Being 22 / The Niece

Being 22

The Niece A, our friend who she has the hots for D, husband B and I went out last night. Basically A wanted to meet up with D but insisted that I should come along, so I tagged along B.

It was a strange experience. Both these 22 year olds had their hormones raging all over the place. B and I felt really old watching the coochie-cooing getting more intense as the evening progressed and the liquor flowed.

It was really funny – D would go downstairs to smoke a joint with his friends and A would say to the both of us how worried she was that she may have lost her chance with him cos she mentioned her boyfriend back home by mistake. And she’d fill us in on all the little details of the conversation between them in the car. And then she would go down and D would tell us how awesomely hot he thought she was. And he’d fill us in on all the little details of the conversation between them in the car. Then A would come back up and say she wanted D to drop her home but how should she breach the subject. And then D would tell us that he really wanted to drop her home but how should he wangle it since we were going her way and his home was in the opposite direction.

And B and I just sat there like wise ringmasters orchestrating this little lust charade.

At one point B was giving A intense gyan on life, marriage, freedom etc. and she seemed to be listening to him really carefully and then suddenly she went into ‘Are you sure it’s okay that I mentioned my boyfriend to D?’ B and I just burst out laughing cos it was so obvious that she hadn’t heard a word he was saying and was thinking of him the whole time!

Anyway, he did drop her home. And they’re on a dinner date right now. God bless!


The Niece

The Niece, who is in fact boss woman’s niece, is a wonderful person. She is very open and full of life. She tries to juggle the restrictions imposed on her by her conservative Muslim parents with what she wants to do, and seems to get away with most of it. She is here on vacation with her mom, and with dad out of the picture is having a ball wearing spaghetti strap tops and meeting boys.

She is here to be shopping for her supposed wedding with her boyfriend. She said something to me when she first got here that I found really strange. She said she couldn’t wait to get married cos then she would have so much freedom. I told this to boss woman cos I found it incredulous. And then boss woman explained the sad story to me. Her boyfriend is right now of course madly in love with her and agrees with whatever she wants to do. Her father is extremely patriarchal and she thinks that the only way she can gain her freedom is to get married to this guy. Boss woman has met this guy and says that he is extremely weak and is the kind of person who would give in to his parents and expect her to conform once she is married to him. Which means that she will be in a worse trap. She even admitted to boss woman that she would feel guilty to leave him even if she wanted to, since she has been in a relationship with him for so long. I felt so terrible. Not A, who is so full of life, so talented, who can do so much.

Boss woman is in fact more thrilled than A about D! Today when she came up and told us that she’d got an SMS from him asking if he could take her out to dinner (“Oh no – I’m so bad at restaurants. I have no table manners!” How I love this girl!) boss woman was all rah-rah telling her how she must meet other boys and not think that her boyfriend is the best etc. “Yes aunty, you’ve given me that lecture hundreds of times”.

I really do hope it works out for her. She is so aware of her limitations, and it does not occur to her that she just needs to take a stand and break free. Actually I’m sure it does occur to her, but it must be so scary to take on such an authoritative dad whom she loves deeply.

Today when she told me that the official story is that she is going out with me since she can’t tell her mom she is going out with D, boss woman said something very poignant. She said, you know A, I think your mom knows exactly what’s going on. Mothers always know. She wants you to hide and get away with it. Because if you were to tell her or she were to get to know, it would be her duty to stop you. But she doesn’t want to stop you. She wants you to do all this cos she knows she didn’t, and doesn’t want your life to end up like hers.

C’mon A – you can do it.