Buddhist Catholic Contemplative Evangelical General Christian Hindu Jewish Latter-day Saint Muslim New Visions Progressive Christian

Beliefs

Topics

Columnists

Resource Library

Research Tools

Video

Podcasts

Thought Readers

Faith In Media Tracker

Newsletters

Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In Subscription Support

Follow Patheos

Love, InshAllah

Home
Muslim
Relationships and Religion
Love, Withheld

Love, Withheld

Last updated on: November 3, 2014 at 11:18 am by Posted by The Editors

Love, Withheld 2014-11-03T11:18:12-07:00 Posted by The Editors

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

Every mother has two birthing tales:

One, that of giving birth to her child, is shared. The other, of giving birth to herself, of becoming a mother and all the ways that smashes into and fractures everything else she is, of being broken open and made anew, is one that takes a lifetime to understand.

My mother has a story she tells about my birth, her firstborn: 36 hours of unmedicated labor, an absent husband, and, finally, a C-section that left her torn, body and soul. As I was growing up, she told me this story as many times as she told me about her hot tears of love streaming onto my face, of writing on a tissue-thin blue aerogram to her own mother continents away to say, I finally understand the way you love me.

I’m still unraveling all the ways becoming a mother has affected and enriched me as a woman, wife, and writer. What I do know: Through giving birth, one that replicated my mother’s uncooperative body, I began to accept our similarities after decades of trying to differentiate myself from her. I let her in. I came to depend on her again.

She stayed with me after the birth of my son. In the way that newborns do, he kept us all dancing with his perpetual needs. But my mother did what no one else thought to do: She fed her own child, making sure I never went hungry.

As I sat famished while nursing, she spoon-fed me yakhni and char maghz, traditional strengthening postnatal foods. Without her bulwarking presence I might have been ripped into a thousand shreds under the round-the-clock hormonal onslaught and infant demands.

Imagine, then, the shock I felt when she disowned me.

She and I had grown so close that I couldn’t comprehend the words: I pray that I never see you or hear your voice again.

It happened after I sent her an advance copy of my book, a nonfiction anthology of Muslim women’s search for love. My mother had been one of my strongest supporters over the five years from conception to publication.

Women should have the guts to tell their truth. But there’s a difference between an idea and a tangible book, of knowing your daughter’s love story and of reading details that you don’t want confirmed for yourself or your religious community, which considers premarital relationships haram, forbidden.

Your story has no moral or spiritual lessons. It’s just a celebration of sins.

No one knows you or can hurt you like your family. We wield our intimacy in support of each other, in sport, or as weaponry. She spiritually disemboweled me and then vanished. There
was no middle ground to discuss our disagreement―only a tsunami of love or the wasteland of her utter absence.

As I traveled on a national book tour to packed crowds and global media coverage, a vast desert began to take the place of my heart and soul.

I experience God through the relationships I have with others. Surrounded by human love, I more easily imagine and embrace divine love. The opposite is also true.

If my mother does not love me, how then can God? I wondered, bereft.

• • •

After the flood of darkness, after I raged like a toddler against my mother’s impassive door, after my ears stopped ringing at her pursed-lip silence, came solitude and reflection.

It’s hard to admit that light and darkness, love and hate, need and pain, are intertwined in my relationship with my mother. Every Mother’s Day, we trot out to brunch and pretend that love is pure and simple, that we’ve never been wounded or made each other miserable, that our hearts aren’t fists covered in each other’s blood.

In truth, the human heart is smooth with veins and membrane on the outside, but once opened, it reveals intricate ridges, ventricles, and striated, branching, indefatigable muscles that churn out a lifetime of heartbeats.

Contracting and expanding, our hearts are a microcosm of the universe, reflecting two of the 99 names of God: Al-Basit (The Expander) and Al-Qabid (The Constrictor). Every living being experiences hibernation, constriction, and quiescence in order to grow, bloom, or give birth time and time again. As the Sufis say: Without the bitterness of distance, how can one appreciate the sweetness of reunion?

Intellectually, I know this. Emotionally, it’s hard to see being riven as part of my spiritual growth. It’s not until I accept the cycles of closeness and distance, ebb and flow, breakdown and breakthrough, that I can begin to release my rage toward my mother, and move forward, without her.

• • •

After months of silence, she calls. Khoon key rishtey nahin toot thay (blood bonds can’t be broken), she sighs.

We speak occasionally now, feeling a way forward together hesitantly. It is not the same intimacy as before, nor do I usually wish it to be.

Recently, while I was bedridden with a severe flu, she came to stay. She cooked nourishing food and watched her grandson so I could rest and recover. In breaking bread together, we forged a fragile peace.

Like hearts, families present smooth and shiny surfaces to outsiders, but our hidden chambers are known only to each other. The elasticity of families continues to surprise me: the way a family stretches to comfort, then contracts in anger, before expanding again with cautious affection after each disappointment. Who can say how far a heart will go to keep on giving and forgiving?

Our relationships are stories unfolding over lifetimes, the building blocks of communities and nations. There are periods of retreat, followed by reengagement, ad infinitum. There aren’t necessarily neat bow-tie answers or happy endings. Some of our most intimate stories have tattered and bleeding edges and always will.

What continues to give me hope in my relationship with my mother ― and, by extension, with others that I have differences with ― is remembering that complete resolution or agreement isn’t the goal.

The goal is to keep opening the door to a lifelong conversation.

—

Originally published by Spirituality and Health. Companion piece: I went down to the river to pray.

Ayesha Mattu is a writer, international development consultant and editor of Love InshAllah. Her writing has appeared in CNN.com, The Huffington Post, International Museum of Women, and Religion Dispatches. Ayesha is working on a family memoir about three generations of Pakistani Sufi women, and blogs occasionally at Rickshaw Diaries.

Previous Post

September 11, 2012

Single Girl, Asian Daughter

Next Post

September 13, 2012 Leaving an abusive marriage

Browse Our Archives

Select a Category Book Reviews Brown Girl Dreaming Editors Flirting with Fate and other Disasters of an Intersectional Muslimah Food, Love, & Memories Friday Love Halal Since 22 Integrity of Heart Life After Death Literary Mama Literature Love Inshallah Podcast Love InshAllah writers Media My Infidel Husband Not Without Love Poetry Monday Radical Love Reflections & Readings Reviews of Love InshAllah Salaam Love Writers Sex & The Ummah Single in the City Spotlight Story & Chai Book Club The Geekologist The Love Tour The Male Gaze Things I Wish I'd Known Thoughts of a Wasat Girl Uncategorized Your Sunny Side Up Your voices

Select a Month May 2015 April 2015 March 2015 February 2015 January 2015 December 2014 November 2014 October 2014 September 2014 August 2014 July 2014 June 2014 May 2014 April 2014 March 2014 February 2014 January 2014 December 2013 November 2013 October 2013 September 2013 August 2013 July 2013 June 2013 May 2013 April 2013 March 2013 February 2013 January 2013 December 2012 November 2012 October 2012 September 2012 August 2012 July 2012 June 2012 May 2012 April 2012 March 2012 February 2012 January 2012 December 2011 November 2011

TAKE THE

Religious Wisdom Quiz

What does "Pentecost" mean?

Select your answer to see how you score.

Fiftieth Forty Firstfruits Twelve