Останься, дочь / Stay, Daughter

If you want to understand today, you have to search yesterday

Pearl Buck

Wappah – Father

Umma – Mother

Wappumma – father’s mother

Marmee – my father’s only sister. Marmee is the Tamil word for aunt.

Marma – my aunt Marmee’s husband. Marma is the Tamil world for uncle.

Asiyatha – father’s cousin – the adopted daughter of his mother’s only brother.

Rohani Cassim – great-grandfather. My mother’s father’s father.

Thalha Cassim – eldest daughter of Rohani Cassim. Being the sister of my mother’s father, she was my grand-aunt.

Kaneema Marmee – Thalha Cassim’s eldest daughter. My mother’s first cousin.

Fathuma Aunty – one of Thalha Cassim’s younger daughters, sister to Kaneema Marmee.

Zain Marma – one of my mother’s maternal uncles. Of all my grandmother’s many siblings, my mother was closest to him.

Zain Marmee – Zain Marma’s wife whom we affectionately called by her husband’s name.

Maraliya, Hidaya and Nabeesa, my father’s nieces – his only sister’s daughters.

Mackiya Thatha – my mother’s second cousin. Thatha is an honorific meaning “elder sister.”

Rameesa Marmee – the daughter of one of my father’s half-brothers. Having married one of my mother’s younger brothers, she was both my cousin and aunt by marriage.

Shinnamatha – one of several poor women who made a living in the Galle Fort by cooking food and helping out in the better off families.

Kadija Marmee and Zubeida Marmee – two of my mother’s close relatives who regularly visited our home.

Penny – my childhood friend in the Galle Fort. A Christian of Dutch Burgher descent. Her mother and father were Aunty June and Uncle Quintus.

For my beloved sons Kalid, Siraj and Jehan And for my nephews and nieces Rashid, Ayesha, Naima, Laila and Amal

With much affection

And stay in your houses, and do not display yourselves.

The Quran

We did not stay in our houses. Not in the way our grandmothers had, or our mothers. We went out a little more and veiled ourselves a little less.

Casting off the heavy black cloaks that had once shrouded females from head to toe, we covered ourselves, instead, in flimsy veils. Draped lightly around our heads, the silks and voiles fell casually from our shoulders, and in the minutes it took for us to get from front door to car, a stranger walking on the road could make out the features of our young faces, the curves of slender waists and hips. Sometimes, such a stranger fixed his eyes on us. And sometimes we looked back. Mothers drew our veils closer and hurried us away; you shouldn’t allow yourselves to be seen like that, they told us.

Like girls from infidel families, we went to school, and stayed there even after we had become “big.” And still more like them, but so unlike our mothers, some of us longed for more learning and dreamed about leaving home to get it. The elders shook their heads and cautioned: too much education could ruin a girl’s future.

The world outside was pressing in on us, and when I turned twelve, Wappah, thought it time to tell me a story. Many years ago, my father reported, when our country, the island of Ceylon, was still a British colony, an Englishman – perhaps the Governor himself – had invited a Muslim statesman to dinner. “Bring your wife too,” the important official said. “I have never met her.”

“Aaah,” came the reply. “That is not possible. She is in purdah and cannot be seen by men outside the family. But,” the Muslim man continued, as he pulled out a rose from a nearby vase, “look at this. It would be just like looking at her.”

My father beamed and nodded as he ended his story. I looked back and said nothing.

If we felt the stirring of wishes unknown to our mothers and grandmothers, we didn’t tell them. They would have been shocked, like Wappah, who had only known women like flowers.

Men are the protectors and maintainers of women.

The Quran, 4:34

Not three years after she had become a bride, Wappumma, my father’s mother, became a widow.

“She went into shock when they brought the news to her,” Aunt Asiyatha said. “Rolled on the floor and wailed. What was she going to do? Your grandfather had died in Bombay on the ship bringing him back from Mecca. ‘Who will guard us now, who will guard us?’ your Wappumma kept asking. She was six months pregnant too. Lost the baby.”

Aunt Asiyatha was my father’s cousin – the adopted daughter of his mother’s only brother. When, as a girl, I accompanied Wappah to his childhood home in the village of Shollai where his sister still lived, she was often there. Patting down a straw mat spread on the floor, my aunt would say, “Come sit here; I have some things to tell you.” I would sidle right up. As far back as I can recall, I latched on to anyone who would tell me a story.

Aunt Asiyatha spat out a stream of dark red betel juice and continued. “What was your Wappumma going to do? Your father was a toddler, and his sister only a little older than that. Who was going to look after them?”

“Didn’t Grandfather have money?” I asked.

“Yes, but he had all those children from his first marriage. He couldn’t leave everything to your grandmother. Soon, the money was used up, then the jewelry was sold, and all the plates and most of the furniture, and in a few years, there was nothing left.”