What About Love?

So I have a major new roll in a play that was written by my students (and edited by me). I play the foreign teacher who puts a stop to an underage marrage. I think I am perfectly suited for the roll actually.... All I have to say is that it is a good thing that I am not shy. The topic for the past few days has been marraige and well its on everyone's minds... even mine. It began as a journal topic I asked my students to write about... "Is love important to have before you get married or does love grow after you are married?" Here in Bangladesh 99% of the marraiges are arrainged and the bride and groom come together as virtual strangers. And although it is illegal a dowery is given to the grooms family from the brides. My students have begun to voice their opinions and concerns to me more freely now that we have developed trust and rapport. They want to talk about things that affect them as young women like marraige, and things that concern them too. Things like acid attacks, dowery killings and forced marraige. Everyday in the papers there is a news story of a woman in this village or that who was murdered for her dowary or girls who are disfigured after an acid attack by their families. Rapes are always sprinked throughout the papers, their typeface small, hidden, not wanting to be talked about.

My students are around 18 years old and marraige is looming. Today one of my students was absent because she was getting married. Will she be back to class? I asked... my students did not know. So marriaige is on the mind and we all have so many questions. I can only wonder what my students intimate questions might be. Will he like me? Will I make his parents happy? Will he be handsome and nice? The thought of marrying a stranger sends chills down my spine but it is the custom here and the norm. You don't marry for love you marry because it is your duty as a Muslim and also to take care of your families. Women are expected to give love, affection and to nurture all those around them. Husbands are to provide. So what about love I asked?? Is it important? Some of my students said almost defiantly that it is important and that they wish to feel love for their husbands. The rest of the class said no. It was not appropriate and not proper. Love would grow later... especially with children. I then thought of all the couples I knew back home who thought a child would bring them closer together. Mostly it did not. But hey this is a different cultural context right? Different rules? Different customs? Yes. But what about love?

I think that love is as essential to us as the air we breathe and the water we drink. It nurtures us and sustains us. So lets cut the cultural crap and see that we need to love and be loved. I see the wistful expressions in my students eyes when I talk about love in the class room. I know that some of them have boyfriends (gasp!) and there is plenty in Bengali poetry that speaks of love. I believe that every person wants to ultimately be healed by love. Of course this opens doors to pain and vulnerability and also the "work" of love. Yes I believe it is lots of work to be loving, especially between partners. Erich Fromme said that love was an "art" and I believe that it is an art, something to be mastered and studied and reflected upon. No one wants to marry someone who will be mean to them and end up in a bitter yucky relationship. And I hate the additude of my generation with its "oh we can always get a divorce if it dosent work out." Bleh....! I think that co-dependent and disfuctional relationships can also be tender and affectionate... but it is not the deep essense of love people! And I don't care what culture you are from with its rules and taboos and stipulations. I keep thinking of my Islamic literature class in college... a scene from a poem in which the young girl keeping in purdah is behind the latticed window. Her slender fingers lightly touching the wood as she gazes down to the youth below. Her love... him not knowing but wondering about the feminine shadow in the window.... sigh.... unrequited love the stuff of poets. See its everywhere!! Love is important so why do we find it so terrifying? Why all the illusions and rules and barriers?!

Its like the phone call I got this morning at 3am.... thought America was calling. But no it was another phone stalker... calling random numbers in hope of a female voice. I am not sure what the thrill is but I am not alone, it happens to Bangladeshi women too. Calling calling calling! Interupting my sleep so I had to put my phone on silent... and then the text messages. "I need you ... I feel you... I miss you.... I love you ... do you love me?... Please text me to say you love me.....Please!!!" My first reaction was to say "No you psycho I don't love you!! Leave me alone or I will report you! JErk!".... But then I just put my phone on silence because sometimes when you need attention and love even a negative reaction is better than no reaction. Silence. My point is (loss of sleep and psychos aside) we all need love. No matter how you wrap it up. We all need love.

M

p.s. everyone of my students I asked if they wanted to get married said no and I said me either.