Studying is Serious Business

“Liking boys is haram,” my mom said to me as she drove me home from elementary school.

Even as a seven year-old kid, I was told to “focus on my studies” and to avoid thinking about boys, marriage, or anything pertaining to the opposite gender because it would inevitably lead one down a path of sin and homelessness. My parents believed that boy-crazy girls would end up jobless with an equally useless husband who would be the tragic male equivalent of a “welfare queen.” Whenever I got tired of studying and wanted to watch Beverly Hills, 90210, my dad would say, “Do you want to make a career out of working at fast food restaurants?” Such terror tactics were effective, and I thought that any distractions would result in me being barefoot, pregnant, and abandoned at a Wal-Mart in some small, redneck town in Alabama.

In the Qureshi household, liking a boy was not only seen as a fundamental waste of time but something only worthy of cheap, tacky girls with no family values.

My mom began telling me stories about her college life with the “cheap” girls at the Home Economics College in Lahore very early on. The Home Economics College would not allow any men to come into the campus, and so one can only imagine the sexual tension that existed within the confines of the college walls.

And so, there would be vignettes about girls named Nilofer or Ruksanna or Arfa, All these girls would sneak outside college walls to go drink chai with their boyfriends. At this juncture of the story, Mom would inflect such horror and disgust in her voice that I would think that Lali was just short of being a two-bit hooker turning tricks for a rupee for her pimp. I always expected that Arfa and Ruksanna would meet a tragic end as a victim of an honor killing as a punishment for their sins; instead, when I asked about the fates of these girls, my mom would merely reply, “Oh, well she married her boyfriend ….” Despite the unromantic ending to such a sinful affair, I think I was still supposed to think these girls were as shady as a one-night stand in a motel called the Camelot.

In conclusion, one can gleam a very important message from the above – that foreign parents will do anything, just short of building you a cage inside the basement and feeding you only peanuts, to get you to study hard and get on the honor roll.

-- By Mariam, still an MS1 student