The Sadness in Some Arranged Marriages

source

Two generations ago, in my family, it was rather normal for a young woman's marriage to be arranged, particularly if she were twelve years of age and if he were around twenty years older than she. And one generation ago, it was perfectly normal for first cousins to marry - that my parents are indeed first cousins is entirely beside the point, though.

Two years ago this month, my sister was piecing together the requirements of her Media assessment task. She was to create a piece of film depicting the theme 'life and death'. She decided firstly to ask the sweetest couple in our neighbourhood who are around eighty years of age and hold hands wherever they work to partake in this project, and they agreed so long as we provided fruitcake and tea. That was easily arranged, they came to our house and shared their story with us, he, being a German boy, who asked she, being a Polish girl, to the dance, and they were inseparable since. After briefly digesting the preserved cherries and other fruits found in the cake, they were off to be filmed holding one another and puckering their lips and pressing them to one another's.

And that part of my sister's little film was sensational. Despite the awkward kissing scenes and the fact that once you watch it, you realise my sister stood there like a creep recording old people sharing saliva, it was a beautiful sight. In contrast to the sight of the other footage, that is, which contains my grandma Loris. Her husband, deceased for almost thirty years, is remembered by one of our families in one photograph, a singular black-and-white portrait of him sitting alone, smiling. My sister made her way to that family's home to film some footage of it and Loris. "Act sad," my sister directed. "Act sad. Look like you're crying. Stroke the photo. Look sad." Crying from laughter, more like. The footage my sister ended up with was a happy Loris dancing and slapping a photograph of a man no longer here, of a man that she put through emotional turmoil when he was in our midst. 

And it had me thinking - arranged marriages as such are utterly sorrowful. Just as sorrowful as the marriage of my second grandmother, Samia and her husband George. George is over twenty years her senior, and there is not one moment I can recall where they have gotten along with one another. In the photograph below sits their original love for one another, which is rather minimal, and in the photograph below it sits a photograph which shows the reactions they gave to my aunty asking them to pose in a loving embrace. 

In the situation of Loris, though, one would think that despite being forced together, having shared a bed would have made them compassionate to one another on a human basis. I am not sure how her husband was. I never had the opportunity to meet him, however I know of him, and I know that he was a lovely man. And it saddens me, the fate of people in arranged marriages. It is almost dehumanising to partner one with an older spouse.

Beached: the Breaking News that Sparked Cultural Differentiation

source

Ever since I was squeezed through my mother's menstrual passage, ever since my umbilical cord was sliced into and I breathed my first breath and cried my first tears, I have been torn between two cultures.

Today that tearing was emphasised by the viewing of one 'BREAKING NEWS!' segment, which I did not witness by sight by involuntarily witnessed by hearing the deafening roars of my father which mixed between thundering laughs to ground-breaking complaints. This sequence of roaring and complaining did not seem to stop, so much so that they pulled me out of the mild serenity that my study offers in order to see what all of the commotion was about. 

I walked into the lounge room and instantly wished that I had not. "Look!" screamed my father, "it's the millionth time they play this stupid sh*t!" I shook my head when he turned to face the television again, his rear end hanging off the edge of the sofa. He held the remote with both hands between his parted legs and had his head stretched out further than his body as though tht would assist him to hear the television a little better. 

My father likes to do this sort of thing whenever my sister and I watch anything on Australian television. He likes to mock the apparent 'stupidity' of what Australians hold dear to them in comparison to all the action and gore that comes on Lebanese news. "They should get the Japanese to help get rid of that whale!" he remarked, making my insides boil with rage. Yes, my father represents my other culture, the culture that has killed and eaten so many birds in Lebanon that spotting a wild bird or hearing one sing in the morning has become a rarity; a culture that demeans anybody that thinks or acts differently; a culture that I wish I was not a part of. My father, the other day, stood in the doorway eavesdropping on our watching of     and caught one of the young makes saying, "what's up?" repeatedly in a threatening manner. My father immediately took that as an invitation to mock what we choose to view, in turn mocking the culture we were born into. 

Cultural differentiation is a terrible thing when you are experiencing the clashing of two both within and around yourself. Outside of my home is freedom, the ability to think and do as one pleases, the ability to say as one pleases and exist as one pleases, and then inside my home is chaos between what I need and want and what my culture expects of me. To be frank, I could not give a rat's rear end for what my culture demands. I acknowledge it, I try to put up with its presence but I am not allowing myself to be enslaved by it. Though I am not letting it control me, it does get to me, and it makes my living in the Australian culture rather difficult especially when my parents try to further enforce that culture onto me. For years in my adolescence I made up excuses for the lack of participation. How was I to explain that I was being culturally restrained?

And that is not all in the past. My parents only allow me to be as free as I currently am due to revolting against their system my entire life. Even now I am not entirely free. I am not entirely free to the point where when animal activists on television try to make a difference by updating the nation on the progress of a young whale in potential danger, my family decides to mock it, thus mocking something I stand for. If only I had a singular culture. 

At times I feel like that beached whale. Beached on the shore of Lebanon, trying to get a push back into the freedom of Australian waters.