MY STORY

I was told it was because they cared about me and it was for my education, but I noticed strange little things happening and even though I was still young I knew something was wrong. I was being stopped from going on a lot of school trips, and my mother started insisting that I cover up more. It wasn’t what I was seeing happening to the other girls around me, but I was a shy, quiet girl back then, so although I was unhappy I would keep it bottled up and to myself. I was a dreamer, I loved being outside but as I grew older  I realised a point was being made of putting me ‘in my place.’ I had a brother who was two years younger than I was and he was being given the freedom and opportunities I would long for, and being taught he was ‘superior’ to me and ‘worth’ more. I was told in no uncertain terms one day by my Mum that I was ‘worth half’ literally what he was and that as a female I would be more likely to end up in ‘hellfire.’

I couldn’t believe the things I was hearing. I started to fall apart. I’d been a pretty good student up till then but my dreams it seemed were over, my hopes for the future gone. I was supposed to be prepared for a lifestyle befitting my culture. When school was over many of us had arranged work experience before we started sixth form. Mine was at a firm of architects. I hovered between the idea of being an architect, a lawyer or a journalist. It makes me laugh now as they’re so different but I was young and I liked all those things. My grades at school meant my teachers had been supportive of me going forward down one of those branches, I just wasn’t sure which. 

The first morning I had laid out my clothes ready for the week of work experience, but when Mum came in and saw a knee length skirt she told me I would have to cover up. Things were clearly about to  get worse. 

I remember crying most days through sixth form. Up till the age of 16 or so I had been closeted I guess by my school, but now I had left and it was easier for Mum to take control. She monitored what I was wearing, who I spoke to and was even listening in to conversations if I was using the phone. I once caught her trying to follow me in the car as I walked down the road one afternoon. After a couple of attempts at trying to go out in the evenings with friends with the help of my Dad that was over too. I was told I would not be allowed out after dark, not allowed to learn to drive without express permission from her first and one day there was a bizarre interrogation by her asking if I let boys ever ‘touch’ me, which ended up with her saying if anyone was ever interested in me it would only be to use me as I was apparently so awful. I would try and doll myself up believing her when she’d call me ugly, sometimes even in front of guests. 

I didn’t think much of myself. My confidence was being stripped away. As well as not being allowed out   without their say so I was told I wouldn’t be allowed a television, my mum didn’t want me being under any ‘influence’ she couldn’t control I guess, but I got myself a tv anyway, and she tried to confiscate it, with Dad bringing it back to me. 

My freedom, my movements, were so curtailed, was I supposed to just sit in my room by myself all day only doing the activities she approved of? It didn’t seem to matter that my brother would be given the newest games consoles, clothes, whatever he wanted and had to be kept happy, he was ‘superior’ to me and I was meant to just accept it. He liked the status quo and was never going to point it out, as time went by in fact he would help my mum enforce it. 

So there were a few times I did try and stand my ground, but they would try and shoot me down. My brother gave me a beating so bad once, whilst my mother watched,  that I had to leave, I had to run out of the front door for my own safety. Dad had been there too. All the promise and dreams I had from my schooldays began to dissipate. I withdrew into myself and became a shell of a person. Dad was heartbroken by what was happening to me but was a quiet passive person by nature. He knew what was happening was wrong but I guess he just hoped things would get better. 

**What he failed to realise, or didn’t want to admit to himself perhaps, was that when you let  bullies get away with things there is usually more to come** and there would be cover ups and lies to ‘help’ them, their behaviour would tend to get worse, leading to more family drama, tears and mess with growing egos, thinking they could get away with anything. That was the first incidence of violence but it definitely wasn’t the last. 

My brother, who was never particularly smart, was expected to study medicine and I remember Mum being furious when his teachers said he wasn’t really doctor material. So when he failed to get in the first time, and then again, she began to freak out, talking about sending him to Eastern Europe to study as a last resort, but ‘luckily’ he did end up getting a place through clearing at the end and moved up to Sheffield University to study. I had been forbidden from leaving home to study, but by this point my mind was an absolute mess anyway. All my life I had seen myself being denied the opportunities a male was told would be his and not once had he stood up for me or said we should be equals as you’d think any normal person in the West would. On the contrary he would back Mum up and even tell relatives as the only male child on my father’s side everything needed to be passed onto him. He had started telling people that everything even my (very successful) Grandad had had would be his.. this amounted to millions.. My Grandad had grown up poor but begun buying land when it was dirt cheap and no-one else was thinking of it, later being able to sell it and make large profits when developers came along and wanted to build on it.. My brother was now claiming it should all be his, with my Mum backing him up, even though we had cousins, but they were female (ie the ‘wrong’ sex).. It was insane.. like we had stepped back hundreds of years, and I was being branded a ‘troublemaker” for wanting to be treated as an equal too. The excuses given were “Islamic law” and ‘our culture’ but of course they would just pick and choose the bits that were convenient to them. Again, I was told off when I pointed out the double standards and ridiculousness of it all.. 

I began to sink in and out of depression.. I would doll myself up with makeup and play about with my hair to cheer myself up. I hated how things were at home. Years went by then one day I met a doctor friend of Dad’s who worked at the same hospital he did and told him in no uncertain terms to get me away from Mum and my brother and said what I had been going through was abuse. He told Dad that I  should have a safe place to go, to live. Dad took this seriously and a few weeks later a lovely little flat had been bought. It was to be a ‘safe place’ to provide me with some security.

Mum was incensed by that and stopped speaking to Dad because of it. A couple of years later though Dad ran into financial issues when the very last large payment on the mortgage of the family home was due.  Neither Mum, who had well in excess of £100,000 available, or my brother, who had also been helped, and had a flat too, wanted to help so I said to Dad to sell the flat, and that was what  happened. Now my safe place was gone a lot worse was to come.. 

Although I was treated as someone quite unwanted that wasn’t something I was personally seeing amongst family friends, from what I saw their daughters had a lot more freedom and were going away to study, they were living their lives as normal. They didn’t have the same restrictions at all. People saw my Mum as conservative in the way women were maybe 50/60 years ago back in the homeland. The funny thing was that when I was very young I distinctly remember her wearing jeans, taking us to McDonalds, I think we even went swimming together once, all things that later she decided should be forbidden as they were symbols of western lifestyles. Her own father, my other Grandad, had allowed her to leave home and go to university though, and that was still a pretty rare thing  back in that generation in Muslim families. Dad pointed out she was trying to deny me the freedoms she herself had been given and been able to enjoy. 

Mum would constantly try and monitor what I was reading too. I loved reading… books, magazines, newspapers, whatever I could get my hands on..  I was interested in the news too. According to her though, I should only be reading what she thought of as ‘appropriate’ and definitely not things that would fill my head with western ‘nonsense’ She would disapprove of plenty of books and magazines and so I took to hiding my teenage magazines especially under the front door mat and sneaking them in. I had turned 18 but was being treated like a child. I was living in a big house but it felt like I was in a cage. I began drawing the curtains and sitting in the dark. I don’t think of myself as a weak person generally but I hated living that way. My 16th, my 18th and my 21st went by but there were no celebrations. We lived to make God happy and women especially were supposed to be ‘sober.’ 

I’m not someone who normally cries very easily but I was struggling a lot and as I got lonelier and lonelier I decided to try and get a pet. With more  or less no cash of my own I wasn’t sure how I was going to do it till I realised I could adopt. When I was a little girl I had fallen in love with dogs but never been allowed a pet. So off I went to adopt my dog. I knew my Mum would not be happy but when she was out one day I did I anyway and snuck him into the house and up into my room. What I hadn’t thought of though was that the little guy might bark when my Dad walked past my room the next morning, and of course he did. On opening the door though Dad fell in love with him and seeing what I was going through said we could keep him. I realised over the following years how loving these animals could be and have become so grateful to have had them in my life.