When you hit 30 in Azerbaijan life stops there. You become an enemy of yourself. Oh wait, playback.. when you hit
When we hit glorious 30 single, we enter a new phase of life in Azerbaijan which is called "evdeqalmish"(old maiden). If we have entered as a working career woman self sustaining ourselves, lucky us. If we depend on the family funds, we are s**t out of luck.
To be honest when I started this post, I thought I had so much to say about this stupid concept, but when I started writing anger blocked my logical thinking. Now I am thinking how to finish this post by giving you a clear picture on what it means. Let me start from the beginning then. What it means to be a girl in Azerbaijan.
When you are born, some families mourn as they were expecting a glorious boy. Some cherish you as they know girl is the one at the end of the day who takes a good care of family better than boys. Some sigh deeply and think about the expenses one needs to invest into the development, education, marriage and bla bla bla with lots of troubles for the family. So, you are already born guilty in one or the other way. As you slowly grow older you start experiencing lots of differences between how they treat you and how they treat your brother(s). Your brother automatically obtains freedoms to many things as for you, you have to act girly. While your brother is enjoying himself outside you have to take care of the chores. You help your mother in household, clean, help cooking, take care of the requests of father and clean the s**t after your brother. You slowly start experiencing limitations in your social life. Most of your teenage times, you spend in heavy studies to prepare for the university. If your family is socially able to help you study you are lucky which is another story!, if not, they start telling you not to prepare in vain as they won't be able to send you to school anyway. I guess now I will cover what happens when you do not study.
So, now that you know there is no reason for studying, you stop trying at all. In the meantime relatives and neighbors who have sons start scanning you to see how nicely "domesticated" you are. They keep asking if you are cooking well or know how to clean and stuff. Parents start decorating you like a Christmas tree and take you to different social events like weddings, parties, family meetings and etc. where people can see that the family has a daughter ready for a marriage. When they see you alone, they keep asking if there is "something" which means if there is anyone interested in you. As time passes pressure at home keeps growing. Moms and dads become unbearable. You don't leave the house much. Everyone is wondering when you will get married. Neighbors start "chirping" here and there that somebody's daughter is still "at home" meaning not married. You slowly cut yourself from all communications. You don't leave house alone when you go to markets, to visit your relatives as family needs to guarantee your honor and prevent things like side romance, sex, flirting. You have to continue being virgin as this is the family honor. If you want to get married, you have to stay virgin. Hormons slowly rushing up and down, you have nervous breakdown now and then, stop socializing at all. Eventually you stop going to those social events. Your classmates and friends are all married and have kids.
You hope for the future becomes less and less clear. Eventually you give up and slowly accept that you are "evdegalmish". From time to time there will be someone's relative's cousin's brother-in-laws group mate who is divorced and have two kids. He does not work now but he might in future. Everyone tells you that this is your last chance to have a family. As your age is above 30, you won't have kids anymore. So, this is good chance to take care of somebody else's kids. You either choose to be "free" at husband's house or stay at family and keep being pressured.
Many of these women who get married at later age become a victim of domestic violence but because of family pressures they do not get support to leave their crazy husbands and move back to their loved ones. They choose to suffer which is better than the stamp on your forehead as "evdegalmish".
I just described the life of thousands of young girls in Azerbaijani regions suffering from social concept called "evdegalmish". One thing is important to mention that, families who have enough social income to educate their daughters have a different experience. Educated girls tend to be more independent as they have a social life, they get access to different events, programs, seminars where they develop world vision and better understanding of what they want.
Many of the educated "evdegalmish", spend good old youthood for education, and then more education, and then more. Hungry to learn, they spend all their resources to develop themselves. They become independent and spend most of their "under thirty" for building self confidence, self assurance and self understanding. While they also dream about ideal family, they also understand marrying just a random guy would not do good to them. So, picky enough, they end up in their 30s still single. After certain period of time, dreams like perfect guy, perfect wedding, perfect dress, perfect kids become part of unreachable dream that slowly fades away. Some choose to marry and try to have kids in mid or even late 30s, some choose to continue building a career that benefits not only them, but millions of others. They start seeing the big picture. Some of them choose to marry mostly foreigners (local men in their age are already married) and leave the country. Some stay and fight with this cruel cultural concept and stand true to what they want from life.
Generally accepted perception is that "evdegalmish" can only get candidates from low income families, divorced, widowed, or unsuccessful like these women themselves. People pity them as they can't bear children who will be taking care of them. They will die lonely in house for elderly perhaps and there will not be anyone to buy you a grave stone. What about adoption? Oh thats out of subject. None should adopt a child unless you have a husband and a hostile uterus. Sigh!
Because of this concept and social pressure, many girls drop out of school, end up in early marriages, suicide as a result of forced marriages, get killed by husband as a result of domestic violence, get disonored because some are not virgin and etc. These women spend all their lives worrying that they are not enough, living a depressed life.
In developing countries like Azerbaijan, society and families are not always the best example to follow. Women need strong foundation at kindergarten, at school, at university. They need a social institution to educate, to empower, to inspire girls to get as much as they can from their lives without falling into mentality and tradition trap.
Girls who are the future mothers are the best teachers for their daughters. We need to make sure these girls get a strong foundation and grow up in a healthy environment calling for healthy future. We need to try a lot to prevent cultures from destroying the lives of girls!
What a concept ha?!
nice read.
ReplyDeleteThanks a lot.
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