Merciful Mothers

How is it that mothers who care desperately that their children live out quietly gentle and happy lives and do their utmost to support them emotionally and lead them to share lasting values and cherish their children as individuals who are briefly their parents' responsibilities, then bid them adieu in adulthood in the hopes that they have led them well often have their offspring chide them for having been too 'controlling'?

While mothers, like Bahar Ebrahimi's, who, in her unbridled frustration and livid anger that her daughter chose to defy her family's rigidly strict limitations on her social freedom to behave in as liberated a manner as her Canadian peers, are respectfully alluded to by the very daughter whom she attempted to murder, as a 'merciful' mother, a mother who simply 'couldn't hurt a fly'?

Puzzling that is, a real mind-bender.  But then, it is not indicative of anything much other than that people have their idiosyncrasies and everyone is an individual, with inbred and inherited characteristics shaped by early environment, exposures and experiences.  We perceive matters in our very own personal manner, taking from them what best suits our needs.

In Bahar Ebrahimi's case, it was a need, after her mother had stabbed her in the back repeatedly in a rage that her defiant daughter disobeyed her parents' rules about staying out at night, at age 19, to rescue whatever she could of her family connections.  Very few people have it in them to sever all connections to what has been most important in their lives; the treasured safety and emotional security of a family's warmth.

The background of a tribal community with its irrevocable social structure and strictures, particularly one that is equally weighted by religion and a traditional social compact backed by a patriarchy that has rigid expectations for women proves to be repressive when it is transferred to a more open, democratic society for which respect for the individual and for basic human rights outweighs the 'what will the neighbours think' social paradigm.

Johra Kaleki, Bahar's mother, was proud when members of her Canadian-Afghan community made mention of how good a job she had done bringing up her four daughters.  In particular her oldest, Bahar, who behaved discreetly, and gave her parents no reason to be embarrassed by untoward behaviour resembling that of most Canadian teens. 

That is, until Bahar felt she could no longer restrain her own social impulses, wanting to be just like her Canadian-born peers.  Her rebellion went rather far, for even in most other, not recent immigrant Canadian families most teens do not stay out overnight without having first arranged things with their parents, if only to ensure that their parents know where they are, with whom, and have no reason for concern.

Bahar felt so strongly that she could no longer put up with her freedoms being so restrained that she pushed her parents' tolerance a little too far.  Any parent who loves a child would be desperate with worry over that child's safety - having reached the age of 19 doesn't necessarily confer adulthood in the mind of the parent; that child is still a child under their care.

Bahar's domineering mother was in such a severe state of rage that she was psychotic, yet even so she was manipulative, sending her husband away, assuring him she would take care of things, soothing her upset daughter (upset over having been severely lectured by her worried father) by urging her to submit to a back rub to calm her down.

And when Bahar was in a prone position and helpless, her mother withdrew a kitchen knife from under her top and stabbed her daughter again and again.  Then ran after the girl to finish the job, as she sprinted up the stairs to a bedroom to lock herself in and dial 911.  After Bahar was rushed to hospital, emergency operations saved her life.  And while she was in hospital her mother, Johra made a number of statements to the police.

All of which severely incriminated her in the attempted murder of her disobedient daughter.  Now the mother claims she had no memory, none whatever of what had transpired that dreadful day.  No memory, so how can she be held accountable?  Since several years have passed since the incident and Bahar is now married, secure in her Afghan-Canadian lifestyle, she forgives her mother.

"I wanted to go out.  I wanted to rebel.  I wanted ... to do all that.  I wanted to smoke.  I wanted to drink.  I was fed up."
"I felt something in my back....  It really hurt."  I'm not even 20 years old.  I'm dying, and it's my mother who is going to kill me, she recalls thinking.
"I understand now that it was crazy on my part because I maybe should not have treated my mother that way  Maybe I should have come home a little earlier.  I don't blame myself, but it's maybe 1% my fault."

Before her mother stabbed her, her mother said she loved her, and wanted to talk.  "You don't deserve this life", her mother screamed at her.  "She was taking, like, really deep breath and she was looking, like, really weird to me.  It did not seem human.  It did not seem like my mother."

The woman who attempted to take her life, to teach her a lesson she would never forget, because in death one does not remember nor forget, has since realized the kind of future she wanted for her daughter; marriage - and a traditional one. 

Because her daughter understands her tribal society enough to know that "Nobody wants to marry the daughters of that family", in speaking of another rebellious Afghan-Canadian girl who "ran off" with a man.  And this was something she felt she could not do herself because "My sisters will also be judged because of me".

And so, she survived that horrendous attack, and the mother-daughter relationship resumed, and she is now a dutiful Afghan-Canadian daughter of a traditional Afghan-Canadian family.  And she is 1% responsible for having brought her mother to the brink of murder.  An act her mother has conveniently laid away deep in her psyche. 

And all, after all, is well.