Is your Faith weak? Oh, you must be narcissistic, ill-tempered, short on patience, selfish, and dominating! … possibly spoilt too?
Hold on, before you tell me that moving closer to God doesn’t have its benefits. I’m just wondering how this will play out in homes where men abuse their family members, get to have their way, control their wives, are dismissively rude to their in laws, and manipulate the people in their lives to get what they want.
Oh, and they don’t pray 5 times a day too. Spoilt Sons Have Weak Faiths – The Common Thread In Pakistani Dramas? And they can be fixed by their wives (who happen to be fully compliant on religious matters).
Agreed, different people, different strokes, and perhaps Dua might serve as the conduit for Mustajab’s journey towards God, just like Shanaya will for Azlaan and Mahi did for Farhad? See where we’re heading here?
Being close to God, getting to study and know your religion is a journey. But that journey does not need to begin after getting married. It can too, but why does your wife have to take on the role of a teacher? The job that a parent and society must do is now passed on to an unsuspecting wife. She must train him in the ways of the world, and … Faith? Here’s my question to all those who are watching Dua’s journey and resonating with it:
Are Pakistani dramas pushing our parenting mistakes on to young wives, and conditioning our society to accept the norm?
1. Anger Management Is An Issue Not To be Confused With Lack Of Faith
Anger management issues can exist in the faithful as well. But when we show men have distanced themselves from God, and they are abusive, selfish, unjustifiably angry in moments they should show more control, we are being conditioned to club the two issues together. Fits of rage = Lack of Faith. Really?
Does that explain all the abusive husbands who shout, scream, throw things around (bear in mind Mustajab is one of them). They are just not close enough to Allah and they need to marry a woman who can show them the righteous path, yeah!
If your husband has anger management issues, he cannot be dismissed lightly as a super emotional human being. You are also emotional, but that doesn’t mean you throw things around when you get angry. His journey towards Allah will help him become a better person, and hopefully, he will learn how to rein in his anger, but his childhood issues (allowed to be nurtured into adulthood) should not be yours to shoulder. A society that expects a woman to bear children, keep the family together, deal with her in laws (and continue her own journey as an individual) should not be expected to tend to a half[-baked person – that is what Mustajab is. A person who needs constant TLC and submission.
Why would any parent want to do that to their daughter, and if they do, there’s a problem right there – it’s called cultural conditioning, which might be normalizing this (happy?) coincidence through our dramas?
2. Loving Someone Does Not Mean Giving Up On Your Dreams
If you want to complete your degree, you have a right to do so. Especially when you asked for it explicitly in a verbal prenuptial agreement. (better written down next time, and Islam allows it btw). If you don’t want to settle abroad, yes, it’s a tad restrictive for a husband, but one that can be worked upon mutually.
Love can be all encompassing and the most beautiful emotion that touches your soul, but don’t lose yourself in love to the point that you turn around and ask yourself one day … who am I? Are we creating unrealistic relationship goals to aspire to for our young girls?
Dua and many other girls are about to embark on that journey and, lest they pause and take a long, hard look at their actions, it might be too late …the further you go, the harder it is to turn back.
I’m hoping Dua’s arc will learn to step out of the abyss she’s slipping into. Because that’s when young girls will get hope and know that Mustajab is not a choice they should make, no matter how much in love they are.
3. Talking To Your Parents
Talk to your parents. They might give you the wisdom and experience you lack. They might see things from a different perspective. They might advise you, and pray for you too. There’s always the downside that you open up your personal relations to your family, but keeping things inside might make matters worse. Marriage is a relationship to be made strong with time. Everyone faces obstacles, perhaps your parents might have faced them too, and can guide you better with their advice, and prayers.
Also, if your relationship is going consistently downhill, you don’t want them to get a shock all in one go. It is better to give them a feeler for things.
4. When Apologies Are The Norm, Not The Exception
It is interesting to note that lately, abusers take on a more subtle form. Mustajab does not rely on the crude thappar to get his point across, he manipulates, he cajoles Dua, he apologizes for his instant loss of temper, (repeatedly).
He makes her feel that he can’t live without her – emotional blackmailing at epic heights! He’s smart – most abusers are.
5. Spoilt vs Love Deprived
It is not your responsibility as a young (or old) wife to fix what’s wrong with a young man. If you were given a (half) baked person in marriage, that in itself is tantamount to foul play! Especially when the marriage is arranged.
Love marriages atleast allow you to cover a few bases (know thy faults) before you leap in?
Why are wives expected to ‘fix’ their husband’s shortcomings, fulfill the void in the lives of a son in areas where a mother failed? Why are wives expected to mother their husbands? That sounds awfully wrong, yet, it is what is expected of Dua and the’ mother in law – daughter in law post marriage talk’, that many women dream of having with their daughter in laws – is it just expecting too much? My son has all these faults – list 1.2.3. but I KNOW you can save him through LOVE – the cure all remedy for all things men?
If you have a burning desire to explain your son’s drawbacks, you just can’t. There’s no getting away from bad parenting. You have spoilt him, it is unfair to expect another woman to mother a grown man.
6. Marriage Is Not The End
Especially for a young girl who has a bright future ahead – An unfinished degree, wealthy and loving, supportive parents and youth on your side, you have no reason to stick it out with men like Mustajab. You tell me it is love? I tell you that this love will be all-consuming and turn into a kind of imprisonment (which it has for many young women in our society). Their husbands will tend to their material comforts, bring them flowers, romance them – but their love will be a selfish kinda deal where family members, personal goals, and desires are all sacrificed for the higher good – giving them company and obeying their every command.
But this voluntary self sacrifice soon turns into an involuntary, quiet one, where you just surrender to your future with him. Life goes on, you have children, the cycle repeats itself and snap, you wake up one day and its too late to turn back!
Women in our society are shown to be very resilient, and that is perhaps their downfall. In their resilience are hidden self-sacrifice, a loss of one’s self, personal desires, and goals.
7. Finally, Is Mustajab A Red Flag?
Yes, you bet he is.
Not just Mustajab, but his mom too. She micromanages his life, and he, happy to have her do that, asks her to manage his wife too. We’ve seen women like Mustajab’s mom and we’ve seen men like Mustajab.
We’ve lived with them often, and we know, life with them means committing to a lifetime of misery, of constantly being on our toes, of tweaking our behaviour to his every whim & desire, of knowing we cannot find peace unless he is happy! Keeping him happy becomes a life mission – do you see where this is heading for Dua?
If the narrative will steer towards Mustajab redressing all his wrongs, overcoming his fits of anger, manipulative, selfish, controlling, dishonest behavior by receiving unconditional love, then I guess psychiatrists of the world can call it a day. All we need is a little bit of faith and a wife who is willing to take on ‘mission husband fix’ for the rest of her life, or – teach him how to pray 5 times a day and not plan ‘a honeymoon in Ramazan’ – sarcastic much, yeah!
In a society where girls are turning against marriage, divorce rates are not really falling and the youth is getting fairly disillusioned with marriage, we hope Aye Musht e Khaak and other Pakistani narratives deliver an uplifting and believable journey where the woman doesn’t have to bend over backwards to achieve any semblance of normalcy in her life.
If this is women empowerment, I’d rather be alone, on a honeymoon by myself, loveless, free, but at peace – Faith is a great companion, and Dua already has that!
Yes, Mustajab is a red flag and I hope Aye Musht e Khaak can show that to us!
