The Caged Virgin - Ayaan Hirsi Ali [38]
My father has five daughters and a son, by four different wives. My mother was his second wife. He met her when his first wife, Maryan, was in America. She had been sent there by him to study, but she didn’t do very well. My father wanted her to stay away until she managed to get her diplomas. Meanwhile, at home, he had become one of the organizing forces behind the campaign for literacy. He was a teacher himself and my mother was his pupil. He thought she was smart and ambitious, and married her. Within a short period they had three children, and then one day Maryan turned up at the door, back from America. She knew nothing about his second marriage and was furious. She demanded that he make a choice. My father chose my mother and divorced Maryan.
In 1980 he left for Ethiopia. After a year he came back to visit us. My mother said, “If you leave again now, I don’t want you to come back ever again, and I will no longer be your wife.” He went away and returned after ten years. My mother refused to greet him and has stuck to this to the present day. Later he married an Ethiopian woman, and then someone from Somalia—I have no idea where they are now. Eventually he remarried Maryan, his first wife, with whom he lives in London.
Besides an older brother, I had a sister, Haweya, who was two years younger than I and for whom I felt strong admiration. Haweya was rebellious. She did what she wanted, and she didn’t care if she received a beating for it. I was more timid and docile, tending to accept things as they were. But she never did. As a teenager Haweya wanted to wear short skirts, something that was considered thoroughly indecent. My mother ripped them up, but each time she did, my sister just bought herself a new one. During her second year in high school she quit. Everyone was furious, but she couldn’t have cared less. She successfully completed a secretarial course and found a job at the United Nations. My mother forbade her to work, but my sister defied her, despite verbal and physical abuse.
Haweya was a strong woman and commanded admiration and respect everywhere except at home. When her turn came to be married off, she followed me to the Netherlands. She arrived in January 1994, and after a year and a half her Dutch was good enough to enroll at university. But she started to become tearful and her behavior became eccentric. She struggled in the company of others but could not manage being on her own either. She watched television for hours on end, regardless of what was on. She would lie in bed for days and didn’t eat. After a time she revealed that she was unhappy because she had neglected her faith. She began to wear a headscarf and tried to pray. Some days she could not manage it and that increased her feelings of guilt, because for every prayer you miss, there is a punishment. She also kept saying, I am suffering so much, but nobody understands me. And she was ashamed of the way she had behaved toward my mother in the past and deeply regretted all those arguments.
Then one day Haweya had a mental breakdown and had to go into hospital. She was treated with medication to which she responded well, though she did suffer some side effects: restlessness, pain, stiff muscles, strange twitches. I saw my sister, that beautiful, strong woman, cracking up before my eyes.
In July 1997, Haweya returned to Kenya. Instead of medication she received visits from mullahs who had been summoned to drive out her psychoses. They commanded her to read the Koran so that she would calm down. And she was dragged to an exorcist because some people thought that my stepmother had bewitched her. My sister said