Bypassing Begumhood

I left my job over two years ago to battle my illness and focus on healing. It was an incredibly difficult decision and I’ve gone through periods of feeling purposeless, unproductive, and depressed about it - feelings which still affect me regularly today.

For people who don’t work (in Freeland’s conventional sense of the word), there’s a profound discomfort when that inevitable second question arises about ten seconds into a conversation: “And what do you do?”

I usually respond jokingly that I’m a Begum (Lady of Leisure (“LoL”)). Not working outside of the home, having no children, and being a rather neglectful and reluctant homemaker I’m often at a loss of what else to say.

Although I write columns regularly, I sometimes hesitate in describing myself as a writer. It seems somewhat pretentious and untrue, largely because I earn very little from it. So much of my self-worth seems to hinge on bringing home a salary. (Thank you, co-opted feminist revolution!)

As much as I’ve always supported friends and family members’ decisions to work outside or inside of the home, when it was my turn to stay at home I reviewed my productivity on almost corporate terms and found myself sadly lacking.

If I can no longer be a career woman, and am not a mother nor Martha Stewartesque, then what or who am I?

I am still a wife, sister, daughter, and friend but one who is often fatigued, immersed in my reading, writing and other creative pursuits to the neglect of putting dinner on the table for Basil or remembering to call loved ones, and almost wholly dependent on my husband’s financial largesse to supplement my own miniscule disability check.

I know that beyond the labels of my relationships to others I am a valued and loved creation in my own right but actually believing and embodying that is very challenging.

Although I might joke about being a LoL, I see real Begumhood in action in Pureland.

My mother and other women of her background run grand houses full of khidmatgaar (helpers): guards, chefs, chauffeurs, housekeepers, and gardeners – and deal with their related politics and intrigues. They devote themselves to bringing up their children, and forming social networks to further their husband’s careers and, later, to snag successful spouses for their children. They go to tea parties, sit on NGO boards, organize charitable meena bazaars and dinners and are the ruling matriarchs in their own little kingdoms.

The traditional definition of a Begum was a matriarch or woman of high social standing who had increased responsibilities in the home, to her family and community but much of that has devolved into mere self-indulgence now.

The male/female roles here are often very gendered and traditional, although with the younger crowd many women are now also expected (or forced) to work outside the home to bring in the extra income which is necessary to support the new consumer lifestyle, while also keeping up all of their responsibilities within it.

Even my mother’s more traditional take on the Begum Sahiba role is so foreign to me on so many levels now but it’s what I grew up with – and what I was expected to take on in adulthood. My parents were always trying to set me up with men who were going to be moneyed jetsetters because they saw that as what I “needed” – a lifestyle suited to my “champagne tastes.” Admittedly I like the finer things in life, but when it came to a life partner I was looking for so much more.

After meeting a number of irritating and boring doctors, Harvard B-school grads, and investment bankers, I tried explaining that I wanted a leftist - which was my shorthand for someone interested in the environment, social welfare, the arts, intellectual pursuits, and generally being an all round do-gooder.

My father was so appalled that he didn’t set me up with anyone at all for a good while afterwards. What I’d forgotten when making my request was the connotation of leftist/socialist in Pureland (and much of the Islamic world) as a synonym for “godless atheist bent on the destruction of the Muslim Ummah.”

Eventually, I moved to Freeland and escaped spinsterhood by marrying a gora (white guy) on the cusp of my fourth decade to the delight of my by-then desperate parents. But I still regularly manage to make my mother sigh, “You might as well have been born a boy for all the interest you take in being a girl.”

This is because I dislike dressing up in heavily-embroidered finery, take about ten minutes to get ready and get out the door instead of spending two hours putting on the perfect face, refuse to make tea-time small talk with nosy aunties, and hate being in the kitchen so usually leave it to my cuisine-loving and –curious husband to do so instead.

Cultural differences are funny – in Freeland I’m probably one of the more feminine women around. I love beautiful clothes, scarves, shoes, and jewelry – as long as they’re also practical and affordable. I like my long flowing hair, curves, and face – but keep them as close to natural as possible. I adore entertaining and will even cook or serve proper tea on those occasions – but only if the guests are good-hearted, down-to-earth, trust-worthy and empathetic friends (which they are, alhamdolillah (thank God)).

But in Pureland I’m just a lazy lump who doesn’t try hard enough.

Here, I’m unfashionable because I am not obsessed with slavishly following every inch of difference in trendy shirt lengths. I am unfeminine because I don’t sit at the salon three times a week indulging in the latest craze for French manicures or getting my threading done, and I don’t straighten my hair or curl it - whichever the magazines are currently dictating - for hours on end everyday.

Here, I must be unfortunate because I don’t buy new sapphire or emerald “sets” just because I don’t own one yet, because I “need” a set to match a new suit, or because yet another social event is coming up and everyone has already seen the rest of my jewelry.

Here, I evidently don’t care about my (unborn) daughters’ trousseaus at all. As much as I love scarves, when the shawl-wala came to our house the other day with four suitcases full of pashminas and smuggled shatoosh starting at Rs. 60,000 (US$1,000) each, while I could appreciate and covet their exquisite handwoven, heirloom-quality beauty there was no way I could ever justify purchasing one.

I’m quite content with a Rs. 1,200 (US$20) pashmina from Maharajah, thank you very much and I hope that any children I have would rather have a good education than a smuggled shatoosh shawl made from the chin hairs of an endangered Kashmiri goat.

Here, I am intolerably rude because if an aunty that I just met literally five minutes ago is going to presume that she can ask me why I don’t have children after four years of marriage then she will soon realize her mistake. I have mastered the art of the Purelandi Aunty freeze out.
One example of the madness: Last time I visited Pureland two years ago I had an exacerbation and was bed-ridden. A second cousin of mine was getting married and because her father had always been very kind to me I dragged myself out to attend the wedding out of respect for him. I could barely walk so had to lean on my father the entire time, and was there for only about 30 minutes just to make an appearance before collapsing into bed again.

In spite of my weakened state, my mother and friend Mun insisted that I couldn’t go out until and unless I waxed my arms, “For what would people think!”

I answered that I hoped that knowing that I was ill they would appreciate the effort.

They were right though; another cousin had no compunction in rubbing horrified hands over my arms and scolding me for appearing in public with unwaxed arms.

Sometimes, it dishearteningly seems to be all about keeping up appearances.

There’s a lot of pressure in every society to conform of course, but I have noticed that class plays a role in the kind of pressure one experiences. It seems that the higher you go, the narrower the band of acceptable styles in fashion, education, profession, and entertaining, but the more lenient the ethical and moral standards.

To be fair, my parents are very down-to-earth in spite of their social standing and thwarted desire for hairless daughters. Amiji and Abuji are both less interested in tea parties and more so in actually being of service to humanity, an ideal which has become even more pronounced as they’ve become more religious over the decades.

Their home was always open to people of all backgrounds, and we’ve sat with sincere relatives and good friends in village jugis (huts) and city mansions because they taught us that the inward heart is more important than the outward shell.

They instilled an ethic of service in us three sisters; we all worked in human rights/development at one time or another. I spent eight years working on the ground in Pureland and Freeland’s NGOs before I became ill, and my sisters are now full-time mothers tenderly devoted to the human development of their children without the use of the Sri Lankan or Filipino nannies that many of their fashionable friends currently have.

Our parents sheltered us from a lot of class expectations, to the extent that we often feel like intelligent, well-read and –traveled but yet lumbering and clumsy transvestite aliens amongst the bleached blonde, bone-thin, never-been-out-in-the-sun skinned, freshly waxed and threaded, brightly-bejeweled and finely-clothed butterfly-women (and, increasingly, men) that we meet here.
Sadly, most of them are only interested in endless discussions about just how trendy and well-connected they are. Conversations peter out quickly and we end up looking at each other across seemingly unbridgeable distances while sipping our tea. I enjoy finding out about a great café as much as the next person, but there has to be more to life than just that, no?

Thankfully, I still have friends from my Pureland high school and NGO days that I can have real conversations with every time I visit. They are doing amazing, inspiring humanitarian work; I only wish that people like them were not so rare, here and worldwide.

While I enjoy many of the perks of Begumhood (like the waxing woman coming to our home yesterday, the tailor doing the same to make our Eid clothes last week, or not having had to step into the kitchen or laundry room since my arrival), I am also profoundly uncomfortable with the idea of being overly-reliant on khidmatgaar or becoming too entangled and comfortable in the LoL lifestyle.

Class is a strange, shifting, sly thing. Although I was brought up upper class in Pureland, I am solidly middle class in Freeland (largely due to my husband’s tech salary; on my own I would be below the poverty line) – but still with many of the attitudes, desires, and spending habits of my childhood. For example, money is something I never worry about because I never had to and because my family is a safety net for me, rarely drawn upon but always available.

I’ve spent a long time trying to school the negative Begum attitudes and habits out of myself, not only because my circumstances are different now, but because I made a conscious choice long ago to live differently and more lightly upon the earth.

And I recognize that even the ability to make that choice is a privileged position too.