Invisible Women

FEAR OF FLYING: CHAPTER 2

Written by Nada Chehade

I don’t know about you, but growing up, marriage was the goal in my community. In Arabic, they use bride, aka, “ aroos,” to nickname us. It’s sort of an insult endearment and everyone from your aunties to your neighbours down to the butcher refers to you like that. All I wanted was someone to call me a princess and not a bride, but even that bitch ended up married in all our fairy tales. It’s what we were supposed to do.

They were constantly shaping us into who we were supposed to be and making it seem like life didn’t start without a man by our side. One time, before my grandmother ended my bedtime story with the usual wedding, I asked her what would happen to the damsel in distress if she refused the “hero’s” proposal. I was confronted with laughs and exaggerated panting like it was the most ridiculous thing she ever heard.

“Refuse a proposal? Of course, she would be miserable and die.”

We never heard a fairytale where the damsel won the Spelling Bee and went off to live in a castle filled with cats and rabbits. No, that damsel got hit by a bus because she dared to act like a “man.” My entire existence was constantly reduced to standing in a white poofy dress for one night. My worth was tied to my relationship status. I suppose when no one is interested in your dreams or accomplishments you start to feel like you don’t matter. 

Like you're invisible.

I learned everything about being in a marriage from a bunch of really dysfunctional people—my family. All of them. It’s only natural that I wasn’t the best judge of character when choosing a life partner. I never really saw a great example of it. The bar was so low. I was impressed by men doing basic things. Of course, doing basic things later regressed to doing nothing at all. And sadly, just getting on with life became a challenge to prove who was the dominant one in some weird man-game I didn’t want to play.

Although the men in my community acted superior over us, they couldn’t do simple things just to get on with life; like make a bed, pick up their mess from the floor instead of waiting for their wives to do it, even simple childcare was a hassle. Putting their weight into getting on with life went far beyond the effort they wanted to put in. They weren’t interested in being real-life partners, they were looking for subordinates.

I was used to seeing the women in my family run around fixing everything, cooking, cleaning, feeding, playing, singing, doing nighttime, and washing baby bums while their husbands grunted.

The one time my uncle got asked to turn the washing machine on, he fucked it up. He even got praised for trying. I don’t believe for one second that he was that incompetent. He just had to press the Start button. On the contrary; it was a manipulation tactic to teach his wife never to ask him again. If his wife realizes that he can press Start on the washing machine, she might ask him to pick up his socks from the floor, and that would totally emasculate him. 

He was a man. A real one. His wife would set up the table, whip up 500 different side dishes, marinate the kafta for a week, bake an Eid cake big enough for 50 kids, and BOOM! My uncle would get all the praise for slapping the meat on the grill like he was Salt Bae or something. And, for the rest of the day, we would have to tiptoe around his feelings because he was exhausted.

His own wife would gaslight herself while washing the dishes after the whole fiasco and be like, BEK-QIET! Your uncle is exhausted!

And I always wanted to be like, “Are you fucking kidding me? NO he’s not, you are.”

My aunts are extremely old school. They did things like spit three times to the left to keep the devil away. It’s crazy; I was always sitting on the left. They also loved dabbling in some cup reading which is referred to as tabseer, meaning foresight, or fortune-telling. It was considered haram; that’s how they got off being bad, basically.

Yeah, they were so good at it too. According to the cup, me and all my female cousins were going to get married. My male cousins would go off to become doctors, engineers, and astronauts. It didn’t matter how fast we sipped the coffee or the way we turned it onto the plate to fuck with fate, we were always getting married. It was written in the coffee grounds.

You couldn’t splash a little eyeliner for self-expression around my aunties without them jumping in and asking if you’ve met someone. Actually, it started five minutes into any hang out with them. I like to call it the gaslighting spectacle. They were obsessed with the idea of getting us married and found any chance to play matchmaker. It was like their favourite side hustle or something. Yes, finding brides for below-average men around town — and they took the assignment seriously.

The community of Palestinian moms sent pictures of their sons out to each other in hopes of landing the perfect bride—another Palestinian. It was like Bumble but with your conservative aunts as the moderators. They had pictures of eligible bachelors on their phones and would show them to us anytime we came around in case any of them caught our eye. Anyway, this is how it would typically go.

“What do you think of Ahmad? Look!” aunt.

“Aunty, his beard is down to his knees.”

“ So? It’s the sign of a real man.” aunt.

“What about this Moe?” aunt.

“He’s holding a cane!”

“What about this Ahmad? Not that Ahmad, the other Ahmad?” aunt.

It’s so damn cringey, I know. They never thought to throw us a James in there to spice things up. The men’s bios never included anything about them; it was about what they wanted out of a bride. Is she blonde or brunette, does she have child-bearing hips or French ones, and does she marinate the kafta like his mom does? 

Read chapter 1 of Fear of Flying

That’s the thing; it was never about what we needed from a man, but rather what superficial shit they needed from us. As a woman, I just had to try to fit the male fantasy before my time ran out and slightly like the dude in the picture, otherwise I would end up a spinster. Mind you, Moe with a cane was referred to as a bachelor till he died.

Of course, at the end of swiping left on the entire groom-catalogue, they would threaten us into ending up single and alone, like it was a death sentence. It triggered them so much that the women in my generation had some basic standards. God forbid we ever demanded some eye candy for ourselves. Having preferences when choosing a life partner —even some simple grooming—was like committing a crime. It would be considered promiscuous if one of us asked to see a groom with a six pack or some decent calves, and pretty fucking hateful to expect he does half the dishes.

While the men had many different preferences, they all had one prerequisite when it came to choosing the perfect wife; everyone wanted a lady of honour. I hated that bitch so much. My aunts loved being part of the ladies of honour club and were always competing about who was most worthy of the label. 

The lady of honour is a woman who strives to get married and be a mother. She works tirelessly, sacrifices for everyone, and her needs come last, if ever. That’s what made her amazing; she was overworked, came last, and has no needs. Basically, she was praised for being invisible. Of course, the big lie was that you were worthless until you got married, only to find yourself in a new category of worthless housewife afterward.

The lady of honour was so unappealing. She wasn’t respected. She wasn’t appreciated. She had no dreams. No goals. No needs. Just a shit load of dishes. Her entire existence revolved around serving someone else’s overinflated ego. 

My aunts had no idea how important they were, especially to me, irrespective of all the gaslighting and matchmaking. But that’s what made them feel important. They couldn’t fathom the idea that success could be measured any other way. Their value was attached to how submissive they were to their men, and I always wondered why someone so big and strong would require a meek woman.

Unfortunately, the only thing women like my aunts ever got commended for was for being submissive. No one ever praised their real efforts as mothers. Their contribution to society ended at popping out a litter of kids, belittling the real role of raising them to build that same society or the partnership it takes in building a family. On the contrary, the same community also trivialized their roles as mothers, like it was not a real job.

It’s ironic. The most time we ever respected them was when they didn’t act invisible.

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My aunties loved putting up a pious act and wagging their righteous fingers about the Lord. And then one day, when I was around nine, we were at the souk with my aunty Rima, and the guy at the juice stand tried to hustle her out of a whole Dirham.

You know what she did? She took off her veil to show him how angry she was. She slammed it into the ground and proceeded to berate him. The guy shat himself. She wanted him to see her. 

That’s exactly it. 

She wanted him to SEE her.

That was the first time I saw a veil- smack. It was so exciting. My cousins and I were cheering her on like hooligans. Then it became a regular occurrence in the family, where whenever a kid acted out of line, one of the aunties would threaten to take off her veil, and that’s when you know you’re about to get beat.

Ohhhh shit, she’s gonna twist it into a whip and lash us!

Man, they were such hypocrites. They found any excuse to take off their veils and slam them into the ground in a fake fit of rage, or act like they got heated mid-convo and fling them out the window to prove how furious they were. Oh, and there was that one time where my aunty Rima got super excited, took off her veil, tied it around her waist, and belly danced. I kid you not; it was her son’s wedding.

There was a huge gasp. The gaggle of aunties sitting behind me fainted. But then there were claps, whistles, cheers, dabke; the whole wedding loosened up. The Dj hit that shik, shak, shok and it was magic. I’ll never forget how my aunty Rima moved the room. She was a beast on the dance floor. I had no idea she had a waist either. She wanted to be SEEN dancing at her son’s wedding. The cognitive dissonance was insane, but she was free in the moment. 

She was strong, powerful, beautiful.

When we teased her about being a big hypocrite afterward, she justified it by saying her son was so ugly she never imagined he would get married; thus, it was halal in God’s eyes. I loved it. I loved it when they were not invisible. I loved it when they put down the facade.

I loved when they laughed at being shameless.