Yasmine Mohammed ياسمين محمد  🦋

-and more lax in his absence. It was too much. We were just kids. She would let us watch TV and read what we wanted and use the internet. She still held her religion, but she didn't believe a merciful good would burn us for watching some cartoons for 1 hour a day. (14/?)

And every step into my radicalism, she hesitated. I wanted to wear niqab, she hesitated. I wanted to start preaching, she hesitated. I wanted to listen to more lectures by radical scholars, she hesitated. She never disallowed it because it pleased my father and- (15/?)

-he never made the first move in the right direction but he always had the last say. My mother became obsessed with getting me married off as soon as she could - it was actually her dying wish for me. I always thought it was for religious reasons or to get rid of me. (16/?)

But I understand now that it was just to get me away from the toxic power that was my father. She didn't know any other way. And a skill-less, brown girl alone in the world would be a terrible fate. It was the reason she didn't get divorced. She knew her family- (17/?)

-would ostracize and reject her for it. I remember when Aunt Yasmin blamed my dead mother for my father's actions - saying that if she had gotten divorced, then my father would never have been abusive. Even death cannot erase a woman's imagined blame. (18/?)

I took care of my mother in her final months and I took care of her children. There was so much sadness and anger in me, I would rarely speak to her. We didn't have that kind of relationship and I knew she didn't want to be pitied. Moments were stolen from me. By- (19/?)

-fanily members, by strangers who wanted to say their goodbyes. When all her hair was falling out due to the chemo, my cousin was the one to shave her head. It should have been me. I was my mother's keeper and that was stolen from me. But I remember as story she told- (20/?)

-in the twilight of her life. We had visitors. Faceless strangers that didn't know her but wanted to say goodbye. She told the story of the day I was born. And how happy I had made her. I think it was her covert way of saying she loved me. (21/?)