Anniversary of Sorrow

This day always brings many thoughts to my mind. About twenty years ago when I was a younger and more foolish woman I made a good friend. My friend was a fine beautiful modest compassionate gentle generous soul. She was also a muslim from Pakistan. She spoke Urdu and a bit of English, and I spoke only English, but we still managed to communicate. She had two adorable little daughters and I had two adorable little daughters. I thought her clothes were absolutely beautiful and do to this day. She gave me one of her outfits. The top and is too small for me now, but I still wear the pants. We were fascinated with our different customs and wanted to learn and grow in understanding. My friend was such a good gentle devoted mother to her little ones. She would bring them to the community pool and let them play in the water. She did not swim, because she was decent and modest. I used toilet paper for my cleanup after the potty business, and she washed with water, because that was the way for her to be properly and truly clean. She shopped so wisely it was most impressive. She cooked the most delicious foods. She asked me "Do you like spicy?" Well, I only thought I knew and liked what spicy was! She showed me what spicy really was. I remember the taste of this bean dish she made. I could live on only that. I discovered that raisins were too "hot" to eat much of if at all. We talked of men and marriage. She showed me her astoundingly beautiful wedding pictures. She told me that she had been married according to custom, that her husband was chosen for her. I told her that I had picked mine myself, though it was indeed a bad choice. Her marriage wasn't happy either, for her husband loved another woman, but could not marry her. How sad for them all! I told her that I was going to divorce my husband because I had realised my mistake and she was amazed. She told me that she went to her husband's sister for assistance in smoothing the displeasure of her own husband and I was amazed. She told me that she wanted to go back to Pakistan. She told me of the house she had lived in there with caged singing birds and sturdy thick walls. And there we were, living next door to each other in shoddy trailers. I agreed that a house with singing birds and sturdy thick walls was ever so much better. She was working at a fast food restaurant and I was working at another. They had come to the U.S. because her husband could get better medical care for an ailment he suffered. At first I liked her husband too, until one morning as I was leaving for work she came running out to my car, her nose gushing blood. "Christy, what I do?" she cried, and I told her what was possible. That here, such a thing was a crime and that it was he who was in the wrong for his bad behavior and not her. He could be punished, she could have a place of her own with her girls and never have to put up with such things. She was a good and devout woman caught between millstones. She did not want to bring disgrace and disaster to her family. It would be an absolutely intolerable disgrace for her husband to put her aside. Of course, I didn't understand for I had been raised in such different customs. When her husband suffered a round of affliction she tended him with utter gentleness in spite of his mistreatments. Her grace and gentleness in the face of such monstrous behavior was astounding. She told me a little of her religion, and I came to respect it enormously. She told me it was not her religion that was bad, it was people that made it so. Truer words have never been spoken. There are people of every faith that do bad things. Bitter, angry and confused souls, for whatever reasons. I had a good friend that was muslim. I will never hate Islam. Even today. I sorrow for the losses we all have suffered at the mercy of bitter angry confused souls that have been twisted and blinded by their own pain and cannot get past it to cause no more pain and destruction to others.