Allah for forgiveness before sleeping.” She clapped her hands to stir us to action. “Let’s start now!”

  Each evening after the completion of my prayers, I dutifully recorded the various Allah-pleasing activities I had performed that day, such as bringing my mother a glass of water or folding the entire family’s laundry. But I often lay in bed at night weighted with guilt and fear. I worried about having daydreamed about a boy during prayer, for letting a few drops of water drip down my throat as I brushed my teeth while fasting, or for hating my mother when she slapped me for making mistakes while reading the Koran. I worried because I hadn’t included these sins on my list and Allah knew it.

  During high school, I became aware of how differently my non-Muslim classmates lived. My classmates wore shorts and bathing suits, had boyfriends, and weren’t worried about sin. I had to wear long-sleeved shirts and ankle-length leggings under my P.E. T-shirt and shorts. They talked about camping trips, bonfire parties at the beach, and going off to college. I wasn’t allowed to talk with boys on the phone or attend any of the formal dances. Even my classmates who went to church enjoyed their youth groups, overnight retreats, and Christian rock music. Their lives seemed light and carefree. Mine felt like a never-ending list of good deeds and sins, and the unwritten lies that went along with this daily reckoning.

  BY THE TIME I went to university, I yearned to break free. I was so tired of worrying about Allah all the time, and having my curiosity muzzled. Although my parents initially insisted that I commute each day the 120 miles from our home to college and back, they eventually decided to let me stay in the dorms in light of my three speeding tickets. Their decision came with a list of admonishments about sinning and Allah’s punishment if I misbehaved.

  “Remember, Leila, Allah knows and sees everything. Be good and you will do well at university,” my mother said as she signed the check for my housing deposit. I always nodded my head in agreement.

  AT UNIVERSITY, I DID what every good Pakistani Muslim girl does not do. I smoked Marlboro Lights and drank, tried recreational drugs, danced on countertops in dive bars, and lost my virginity t
o my white, art-major boyfriend who looked like Flea of the Red Hot Chili Peppers. I desperately wanted to enjoy life, so I followed the example of those around me who seemed to be having such a good time. I wanted to stop being that girl with her arms folded tightly across her chest, a worried frown on her forehead.

  My rebellion grew into an enduring rejection of the fear and guilt with which I had been raised. I soon rinsed my life clear of all religious practice and dogma. I stopped praying, reading the Koran, and fasting. The frequency with which I called out to Allah slowly diminished. I even pushed back against the marriage my mother was trying to arrange for me. I wanted a joyful, self-determined way of life.

  My parents were horrified and distressed. They thought that, once I graduated from college, marrying me off to a Pakistani doctor or engineer would set me straight. “Leila, you’ll be turning twenty-one next year. We must start thinking about marriage seriously now, or you will get too old. I was eighteen when I married your father,” my mother said. “Rouksana, Auntie’s daughter, just got engaged to a doctor and she’s eighteen,” she added. Each time we spoke, she updated me on all the engagements and marriage proposals of the other girls in our community.

  My mother’s efforts intensified as my graduation date neared. She called me one afternoon, breathless with excitement, “Leila, the Ahmed family is interested in you for their oldest son. He’s an engineer with a degree from Stanford. Oh, thank you, Allah, for your kindness. Leila, this is a perfect match for you. The Ahmeds are a very good family.”

  I shrugged and agreed to meet him to appease my parents and to buy myself some time. A few weeks later Amir and I met for a coffee without parental supervision. This was his way of letting me know he was somewhat progressive and modern. I listened to him tell me about his studies, his job in Silicon Valley, and what he wanted in marriage: “stability, security, and support.”

  HE WAS NICE AND kind, and ready to settle down. But I had just started my personal journey. Several days after our coffee date, his parents came forward with a proposal. My mother was ecstatic. “Oh Leila, this is Allah’s reward for all your good deeds! Such a good boy. Such a good family. You’re a very lucky girl!” she gushed. I hesitated, arguing that I wanted to go to law school first. My mother tried to persuade me that I could do both, marriage and law school, if my husband agreed.

  “Ma, please. I don’t want some man deciding whether I can go to law school or work as a lawyer. Please, try to understand.” I blinked back tears of frustration. For years I had watched my mother struggle with her financial dependence on my father. When his business blunders had cost our family all our savings and jeopardized our financial security, my mother’s feelings of powerlessness left a lasting impression on me.

  “But it’s your duty to do as we say. It’s written in the Koran. You must obey your parents.” She glared at me as she tucked her ivory headscarf behind her ear.

  “I don’t want to marry him. You can’t force me. That’s also written in the Koran.” I lowered my eyes, trying to soften my defiance.

  “You listen to me, Leila. I know all about the things you have done at UCLA. You have disappointed us so much. If you refuse to marry Amir, I will curse you so that you never succeed in life. You will fail and fail, and when you come crawling back to me, begging for forgiveness, you know what I will do to you that day?” She stared at me with unblinking eyes. “I will kick you so hard in your face, you will never be able to get up.”

  “Ma!” I gasped, inhaling sharply. She stormed out of my room. I sat down on my bed, trembling with anger and fear. A mother’s curse is very heavy, and I was terrified of how it would affect my future. I was sickened by how she wielded our religion to force me to submit to her will. In my head and heart I wondered, How can you have Allah in your heart and say such things?

  I never recovered from the violence of her words. Although growing up I had gotten used to her harsh physical and verbal outbursts in response to my disobedience, the promise of this curse was irreparable.

  HER WORDS HAUNTED ME for over a decade. Rejection letters from my top law school choices, a broken engagement with an Italian Catholic man, living alone for five years during my thirties, and being laid off from my law firm job of eight years. As I went from one struggle to the next I would hear her, however faintly, repeat in my ear: “You will fail and fail.”

  I turned back to Allah in these moments of despair, unfolding a prayer rug that I kept in the back of my closet or carrying tasbih beads in my coat pocket that I thumbed surreptitiously while sitting on a train or on a flight. I needed comfort but I also felt angry. Ya Allah, would you really uphold such a curse? Am I such an awful person for wanting to live my own life? Have my sins been so great to deserve such heartbreak? Even as I went through the motions, I punished Allah by questioning or denying his existence. My attempts to return to Allah were halfhearted and short-lived.

  My relationship with my mother was similarly tempestuous. Reconciliations occurred every now and then because each of us wanted harmony in our lives, but our differences always tore us apart. Long periods of estrangement followed, ranging from a few months to a couple of years. We often didn’t call each other on birthdays or Eid, and I rarely called her on Mother’s Day. No congratulations were forthcoming after I informed her that I was accepted to my dream graduate school in London, or when I ultimately succeeded in transferring to my law school of choice.

  During a two-year stint for my law firm in Brussels, my mother and I did not see each other at all. But even if my life often seemed incomplete because I had such a barren relationship with my mother, was not married, did not have a child, and, for a while there, did not have a job, even if my headscarf-wearing cousins seemed to have abundant lives with their arranged marriages, proud parents, and several children, I wouldn’t submit. I didn’t want to return to Allah and my culture simply because I had been beaten down by life outside. I wanted to do life on my own terms.

  WITHIN HOURS OF HER arrival, my mother has spread out the religious paraphernalia that had adorned the houses in which I grew up. A prayer mat lies open in the corner of our living room, a small, thick Koran sits on our long oak dining table, and recitations of Koranic verses my mother finds on YouTube play on my MacBook. A few days into her stay, she resumes her campaign to convert David to Islam. Although she is relieved that I finally met someone, she still has trouble accepting a non-Muslim for her son-in-law.

  “David, did you have a chance to look at the Koran I gave you? The English translation is very good,” she says, eyeing our tall, wooden bookcase stuffed with novels and old textbooks.

  “Yes, yes, it reads a lot like the Old Testament,” he mumbles.

  FOR THE MOST PART, David takes my mother and her religious accessories in stride. Other than celebrating a bar mitzvah to please his paternal grandfather, David grew up in a secular household. His father was Jewish and his late mother was Christian. David is unfazed by the Koranic verses my mom coos in Eva’s ears to soothe her, or the way she rhythmically pats Eva on her back to “Allah-hoo, Allah-hoo.” When my mother panics after seeing the pits of “holy” dates from Mecca in our compost bin, David apologizes, explaining he didn’t know they were holy or that she saved them. The only thing that visibly irks him about my mom’s stay is her headscarf.

  “Does she have to wear it in the house?” he asks, while peeling a grapefruit. I mean, it makes her seem so alien to me. I can kinda understand why Sarkozy banned it in France.”

  I raise one eyebrow. The ban on the headscarf angers me and, usually, I am quick to argue about how utterly undemocratic such a prohibition is. But now, with a newborn to care for, I feel void of any fire, and I don’t want my husband to feel uncomfortable in his own home. “I can ask her to not wear it,” I offer.

  David shrugs. “I just prefer it when she doesn’t,” he says, referring to the times my mother forgets to wrap her head in David’s presence. I agree. It seems silly that an elderly woman has to cover her hair to remai
n modest in front of her much younger son-in-law.

  One night when Eva is crying inconsolably my mother comes flying into our bedroom with one hand on her head, holding down a piece of cloth that barely covers her skull, the other hand reaching for Eva.

  “Ma, come on, David doesn’t care if your hair shows. Plus, it’s four in the morning. Really. Is it necessary for you to wear the dopatta in our home?”

  The following morning, my bare-headed mother comes into the family room with a triumphant smile.

  “I just spoke to the mullah at our mosque. He said I don’t need to cover my hair in front of David. A son-in-law is like a son, so there’s no problem.”

  “Great, Ma, thanks.” I smile back at her, relieved and grateful. In that moment my heart softens to my mother and her conciliatory gesture.

  Even though I was skeptical of my mother’s intentions when she first arrived—I assumed her true intention was to make sure that Eva was exposed to Islam—she has been surprising me during her stay. Each morning she prepares breakfast for us. She fries eggs, butters toast, and makes milky, spicy chai. She feeds me an assortment of nuts to improve my lactation and recovery. She holds Eva while I shower, and readily changes her soiled diapers. She waters our wilting plants. In the evenings, she cooks curry and rice before David gets home. She tells me how happy she is to finally be a grandmother and how perfect Eva is.

  Her helpfulness eases the strain of my worries. And these days I worry about everything. Has Eva recovered from the delivery? Is she getting enough to eat? Is it okay for her to sleep with us at night? Why does she always cry in the car? Why can’t I make her stop crying? Why is David unable to soothe her? When will this get better? When will I enjoy this? Why can’t I stop worrying? Why do I feel joyless in motherhood?

  I am bewildered by the depths of my joylessness. I am bewildered because I waited so long to find the right person with whom to have a child, and because I thought that I would happily manage all the life changes ushered in by a child. David and I both were thirty-eight when Eva was born. According to the medical world, I was of “advanced maternal age,” but, in my world, I was only now financially, professionally, and emotionally ready for a child. David and I were thrilled when I got pregnant and couldn’t wait to be parents. We enlarged the pictures from our ultrasounds and taped them to our refrigerator. We chose Eva as our baby’s name in my second trimester because her name belonged to all three faiths in our heritage and because it means “life.”