December 31, 2007

• “Bargained Away”

  I had a very vivid dream last night, and this is how it went.

  I was a young South Asian girl — about 9
  years old. I was one of the younger ones among a large family. I had at
  least two older sisters and some brothers. In this dream, the man who
  was my father told me that he had made the arrangements for me to be
  married. I had been in and out of the room earlier when my father had
  been speaking to another man, bargaining back and forth. I thought they
  were arguing over a cow or some livestock. Now I knew they had been
  talking about me.

  My father informed me that we were to be
  married the following Saturday — so I was getting less than a week’s
  notice. I felt like the room was closing in on me as the news burgeoned
  into full understanding, and the ceiling seemed to squish down upon me
  as this boy, my future husband, suddenly appeared at the door, waiting
  for me. We were having our first meeting right then.

  I
  went to the nearby playground with the boy (it was really just a vacant
  lot which kids, through constant use, had made claims on it to be their
  own) and very quickly found him to be really self-centered, vindictive,
  egotistic, and mean. He spoke to me with an air of condescension, his
  eyes gazing tauntingly at me with all the immaturity of an 8 year old
  boy. I couldn’t believe that he was the one I was going to have to
  marry. From just those few minutes of interaction, I knew it would be a
  lifetime’s ingratiating servitude to an unmerciful patriarch (though,
  as a 9 year old in the dream, I wouldn’t have put it quite in those
  terms).

  And if that wasn’t bad enough, toward the end of our
  initial meeting, he mentioned (almost boastfully) that I was to be his
  second wife, actually. His father had gotten him another wife, whom he
  was also marrying on Saturday. This last piece of news left me
  devastated. Not only had I not been given a choice, not only had my
  life been bargained away like I was property, not only would I be
  married to a selfish chauvinist, but I wouldn’t even have the honor and
  value of his fidelity or devotion. I felt like I was suffocating.

  As
  soon as I got home, I told my father, “Did you know I am to be his
  second wife? He already has another wife!” I thought there might be a
  chance that he hadn’t known and that the new piece of knowledge would
  rescue me from this ill-fate.

  My father’s face revealed that he
  hadn’t known. He had gotten such a great bargain for me that it had
  somehow successfully distracted him from the fact that his business
  arrangements would result in a reality that would be my life. I’m sure
  he really believed that he was giving me the better life by doing all
  this. But my heartbroken cries snapped him out of his daze. “Well, he
  hadn’t been clear about that but…I suppose he alluded…” Looking
  into my sorrowful eyes, he muttered, “I will talk to him about it.”

  I
  sat on the chair despondently as my father retreated into the other
  room. I knew that even if he talked to the man, even if the man had not
  told him the whole truth, none of these things would change the ending
  of my story. The deal had already been struck. My fate was already
  sealed. My elder sisters, who were shuffling about in the kitchen,
  looked down and looked away and said nothing. My father was sending my
  sisters to school. They had not been married off, so I had thought I
  would be saved from the fate that was the lot of every other girl in
  our neighborhood. So why was this happening to me? I didn’t know. I was
  stuck under this hierarchical system, and there was nothing I could do
  about it.

  This is when I woke up from my dream… and realized that though I could wake up, there are many young and old women who can never wake up and escape from this nightmarish reality.

  • 11:46 pm
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