Plain Jane 2

As young Muslim girls, our parents and elders constantly instilled in us the concept of remaining pure. The idea of saving ourselves for our wedding bed took on a deep religious significance. As significant and intense as if the concept had come from a religious canon. Remaining chaste was more severe for us than the American notion of celibacy. In America losing one’s virginity seldom had a violent physical counterpart. In Macedonia not being pure could result in possible physical violence and death. Mother told us that our father had said, “Girls are like clean glasses. And if a glass breaks it cannot be repaired.” This metaphor took a long time for me to understand. She also told us that boys and girls do not mix. Unlike American children, we did not socialize on school grounds or after school with boys. Only when properly chaperoned were we allowed to speak directly to a boy. My two grandmothers scared me by telling stories of what happened when the bride was not a virgin. She was not a clean glass. After their wedding night, the next morning the groom angrily told his parents his wife was not clean. The exact meaning was that the bride was not good enough for her husband. The girl was not pure and the young bride was sent back home. Shame and humiliation went with her. The girl and her family would live in shame as the young bride like some spoiled or rotten commodity was promptly returned to her parents. On the other hand, shame and humiliation never touched a Muslim man and condemnation of promiscuous men never happened. In our Muslim community, something more pervasive than just a double set of standards existed for centuries. Muslim men were exempt from all forms of culpability. Women were always the culprits. Any woman not found to be a virgin carried a stigma worse than the famous letter A the citizenry forced poor Hester Prynne to wear in the classic story, The Scarlet Letter. Even in this story, the woman was always at fault and never the man. And he received no censure. The unchaste newlywed female and Hester, the fictional character carried their shame with them for all their lives. Women always brought the shame and the men were always exempt. That is how I learned at an early age that women in the Muslim culture were magnets for accepting guilt and shame. Thank goodness, in most cases the stoning of adulterers had nearly, but not completely disappeared. The stoning of a man for adultery in the Muslim culture never happened. The young bride would have nothing to say. Women had no rights and defending herself was never an option. She would never have any say in the decision to send her back. The rejected bride’s options were to marry some handicapped person or an aged widow who needed a wife to raise his orphans. This poor girl would end up marrying a handicapped person or an elderly man. She would endure gossip and ridicule for as long as she lived. Again, she had no input and gossip would follow her around like nagging flies. Life in the Muslim world was cruel for women. I look back upon it sadly. We learned early that the shame always belonged to the women never to the men. Men were violent and abusive, but never accountable. They were always blameless. That is how my grandmothers taught us girls. This was my family’s teachings. And just like they were educating us so they had been educated by their family. They were great people and did their best. Like slavery in America, it took many generations to dispel some of the sad mores of our culture. In addition, like America still fighting racism, we are still battling many of these primitive standards.