A Fairer World

A Fairer World

Dushambe, Tajikistan; 2003

The boys were running around outside playing. I could hear them squealing and giggling as they chased each other around the yard. The yard wasn’t very big but for a ten and nine year old it sufficed to keep them occupied in their games. I could hear their bare feet clapping the concrete floor when they came inside for a glass of water. I heard the refrigerator open and the rattling of glasses, the opening of the water bottles and the sloshing of water as it spilled. And then the squealing and giggling resumed outside. It went on for a few more minutes before there was a sharp cry and then tears. I dropped my sponge into the bucket and ran outside with the other girl to find my brother looking anxiously on as the other boy’s knee slowly trickled blood onto our yard. I took charge and poured cold water on his knee and sloppily applied a band-aid on it before the boys returned to their games and I to the chores with the girl.

I had personal chores at my father’s house in New York and my mother’s in Dushambe, such as picking up my clothes and cleaning my room but, at the tender age of 12, I had never before scrubbed a floor on my knees nor washed the windows and tables. But here I was, with a girl who was meant to be a guest at my house, doing just that. When she arrived, I had tried to suggest a number of things we could do while she visited but she had quietly shook her head. Smilingly, she fetched the cleaning supplies and, in broken English, suggested to me that we clean. Not knowing what else to do, I obliged. My brother, having just recovered from rather intense altitude sickness associated with the drive from Tashkent, Uzbekistan, was happy to go outside to play with her brother while we two remained inside my mother’s home and cleaned. This was, for her, normal. For me, it was sufficiently quirky to almost be fun but it left me somewhat uneasy and not because of the actual chores.

But still I wondered, why were the boys playing outside while we girls were meant to be doing chores inside? Why did she and I live such different lives? What made us different except where and to whom we were born?

Flash forward a few days and I found myself sitting high on a majestic horse, grinning foolishly. My brother whimpers nearby. I plead to be allowed to ride. They decline and indicate that my brother may if he chooses. I am relegated a donkey that I proceed to steer directly into a wall. Later, at tea, they ask if he’ll stay the night. His continued whimpering is the only response they get from him. My mother and I are the only women in the room. The rest duck in to serve us tea and immediately dart back outside. I kept waiting for them to come back, for the mother to engage in conversation and for them to ask for me to spend the night because, after all, most of the household members were women. But it never happens.

Why were the women left as mere servants in the party and not active participants? Why were my mother and I treated differently? Why couldn't I ride the horse?

Then suddenly the trip is over and I’m sitting in a small aircraft, sweating profusely, with my brother and my nanny headed back to the United States. They hand out boiled eggs instead of peanuts. I wiggle around before take off and the seat in front of me is suddenly in my lap. Once we’re in the air, I’m freezing cold. And then about fourteen hours later, I’m back in the US.

The memories of a twelve year old are fragile. They come and go and putting together a vignette from them is like sewing together a coherent patchwork quilt from scraps found strewn about the house. There are some pieces that are too small to cover large expanses and others that feel so large that they overwhelm the blanket. But at the end, something sticks out.

I left that trip with this this peculiar feeling in my stomach that didn’t pass even after I reacclimated to American food. It didn’t pass once school started again. It didn’t pass even after I had all but forgotten the trip. In fact, it still hasn’t passed.

From that day onward I had a burning desire to make the world a fairer place. How I planned to do that has taken on different forms, shedding one skin for another, adopting a variety of different words to describe the same thing, diverse career paths and even fields but at the end of the road lies the same bright light. 
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