Dear Anita,

I watched an incredible movie this weekend, it is about a Pakistani girl who is raised in Norway, and suffers a man’s emotional abuse her parents. The story is quite extreme and the fact that she gets kidnapped and said to Pakistan against her well because she is found sneaking around with a boy. When in Pakistan she finds herself in trouble again, and is returned back to the west. We are when she arrives they have arranged a marriage for her so that they can control her behavior more and just get her married off.   I couldn’t relate to the actions per se, but the dialogue, the emotion, the unspoken aspects of the movie were incredible. I took away a lot from the movie, much more than I would have perhaps six months to a year ago. Much of the dialogue focused on the fact that the father made it a point to make her realize that her actions were making them look bad in society. The constant phrase of “what will people think“ was used as a way to guilt trip this girl. I thought about how unlike the protagonist in the movie, this did work on me. In fact, I didn’t see this as Ludacris or try to rebel against it, instead I internalized it and thought to myself, how sad and true. I thought to myself oh my gosh they are right. But it didn’t sit well with me, internally I knew something was off, it just had not come to surface. This shows me how deep my dissociation has been for a long time, perhaps that’s not the right word per se, but the concept of on the surface truly trying to appease my parents and hiding any intuition of what I mean actually feel.  At one point the mother states, if she gets married to a great guy it will increase their place in society, or if she has a good education. The older brother agrees, he is entirely brainwashed, he wants to study to be a doctor just so that his parents role in the world could be better. Such a blind faith, such devotion it seems. But as I see it now, the entire point of the children’s life is to appease their parents, and take away their hurt, take away their anxieties, take away their insecurities.  I read some reviews about this film after, wanting to see what other people thought. It was noted somewhere that when immigrants move to the west, they raise up the culture of the Western world, Europe or the United States. The entire movie talked about how the parents made comments like if their kids were raised in the motherland they would not be acting like this, they would not be suffering. Suffering comes with this immigration as kids no longer listen and respect their parents. Just like my mother. And so because of their anger of immigrating, and feeling like the kid should be indebted to them for yet another reason, They inflict even more control. This is not just the simple: look I moved here to find you a better life situation. This is the: look how sad and miserable we are, how could you not do everything in your power to make us happier.

Interestingly, the protagonist gets her self involved in some what may seem racy actions. I did not, but the results were not that different. It reminds me how, with parents like these it doesn’t matter what you do. And innocent bystander may watch this movie and think, if this girl simply behaved her parents will be happy. But I know better, I see the brewing anger and the father’s face, our years of pent-up emotion, ready to be projected on to anyone and anything. I used to believe otherwise Anita  I did believe that if I didn’t go up and swap meet my parents happy, all with the with the well and calm. That is why over those two years, I tried constantly to appease my mother, at the risk of consistently abusing my husband. The more my mother would  torture me the more I would torture urr my husband, in a way  it was kind of like what you are saying. See mother I’m not just sitting here and not listening to you, look at what I am doing to my husband, I’m torturing to the point that he will acquiesce with you. See look at my hard work