I have just finished reading A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini. (Loved it, ask me if you want to borrow it :)
It tells of the hardship of two Afghan women during the war and political unrest from the 1970s to the current day, and to compound it further, the oppression of women there.
There were spurts of years whereby women could go to school, hold jobs, walk out into town and bazaars openly without scarves or a male relative as a chaperone. Until the extremists took over and made it so that all live in the world of men to serve only men.
I guess reading the book made me feel very, very thankful to have been born in Malaysia in the 1990s. I can’t imagine having to go through what the female characters went through in the book. Born as a harami (a bastard child), living in a shack making ends meet, if at all… Being married off to the first paedophilic pervert who knocks on the door and then be forced to serve his every whim and fancy without a say in anything, just to be beaten when he gets into a fit.
I cannot… cannot… cannot imagine how women continue living under that oppression, only able to hope for the better for their children’s generation.
And then to know that it still happens today in certain parts of the world, I felt this sudden selfish thankfulness that I am here, in Malaysia, free to get an education, a job, use my laptop and say whatever I want to on this virtual space… Free to live as I wish, with my family and friends.
And yes, many Malaysians have been more openly voicing out how bad we have it here. How our ‘administrators’ have been making a fool out of what’s ours and also making a fool out of themselves on the side. How our country pales in comparison to our neighboring countries. How we could be so much better off if someone did something instead of doing something else. It’s so easy to point out faults.
I don’t intend to point out any.
But I’d just like to take a moment of appreciation for the calm and serenity of 2011 in this lovely city of Kuala Lumpur.
Where the only kaboom you hear is from fireworks at KLCC and not artillery.
A belated Happy Merdeka Day, and Happy Malaysia Day!
