She was the darling of the night, all wide eyed and excited, talking to those who would speak to her.
“Really? You made this?”
“Wonderful. Very nice”
“Awwww. Thank you”, I said, in the spirit of her own.
***
I fumbled through her playlist and found Pete Doherty’s Last of the English Roses. This was our song; we would sing this into the end of night, not understanding a word of it, but it was beautiful, the night was beautiful, the scenery was beautiful. It all made perfect sense.
It is nice to instantly reconnect after four, long, absent years. The space between them evaporates and become the fuel of conversations, from stargazing to bush walking to mountain climbing to photography to politics to literature to fresh grass to the wondrous people surrounding our lives.
***
“Tell me when I return”. A promise is then made, and from there she would shoot in different courses of directions. The possibilities. In the end, when everyone is asked, all opinions are laid, all arguments are made, it is hers alone that matters. “The heart of the matter, is that I…. simply cannot choose”. So much complications, this matter of the heart. She wanted to do justice to all, to “treat everyone right“, but like Plath (again?), she will be at the center of atrocity.
The woman who sat next to her asked her if she was married. She says no, no, I am in a dilemma. In a year or two, or perhaps never at all.
***
The girls said that her father says “It is hard to take care of women. So, we should marry them off as soon as we can”.
Such a simplistic argument. Are we to cook, to clean, to care for children ? Is there no other role for a woman, except to become a burden until we are carried off to someone else. Is the pinnacle achievement for us is to enter motherhood?
She is only a girl of twelve. The mother married at eighteen. What would become of her, in five, six years time?
The sound of the twenty-odd children in the room roaring and shouting and screaming and crying in the room that we left echoed behind us.
perkaraperkara 