Love and fear

about the patriarchy (again) as inspired by a woman and her son

There’s a story I haven’t quite known how to articulate since coming back, having to do with my witnessing of the interaction between a mother and her 1.5 year old son. They were seated next to me on my flight from Dubai to Karachi, and so of course I had no choice but to closely observe and judge with my judging mind.

This morning I heard about (yet another) horrific incident to have happened to a woman in Pakistan. I won’t go into the details, a) because I don’t know them myself and b) because this post isn’t intended to traumatize/desensitize with the use of graphic imagery. But this incident, for some reason, reminded me of my short 2 hour encounter on the plane.

At first, she appeared to be a very loving mother, and she was. Cooing and cuddling, stationing him lovingly on her lap, keeping him entertained before the plane took off, directing his attention towards light and moving objects and sounds. During the course of our journey, baby started to complain a little, some whining and less than obedient behaviour. This was still a very sweet child though, adorable face, far less annoying than most babies on planes, and in my opinion, made annoying by the adults in charge of his care. In this case, his mother and grandparents.

All of a sudden, usually out of nowhere, mother started to threaten baby. She went from cooing to snapping, at some points even unnecessarily (IMO) spanking, and shaming him into submission. A few times, she snapped at him for perhaps flailing a little too much for her comfort, and threatened him with the arrival of “Allah baba”. This Allah baba came up a lot. From the corner of my eye I felt baby shrivel from shame and dig his face into the chest of his mother who loves him.

This happened in regular intervals throughout the next few hours. And for no fathomable reason. The first thing I thought was: this is what this child is going to grow up thinking love looks like. Giving, and then abruptly taking away. Fear-instilling, pain-inducing, and then making up for the pain with hugs. It was inconsistent, and frankly a little terrifying to witness. Especially because this family looked like any other middle-class family from Karachi. Unconsciously raising more blithe children in the quest, I assume, to appease familial, societal demands. Most likely they have been raised to want this life. They don’t look very happy. Who am I to assume? But these are my observations.

So, since then, I’ve been thinking back to this sweet kid, his inconsistent mother and passive bystander grandparents. The only person actually not displaying any signs of threat or participating in creation of fear was the grandfather, actually. So in my desire to turn this into a lament about the patriarchy, it seems to me at the end that the patriarch was not the bad guy after all. This is not to be generalized, only a point to note.

What does this mean?

How much shame, fear, and distorted ideas of love and family do women internalize from the moment they are born? As a result, how are these being passed down to the children in their care? Specifically baby boys. What are they learning about their role in this life, about family, love, women, mothers? Do they love their mothers, or do they hate them? Do they hate them and not know it, never being able to admit it? Do they love them without ever being able to admit that their mothers may have, at some key moments in their lives, done them wrong?

And so… what does this mean for boys who become men who become friends and boyfriends and husbands? Does their hatred of their wives reflect something deeper that they have never acknowledged?

This isn’t just about how carefully you raise a child; parents don’t hold the sole responsibility for how a small human interacts with and makes sense of the world. But the responsibility is a big one and if the ‘primary caregivers’, in addition to the rest of society, are steeped in values that place fear at the forefront of existence… then we have a problem. And clearly, we have a problem.

I remember once, sitting in my cousin’s room, both of us somewhere between the ages of 6-10 (ballpark), as I was in the midst of my vague child-like questioning of God and subjects of the like, and she, my cousin, asked me if I was afraid of God. I didn’t know what this meant. She asked if I loved God. I didn’t know if I did. What had God done (thus far) to deserve either one of my fears or affections anyway? But that’s besides the point. Mainly, how could I feel both towards God at the same time?

She did. She said that she feared God, and of course she also loved God, and in some way implied that therefore so must I. She must have been 10 years old. Were these ideas really coming from her reasoned understanding of consciousness, or was this what she had absorbed?

Something wasn’t right with this picture right in front of me, and this must be why I still remember it.