Women: One sacrifice at a time
This is a true story.
In 1983, my father’s construction company transferred him to war-torn Iraq to build irrigation canals. (At the time, Iraq was smack in the middle of its eight year war with Iran.) I was seven and my sister was four and we lived in a small Turkish settlement on the outskirts of a town called Miqdadiyeh, about 65 miles from the only International School in the whole of Iraq.
And the distance was not our only obstacle to an education. Between Miqdadiyeh and the school in Baghdad, there were no less than half a dozen check-points guarded by Iraqi soldiers holding scary looking guns. Above us, with too regular a frequency, were the Irani bomber planes, on route to deliver their payloads to God knows where.
Thankfully my mother was not the kind of woman who was about to let silly little things like F-14 Tomcats stand between her daughters and a multi-lingual education.
For three years, at 4:30 am each morning, in the bright of the vast Iraqi moon she woke us, dressed us, and bundled us into a car. By 5 am, we were on the road. At 6:30 am, while on route, she would wake us up again, hand us our breakfast, wipe away our sleep faces, straighten out our clothes. Then at around 7 am, give or take a few minutes per each check-point, she would usher us in to our classrooms.
But then, what?
She could not very well “drop us off” and head back. Not with round-trip four hour commute, not to mention the many dangers along the way.
So she would find herself a bench, in the shade, right outside the school building. And wait.
And wait.
And wait.
And wait.
Every day. Days on end. From 7 am to 3 pm, she sat there in 90+ degree Iraqi heat. She sat there armed with no distractions but a good book and a soggy lunchtime sandwich.
After several week, the teachers at the school began to take pity on the strange woman who sat outside their classrooms silently, forever waiting. First they brought her water. Then they brought her books. Then they said, why not wait inside, where at least it is air-conditioned. Then a few months later, the flu waylaid their math teacher, and they said, well you are always here anyway, so why not sub in and teach?
What did my mother know about teaching mathematics? Not much. But she was smart. With her dad as a professor, teaching was in her blood. Besides, she had had to do a lot of math to earn her chemical engineering degree, so why the hell not?
And thus began my mother’s now thirty-two year career as a teacher. All for the sake, the safety, the education of her daughters.
Our lives have changed significantly since those parched years in Iraq…
…and yet to this very day, whenever I struggle, whenever I fall, whenever I feel like giving up, I can always close my eyes to see my mother waiting patiently in the shadows. Waiting for my success. Waiting for me.
Women matter. Mothers matter. If for nothing else then for their astonishing willingness to sacrifice their present for their children’s future.
Like my mother.
