i don't think she was at all rewarded! she missed seeing her children grow up!!!!
Of course, she was rewarded: she has now
a truly loving husband, a
daughter Verity (10) and
a son, Lysander (8), She
has now contact with older ones (of course nothing will restore lost years, but Iddin and Shahirah are already of age); think about women who
do not have such possibility, and didn't rearrange their life after ending toxic relationship.
furthermore are you saying that people who are abused as children will go onto relationships where they will be abused by someone else?
Unfortunately often yes, because they have a distorted picture of the family and are so hungry for love that ready to forgive a first person interested in them a lot in its name. Psychological examines confirm this fact.
You don't need right away to be rude.
secondly Bahrin did not display signs of physical violence until AFTER the marriage(on one occasion he sodomised her)! so how can you say she was naive in that sense?
Maybe he didn't beat her, but he showed a tendency to dominate a woman, to suppress her mentally; there are many fragments about it and author herself from the perspective of time admits that she hadn't noticed alarming signals. First was a mention of Bahrin's first marriage, (his wife had betrayed and left him after a year)
"Bahrin said he felt humiliated and disappointed, because he had married her against his family's wishes, which turned to be wrong and in a manner so public.
I shoud have to realize that, at age 17, it's difficult to grasp te essence of such a tale.
I should have then got out of his life, until I still could do that, or at least think about why Fauziah felt the need of romance soon after the wedding." (pages 47-48)
"Our romance was flourishing. We decided -
in fact, he decided - that I should live with him, and to me the idea of "playing home" seemed to be tempting. I had no great - almost none - idea how life as a couple should be; my knowledge on this subject could be at best described as fragmented. I am sorry to confirm this but films I had watched (here English titles of these films, which I don't know) gave me rather fictitious and no real patterns of home I wanted to create.
I entered into this relationship with the great ease and without special consideration. When my hopes for dancing career faded and its place was taken by uncertainty and lack of a particular purpose, Bahrin became the only lifeline.
Looking at him, I sawjust what I wanted to see. And fooling myself and Bahrin, - but most of all myself - believed that I was in love, although I didn't know what love is." (pages 50-51)
"I was in love with the feeling that I am in love;
Isn't such a statement painful, but at the same time most accurte description of a teenager's love or immature relationship? I know that this reflects best my attitude to Bahrin in the last months of 1980;" (page 52)
Further she describes troubles with an application for passport, which her mntally ill mother didn't want to sign (Jacqueline was still under age);
"Once when I tried to explain him my mother's behaviour, he said that
my past didn't interest him; we will live in our own way.
What strange couple we created, from the beginning:we both came from dysfunctional families, but none of us wanted to admit or even realize that we lack basic skills to build any relationship. Sincerity appeared rarely in our conversations; the use of polite and elegant language was an unwritten rule. I never told Bahrin that Roger had molested me" (page 53)
IT SPEAKS FOR ITSELF; Trust and honesty are foundations of a successful relationship. Later there is a fragment Bahrin tells about his family:
"He deserved closeness natural for Australian families, he wanted to ceate an "ideal" home, directly from the cinema screen.
It's scary that in that time Ifound nothing wrong in the fact he dreamt of an imaginary life built by fictional characters" (page 54)
Later she mentions that she threw to hug Bahrin after having arrived to Kuala Lumpur, and he told her that according to Muslim customs such behaviour is offensive and she should control herself in the future; in this moment she decided not to tell him that she had taken part in the party organized by the crew in the plane...
"I still didn't know that in this way
a subtle process of my indoctrination had begun." (page 58)Later Bahrin descibes his father's relationshipwith his Chinese concubine Lina:
"Bahrin assured me that it ws a perfect arrangement, perfectly fullfills its tasks; Lina doesn't participate in the social activities of her lover and doesn't even expect to be invited to participate, nor is she officially accepted by family members. However, his father has a person to do cleaning and laundry in her and she can live cheaply in a good part of the city.
I refrained from asking a quetion of mutual respect and love. Bahrin was in his homeland and there, as I guessed, different customs prevailed; I understood this but since then
I had often to hold my tongue in check." (page 59)
Clear allusion that she felt embarrassed and couldn't have courage to express her opinion.Description of nice time spent with Bahrin on the beach of Kuantan before marriage (after marriage she was never allowed to swim in the sea, not to mention wering "Western" swimsuit)is ended by a significant notation:
"Sometimes the pasage of time tempers past events but that temperance can also tease like a putrescent tooth and poison our memories, rebuking us for our NAIVETY" (PAGE 63)You see? She herself uses the word "naivety"!
Later he left her with his relatives whom she didn't know and shortly after went out to greet his mother, and Jacqueline "watched after him with terror in her eyes" (page 66) After nice acceptace by a family, she concludes:
"(...)maybe it's because
I let Bahrin's family "seduce" me; In those days I saw the behaviour which I tried deliberately not to notice, allowing a good part of teir lives to take precedence over the less palatable acts. As a seventeen-year-old I wasn't prepared to disrupt smooth panes of existing state of affairs even with one wrinkle; at the age of thirty I could trigger a wave of storm, when there was a need to." (page 70)
Thank God that I am already approaching to thirty and in alarming situations a red lamp in my head enlightens...
At the end of the visit Bahrin told Jacqueline that he had ordered an engagement ring for her (without asking her to marry him):
"He disposed of my questions about the future saying: Don't spoil it all by talking about these issues. Go home and wait for me. And I did so. In the afternoon I boarded a plane,
not realizing that I voluntarily had endorsed in our relationship a pattern of conduct, from which has never been exceptions - the rule of my absolute obedience" (page 74)
"Intimate dinners for two
weren't conducive to serious discussions, during long car rides music from the radio
thwarted any effort to take important topics" (page 75)
Circle of her friends diminished:
"I coudn't see that a bunch of my friends begins to be confined to Bahrin's relatives and his colleagues from the University, and that all of them can be couned on te fingers of one hand" (page 76)
When he proposed a rapid wedding on occasion of coronation of his uncle (
for the following week!) it surprised her; they had never told about the wedding date; she thought that this can be considered when Bahrin finishes his studies:
"
I felt like interjection points and question marks rumble in the walls of my skull, I searched for the right words, thoughts flew through my head at a dizzying pace" (page 76)
When she expressed her doubts that it's too rapidly and she is under age he went into rage:
"I can make that you will have a family for the first time in your life and you are picking holes in I don't know what!" (page 77) He emphasized that she never had fitted to Australia (she is a half-Chinese) and no one will intimidate her in Malaysia:
"I didn't know what to say.
I started to cry, reveal my fears to him, but he didn't want to listen; shouted accusations against me, stripping me of another protective layer of my self-confidence, which I had developped with such an effort, revealing all my waknesses and fears" (page 78) Later he said that they couldn't live more in the informal union, he wasn't going to live with a WHORE, that according to Islam it was a sin, that he gave her enough time to GROW UP...and at the end he used an emotional blackmail: or she will marry him the following week or he will disappear from her life for ever.
Toxic relationship, do you hear? TOXIC!!!
lastly did you know that women in Malaysia are considered
"unclean" if they still have the clitoris intact?
Imagine that
I knew: I have read many positions of the literature of fact in which appeared the question of Female Genital Mutilation - "Desert Flower" (and continuation "Desert Dawn" and "Letter To My Mother") by Waris Dirie, "Tears on the Sand" by Noora Abdi, "Mutilated" by Khady, "Infidel" by Ayaan Hirsi Ali, "The White Massai" (and continuations "Goodbye to Africa" and "See You in Barsaloi") by Corinne Hofman, "The White Witch" by Ilona Maria Hiliges, "The Love of Lioness" by Christina Hachfeld-Tapukai. So when this topic appeared in Jacqueline's book (page 199) it was not a suprise to me. It's possible that I know about Africa more than you, although I am European.
I certainly didn't until I read the book and neither did Jacqueline!
Of course Jacqueline didn't: she herself mentions that
she didn't knew completely anything about Malaysia before meeting Bahrin. (page 56).
