I’ve been used to spotlighting the pain and stories of others. But today, I will tell you about why I’m here — at AAC, in this space, amongst a community I had vowed to shun forever.
I want to take you back to the fall of 2001. It had just become that much more complicated to look Muslim and to be brown in America — the attacks on the World Trade Centers and the Pentagon changed many of our lives. I, for one was, a nerdy looking 8th grader navigating a complex world of anthrax terrorist jokes and trying to fit in. These were the priorities that consumed my thoughts before two o’clock on most days.
But when it was time to go home….when I got off that school bus, my priorities changed. After that, my focus shifted to protecting my mother from my father.
My father was abusive: emotionally, financially and, physically.
I was still too young to know what was going on but I did know my dad would come home somewhere around 4 or 5. My mother was our rock. She was the steady hand of our family, the person who cared about us the most and had sacrificed her life for us in so many ways already. She left what she knew for us — she left her friends, family, her home, for a life that was unfamiliar with an abusive husband at the time — my father.
On that day, after a long day of making sure my glasses weren’t knocked off of my face, I came home to find my dad… He was feeling feisty, confident and a little more aggressive than usual.
A good day of abuse meant a little verbal abuse, yelling at everyone for minor things or manipulating his kids to side with their dad over their mother. But today, wasn’t a good day. No. Today she said something that he did not like. And — that’s all it took sometimes. And in front of my younger brother and younger sister, my dad became more just a bit more agitated and a bit more aggressive. There was my dad…. with a knife in his hand, confidently on his way to hurt my mother. He had been abusive before… but a knife was a bit scarier than a fist or a hand. In that moment I knew that this had to be the last time he was going to do this.
So I stood in front of my father, yelled at him and told him that he had to go through me first if he wanted to hurt anybody else. I protected my family. I called the cops on him. I defused a violent situation by risking my body and my wellbeing — to save my mother. In that moment, I gained the courage to stand up to my own father, a person who helped bring me into this world and was supposed to love me unconditionally. He wasn’t going to hurt my mother, or my brother or my sister.
I took a side. I took my mom’s side. Against my father, against toxic masculinity, against abuse and domestic violence.
Often, the story of abuse is told by the women in our community and I often find myself, wondering why the rest of us — men — are quiet, looking down, shying away from the conversation. And I would lie to you today if I told you that the toxic masculinity has not crept down the family tree. We have been passed down convoluted ideas about manhood — to be strong, to not cry — that directly play into promotion of violence against women. Very often, those who commit domestic violence don’t stop there. They terrorize women, and then they terrorize nightclubs in Orlando and shoot up our high schools.
How do you emulate manhood when your father is everything you don’t want to be? His abuse has complicated my outlook on what it means to be a man, my romantic relationships, even my notion of what fatherhood might look like one day.
Domestic violence is prevalent in our Afghan American households, even today, yes, even in northern Virginia and Fremont and Queens. There are battered women in our community who are unable to escape their abusers, because their community refuses to support them because of so-called religions reasons. Because being complicit by turning a blind eye is easier than calling out than a guy with stature in our community. I’ve witnessed protection of those guilty, for the sake of reputation and at the expense of justice for victims in our community.
Our mothers, our sisters, our aunts and grandmas deserve better. We all do.
I’m also here to tell you that some other warning signs always precipitate domestic violence.
“I pay the bills around here so how dare you say no to sex with me tonight?”
“I’m sorry I yelled at you but you didn’t iron my clothes the way I wanted them to.”
“How dare you talk to that other guy?” or “Why did you add that guy on Facebook?”
“I am sorry you felt that way.”
I shared my story today — my mother’s story, my family’s story — because we often brush aside this topic. It’s a blemish on our community because it is so prevalent. The toxic masculinity, the abuse, the domestic violence — it’s silently tearing our diaspora apart.
I hope that after hearing what I told you today, you practice a bit more due diligence. Look a little closer and ask a few more questions so in the end, we protect our most vulnerable. If you witness abuse, call them out. If you know a victim of domestic violence, contact the right authorities and those with resources. If a guy is showing problematic behavior, call them out — be they your own father, brother, boyfriend or cousin.
I admit all the privileges I have as a men as I stand before you today, but I ask everyone — including our sisters — to do one thing when women share their story of agony: believe them when they come forward and empower those who suffer abuse.
We cannot move forward if the men in our community refuse to discuss the toxic figures in our lives — even if it’s that crazy uncle or possessive cousin. We men have an obligation. We must learn how to open our hearts and be vulnerable — it is not a weakness, it’s strength. Do not let masculinity be a prison. This much we owe to the women in our community. We can either be a destructive force that causes pain or we can create a safer future for the Afghan American diaspora. What world do you want your kids to grow up in?
** Speech was given at the 2018 Afghan American Conference at New York University in New York City.