exposed cerebral cortex of a proletariat bike slut

My eyes are still misted over, as I struggle to collect myself after just finishing the last pages of “A thousand splendid suns.”

I had to actually take a break from this book last night, and wait until I was in the confines of my parent’s living room to finish it.  I’ve never had to isolate myself with a book before in order to handle it, as if it were some strong opiat.  A drug that is necessary to the user, but brings with it such fierce effects that it must be done in private.

As I battled through all the stories of abuse in this book, part of my mind was preoccupied, forming arguments.  Eventually I had to stop reading, and begin to commit these fleeting thoughts to paper before they formed a burning hole in my soul.

I thought about the cultural differences present in Afghanistan, rationalizing somewhat the behavior of the disgusting Rasheed (read the book. you will know who I’m talking about).  But I couldn’t. I couldn’t attribute his malice to culture.

No matter where he was raised, I know with a comforting certainty that my father would never, NEVER, lay an angry hand on a woman.  Whether it be Kabul, Meridian, Karachi…it wouldn’t matter what land would cultivate him into a man, what culture he would be washed in.  He would never hit a woman.  He wouldn’t kill a spider in the sink at their weekend house, instead he brought morsels of food. And was devastated for three days when he found it lifeless.

Of course it would be argued that this view is biased.  Regular, ordinar Germans were turned into Nazis. I’ve studied it in a psychology class, how it happens that most people will do what they are told, regardless of the effect it has on humanity.

But I don’t believe it.  I believe strongly in free will, in the id and the superego, in the inherent realization of these (unless one is a sociopath).  And it is because of this firm belief that I know I will not be a judgemental first world bitch when I go to work with women in third world countries.  I feel that I come off sounding like a religious zealot when I write this, which terrifies me to the core.  But are religious zealots constantly challenging their beliefs? I hope that gives my passion a little credit.  I am worried that if my hopes someday come true and I am working with women, educating them, gingerly encouraging them to leave abusers, to make it their own way, earn their own money…I am always haunted by the thought that I will be callously stepping on their culture.  (I have in my mind the picture of that gross guy from beauty and the beast, who thinks he is helping Belle by trying to marry her…god forbid I should ever turn into that, American that I am)

anyway.  God I’m glad I wasn’t born into Laila’s life in Kabul.  Or any other Afghan woman for that matter, married off at 14 or 15, laying still under the fat belly of a sweaty naked man as he tries to force a son out of my womb.

and there I am turning into a judgemental american bitch, again.