The Inspirational Women of Shaheen
During my time in Hyderabad, I was asked, ‘so, is India what you expected?’ It was a question not easily answered.
When arriving in India, I expected chaos, and chaos did I receive. The roads are jammed to extreme levels – two lanes become four or five with heavily loaded scooters dodging in and out of tiny spaces. The scooters transport anything and everything you could imagine, from a father and his four children, to a goat in a bag, to a mountain of empty plastic buckets creating a ring around the driver, four times his size. Helmets are a rarity, as are seatbelts in cars. People are transported sitting atop scaffolding poles on the back of a truck and the honking of car horns is as repetitive and consistent as the beat of my heart. Bordering the roads, you see crumbling buildings dating back to the 1800s-neighbouring vast, shiny, new malls and shops. People are everywhere, selling fragrant and colourful fruit and veg on the sidewalks, drinking tea from corner stands; you see them begging, sleeping in the gutter, hurrying in their shirt, pants and sandals to their place of work. Each new road has a different place of worship, temples outstanding amongst the dingy dirt and dust with their multi-coloured presence. The smells distract your senses - from the floral, flirtatious smell of jasmine, to the delicious smell of baked goods, spices waft as intensely as if your nose was in the spice jar. This side of India, is what I expected – the saying, ‘method in the madness’, seemed perfectly applicable.
However, the main aim of my journey was to spend time volunteering in an organisation – Shaheen – which helps women and girls to defeat the patriarchal society they were, and still are, brought up in. This part of India, was not what I expected. The women and girls were beyond my expectations – I did not imagine I would meet such brave, remarkable and loving souls.
On my first day at Shaheen, I met Jameela Nishat, the founding director of The Shaheen Women’s Resource and Welfare Association. She was warm and welcoming and showed great appreciation for my volunteering efforts. The day begun with an introduction to Shaheen – I drank the sweet Indian chai while a presentation explained the challenges they face, their aims and what they have achieved so far. Shaheen tackles endless cases of domestic abuse and violence, child marriage and trafficking, the lack of education available for girls in the community and many more issues. I was told of a young girl who was remarried 17 times by her own parents before taking her own life. I was told of the lack of facilities and hygiene products available for girls, eventually stopping them from attending school once they reach puberty. I was surrounded by survivors of domestic violence. After this I was taken to a centre a few roads over where Shaheen runs classes for girls and women spanning all ages – the classes involve designing and stitching. The purpose of these classes is to give the girls and women a chance to make a decent living for themselves – most of them are from what they call the “scavenging communities”, where their usual career prospects would be collecting rubbish off the streets and moving it elsewhere. This would be done with bare hands. It was these girls and women that Jameela later asked me to prepare to teach a few classes to; I was to help raise their confidence and self-belief and encourage them to persevere and aim high. This was a daunting task initially – leading a class or talk with 30-40 eyes focused on me and what I was saying made my tummy turn.
When being seated to take my first class, I took a moment to take in my surroundings. The classroom was what seemed to be, once upon a time, a library. In the back corner lay piles upon piles of newspapers, reaching the height of many of the girls. The paint crumbled, revealing the concrete walls, the ceiling fans grumbled under the strain of years of hard work, sun beams peaked through the window shutters, illuminating the dust dancing in the air. This classroom however, no matter its aged appearance, was a safe place for these girls. There were no men, no brothers or fathers; the girls laughed and chatted without a care. The noise rung joyfully through the room and I felt encouraged to take my first class.
I was welcomed with big smiles, eyes wide with excitement and a sense of respect. As I sat in front of these girls and saw the way they looked at me, I felt the delight that was building within me to have the opportunity to lead such rewarding classes. The initial nerves surrounding such a task quickly diminished. Nothing, I have found, gives one confidence like passion and interest in something. In the first class, I talked with the girls about the importance of team work and supporting each other; I spoke of my own troubles as a young girl and how tackling them alone was hard and destructive, but with just one other person I was able to overcome them. I chose to include the activity of building a human pyramid – a more enjoyable way to demonstrate how the girls can support each other, encourage each other to be strong and stand up to their problems as a united front. At the end of the class they came and shook my hand and asked me eagerly when I was next coming back. I was told they were very excited and grateful that I was there – though I found that they were not the only ones feeling extremely grateful. This opportunity is something which I will forever cherish – these girls have helped change my outlook on my future, they have helped to teach me about the importance of making the most of what you have and what is available to you. Life has to be grabbed by both hands and every moment should be appreciated for what it is. One should laugh and smile at any given opportunity, just like the girls at Shaheen.
It was not only the lively girls who left an impression. The young women who were now staff at Shaheen have left a permanent imprint on my memory. I was lucky enough to hear many stories of the struggles that they faced as they were growing up. Most of the women were always welcoming with warm smiles, but there was one younger girl who made an impression to me through her withdrawn behaviour. I learned later that she was only 18 and had already been through a life of troubles; troubles no woman should ever have to struggle through, let alone by the young age of 18.
This girl, Saleha, was married off to a man aged 70 when she was 14, all of which was arranged by her own elder sister. The man had offered to pay her, for Saleha’s hand in marriage. Despite Saleha’s refusal, the marriage went forward and on the first night the man forced sex upon Saleha. This story was already ripping through me, such feelings of pain for the young girl. I felt the disgust rising within me and yet the lady told it like a story she hears and tells every day. This perhaps was the feeling which sickened me most. After the first night, Saleha could not allow the man to touch her again, so she began locking herself in her room in the evenings. This however only increased the torment. The people of the family began piercing her with a long rod through the bedroom window – in response to this she began hiding under the bed. They then began flooding the floor so that again, she was left with no escape. This abuse carried on for a year before she was finally allowed to meet with her parents. As she explained how she had been treated, her father seemed unfazed and told her she was to return to him. It was ‘the proper thing to do’. The familial inputs of this story was another aspect which I could not get my head around, how could such abuse have begun with and later carried on due to Saleha’s family. A huge feeling of guilt ran through me, I come from the most loving family, my mother texting me every other day to check I am well and crying from her feelings of pride. Saleha’s parents did not know or care to whom she was married to, and did nothing to stop his mental and physical abuse. In the end, Saleha’s father boarded a train with her in order to insure she went back to her husband – her only escape was to jump off the train, she attracted the attention of the police and this lead to her safety. By the age of 18 she had found her way to Shaheen where they helped her to gain some design skills and bangle making – this allowed her to make her own money and gave her a sense of independence. Her quiet and withdrawn behaviour was a stronger cover than I could expect from a girl of 18 who had been through such tortuous 4 years. I cannot even begin to imagine the mental state I would be in after such abuse – Saleha, although withdrawn, had kept going, she managed her own escape. Saleha, though withdrawn, is perhaps one of the strongest young women I will ever meet.
As my days passed at Shaheen, I gathered a number of stories from these brave women who stood before me. Sultana’s face is one which I will always remember; she carried possibly one of the warmest, most beautiful smiles in Shaheen, though her face was full of scars, making her smile that much more powerful. I learned that Sultana, at the age of 17, had a stone crushed down on her face and a knife taken across her nose, almost taking it off, by her husband. She was pregnant at the time and gave birth in the hospital after being put in a coma by her abusive husband. She now lives in a women’s hostel and comes to work at Shaheen everyday – she travels around the local communities, interfering in domestic abuse cases, she fights for women’s rights and over the years has won awards for her courageous efforts. I also heard Wasim’s story, who when she was 14 was married off by her family to a man from Dubai, who again, was over 70 years old. The man forced sex upon the young girl and she fell pregnant. However, as Wasim waited to go to Dubai in a hotel, the man’s previous wife paid her a visit and started a fight, the husband sent Wasim home to wait for him there. Wasim’s father beat her that night, as he believed she had run away, she said gravely that this is something she will never forget. After this crushing ordeal, Wasim began coming to Shaheen and since has managed to raise her confidence. Before she felt that she had no voice, that her safety and wellbeing were of no importance – now she is on the forefront of fighting against child marriage in the local community.
I met many more and heard countless stories of the courage, bravery and strength these wonderful women possess. When first hearing such tales, I was sad, I felt broken down by the stories I heard, I cried and spoke to those close to me for support in managing what I had heard. However, I found that instead of focusing on the horrific stories of their pasts, if I focused on the women in their present states of mind, the burden lightened. These women are role models, they are the queens of self-belief and confidence. They show that no issue is too tough to be tackled. Their courage is something which I will always take with me as it connects to me on a more personal level as I too went through an abusive episode when I was 18 years old. The event destroyed me for years after, I lost who I was and behaved in ways I wish I could change. Although I was stronger by the time I travelled to India, the journey I embarked upon and the women I met have only given me more strength and confidence. They helped me confirm the past I have does not define who I am in the present day. That positives can be taken from it – I believe my passion for women’s rights and equality may have been empowered by the episode which occurred to me and I think it has made me stronger today. So I thank these women for their incredible strength and courage and for showing me that your past does not need to define or matter to who you are in the present, but that it can also to make you stronger by accepting your past, taking the feelings from it and using them to empower yourself and make yourself the person you want to be.
