She Asked For It

I read an article from the first of the four books that the Bangladeshi feminist author, Taslima Nasreen, wrote about her life. The title of the book is Aamar Meyebela or My Girlhood.

It's interesting that Nasreen, has no actual word to denote girlhood. The word for childhood is chhelebela, or boyhood. So no matter whether you are a girl or a boy, your experience of childhood cannot be the uni-gender "childhood." It has to be "boyhood." So in naming her memoir, Nasreen actually made up a new word.

But a common language is all that we share. Nasreen did not grow up in a prejudice-free family.
In her memoir, she candidly talks about all the times when if female children were born to any family, the parents openly wailed. Or they sent their girls to schools for a limited number of years, if at all, simply because in their point of view, women didn't require higher education. Just as they didn't need to learn how to climb trees, fly kites, run in the fields, or read for pleasure.

At present, several of Nasreen's books are banned in her own country. But her citizenship was canceled and she became a political refugee post the publication of her notorious book titled Lajja, a novel that didn't portray her countrymen in an appropriate light.

As someone trying to write something worthwhile, I feel deep compassion for Nasreen. She hasn't been to her motherland in years because there is a price on her head over there. She splits her time between Europe and India and in spite of her scores of awards, bold words, intriguing stories, and obvious love for the land she grew up in, she is not welcome in her own home. There could be few things more tragic than that.

But then, like most women in most parts of the world, Nasreen got this treatment because "she asked for it," didn't she?