Women Dreaming

Set in an orthodox Muslim village in Tamil Nadu the book tells the stories of several women. As girls they enjoyed brief glimpses of carefree abandon and sly subversion. As soon as they are married off as teens, the trajectory of their lives is completely at the mercy of their husbands.

Mehar has quietly had numerous abortions, her wildly misogynist and fiercely religious husband refuses contraception of any kind. She leaves with her two children when he decides to take a second wife. Mehar's daughter Sajida is caught between two warring parents, one perpetually miserable, the other intent on curtailing her dreams of becoming a doctor. Parveen is divorced and disgraced to hide her husband's impotence. Subaida is widowed when the man she is married off to at 14 is revealed as gay, prompting his death by suicide.

It is breathtaking how absolutely curtailed these women's lives are, how absolutely trapped not only by the hands of an abusive or disinterested spouse but by the very system that sees nothing wrong with marrying them off as children. Of a faith that empowers the men over their lives. Of a generational helplessness that feeds this cycle of misery.

I was invested in these women's stories but the constant wailing, weeping without end, cursing fate and lamenting their plight, the persistent sobs of hopelessness and the endless keening that seemed to finish every chapter became too much. Their cries became the background noise of the entire story and while it didn't obliterate my sympathies it did have me eager for the book to move on. It never does.