The Sins Of Maryam

Everyone has a dark past. Including Maryam. And hers is something too humiliating to tell. Too vivid to forget. A memory she so desperately prays to erase from her mind. Maryam always prays. Raised as a Muslim, she was taught and trained to oblige and beseech for God’s forgiveness. Five times a day. Yet she can never seem to shake off her past. It keeps lurking around. Stalking. Waiting to pounce and stab her in the back. The more she tries to break away, the more it strangles her. Her dark past is one odd story. One with no marked beginning nor definitive end.

When Maryam was six, she would have friends over. And by friends, it means the sons and daughters of their neighbors. Friends by default. She always had a small group of girls in the living room, playing house, dancing around, or just gossiping. Whatever 6-year-olds gossip about. But on a virgin afternoon, they saw a man outside her house. He was standing quite far, but they could clearly see him. All of him. He had a funny-looking face, a peculiar mold of a grin, smirk, and frown. He looked confused yet pleased. Disturbed yet elated. Everyone started gasping and giggling, but Maryam couldn’t comprehend the view. “Is this supposed to be funny?” she thought to herself. She didn’t know where to look for the source of laughter. Until she realized that the man was moaning. That explained the grins, smirks, and frowns. He had been stroking his genitals for God knows how long while staring directly at the little girls. The others were laughing in her ears saying how weird he was. That he was probably homeless. And harmless. But somewhere in her gut, Maryam didn’t see anything funny in that. It was incomprehensible, for sure, but not funny. She doesn’t remember when or how that scene ended, but to this day, she can still picture the strange man with his disgusting gaze, his inexplicable pubic hair, and his soulless face. She feels sorry for him, but above all, she feels sorry for herself. That bizarre moment had changed her life forever. That man had taken away a chunk of her innocence. When she needed it most.

It was not obvious when this started to affect her, and sometimes, she still wonders about the timeline of a few past events, but when she was eight years old, she would go to a small room in her grandma’s house with her male cousin who was a year older than her. They would start rubbing their private parts against each other. No kissing, no cuddling, no talking. They would sit in front of each other, legs open, and just started stroking. Light grinding. She can’t even recall any sensation out of it. They didn’t moan or groan as that homeless man did. There was no particular satisfaction, and who knew where they had learned it from. She doesn’t even remember ever seeing anything like that on drawings, movies, or graffiti. But they would do it anyway, once in a while. When he visited and no adults were around. When this all began and ended was a blur to her. One day, they grew up and never spoke of it. As teenagers and adults, they would meet and chat with each other during family gatherings pretending they had forgotten about that “fun room”, but deep down they kept a secret. A secret that loiters behind their smiles and familial banter. A secret that she would never understand.

The first time Maryam witnessed a sexual portrayal was in her classmate’s house. She was in middle school, and her group of friends had decided to hang out after school. Back then, everyone at school had a group and its official members. If not, you were either extremely nerdy because you don’t know how to make friends, or extremely rich because you don’t need to make friends. Maryam’s group was not popular by all means; in fact, her squad was a collection of misfits. A bunch of sad girls not pretty enough to be popular nor rich enough to survive middle school on their own. There was the big-boned girl who had a Russian last name because her parents were obsessed with a famous Russian tennis player. There was a tall and slim dark-skinned girl from East Timor whose father is in the army. There was a super quiet girl who had menstrual issues all the time. And there was a vague female character whose name had disappeared in one of Maryam’s long-term memory files. All she can recall is her thinning hair and her annoying smile. Maryam had wondered about her odd strands of hair at some point and thought that she might secretly have been an older lady in disguise. An old lady who craved for the glorious youth.

That day, they went to the girl’s house whose father is a soldier. It was a typical military house. In her country, at least. And it somehow looked like a bunker. In her memory, that house was just one big camouflaged tent. The girl said her father watched these “special” movies sometimes and she knew where he’d hid them. She pulled out a video, placed it into the VCR and pressed play. Maryam didn’t exactly know what she meant by “special”, but she fell out of her chair when he saw a man shoving her penis into a girl’s rectum. It was classic anal sex next to a pool on a hot summer day somewhere in the Western world. She later learned that the position is called “doggy style”. Because they look like dogs. “That makes sense” she uttered. She came home that day and resumed normal activities, but she couldn’t get rid of that image from her head. It would haunt her every now and then. She was officially cursed.

Somewhere between middle school and high school, she started masturbating. She doesn’t remember how she learned how to, but one night she just started moving her hand and fingers. And it was good. Again and again, she’d do it when it was dark and quiet. And every time she did, she would slap her face and promise herself not to do it again. Until she did. It was a cursive cycle, for sure. As time went by, she experimented with erotica: videos, drawings, stories, toys, even condoms. There was no penetration, but the repeated circular rubbing was enough to take her to such a wondrous climax. The ecstasy that became a bit too familiar. She was beyond cursed now. She had become an addict.

But the unpleasant side of sex revealed itself in high school. The first time she was sexually harassed in the middle of a huge crowd. She and her cousins were lining up to enter a stadium where a concert was held. It was a popular band at that time, and his uncle, the father of her first-ever grinding partner, had bought tickets for everyone. She just turned seventeen and was embracing her physical transformation as her body flourished. Any guy would ignore her mediocre face as they gaze at her juicy bosom. That late afternoon, she had been waiting in line for a number of hours, pressed against everyone around her. Her sisters and cousins spread out in the crowd. She was standing there trying to survive the heat and slow movement when she felt a groping. The man was groping her right breast, probably for as long as she had been standing there. She was surprised at how slow she reacted to the fondling and how dumb it made her feel, but she was more surprised when she looked at the fondler. She knew his face. It was her uncle. In shock, she wiggled her way into the crowds and caught up to her sister. She can’t remember if she told her sister, or anyone for that matter, but she knew she had to forgive him. He was family after all. Plus, he’s dead now.

A similar incident happened in public transportation when she was in college. It was one evening when she was coming home from an English course. The journey was an hour away and it had already gotten dark. It was an old minibus packed with people. And the passengers were sitting next to each other. When she finally realized that a man was groping her breast, she reacted exactly the same way she did years ago. She bolted. She got off way before her destination and started pacing. For the first time, she could feel an inexplicable implosion of anger and stupidity. She wanted to scream. She wanted to yell at that man and swear at his face. And not just him. But all the creeps she had to deal with. How sweet it would be to slap their greedy cheeks and punch their pervert heads. But again, she chose to shut her mouth and swallow the bitterness. Perhaps these men were her punishment for all those lustful sins she committed. With her cousin, with her school friends, with herself. Perhaps, she deserved it.

It was only when she reached her late twenties that she knew it was a problem. The sexual harassment, the solo sex, the erotica. They must have stemmed from something. Maybe it was the homeless man, maybe it was that cheesy doggy-style sex clip, maybe it was her cousin, maybe it was his dad. Maybe it was her. As she crawled into her thirties, the erotica eventually slowed down, the solitary sex became less frequent, and the sexual harassment turned into an insignificant detail buried deep in her memory. Yet something still lingers. An evil voice still whispers to her. “You deserve it.” “Come on, do it again.” “You're a slut.” At times, she'd win over this voice and at times she'd lose. But whoever and whatever that is, she wants it gone forever. If only she could erase her dark past. If only.

Tonight, she prays a little harder.