Sultana's Dream: Has it come true?

I was about 4 years old when I started going to school at Oxford International in Bangladesh. My mother tells me I was the first in her line of family to become enrolled in an English medium school. It wasn't until much later in life I could perceive what value that may have held in her eyes.

Apparently I was always excited to go to school. Whenever she would tutor me, I remember being mostly excited to tell her all the new things I'd learn. I loved how she was my first ever educator and my first ever friend. 

But my mother, Fatema Nargis, did not have the same education I did. 

Hailing from Matlab, Chandpur, Nargis was about 3 years old during the Liberation War of Bangladesh. When she was in the 5th grade, her family moved to Dhaka where she eventually studied in Begum Badrunnessa Government Girls' College.  

She then had to halt her studies when she got married to my father at age 20 and later moved to Saudi Arabia. She became a mother to 4 children, to whom – I can honestly say – she dedicated her entire life.

Her mother, my late nani, Monowara Begum, was around 10 years old when she was married off. She told me she never got the chance to go to school in the first place. She eventually became a mother to 8 children. 

My late dadi, Ameena Begum, was 9 when she got married. She too could not pursue formal education. Very early on in life, she became a mother to 10 children. 

The common rhyme between my beautiful mother and my wonderful grandmothers who are no more, is that they lived their lives whole-heartedly dedicated to bringing up their children and looking after their husbands and their families without even the slightest qualms. 

But I always regretted that they could not study past a certain age, nor could they fulfil any dreams of building a career of their own.

My nani used to tell me, when I was just in the playgroup, that she would like to see me pass "MA in Law or Arts". I never understood what that meant. 

These women endlessly encouraged me not to take my education for granted. For anyone who knows me, they know I have somehow always put my education and my work at the centre of my life.

This was my way of expressing gratitude to the women before me and the endless sacrifices they had made to pave the way for me and my generation to pursue the lives we desired and dreamed of.

One person my mother often referenced any time she would share with me stories of her childhood – how studious she used to be, how much she loved Bangla literature and how badly she wanted to become a writer – was Begum Rokeya. 

Begum Rokeya was someone who had greatly inspired Mum. Living in a small town, raised by my grandfather who was a banker, oldest of 8 siblings, my mother had managed to uphold dreams of her own…dreams, she says, mostly unfulfilled, that she wished now upon her children. 

"But I have no regrets. I wish for you to live the life I had forever desired. One where you are, in no way, dependent on another's income – not your father, or your husband," my mother said to me, teary eyed and determined, just a few days ago. 

I see why it was always important for these women before me to see me become financially independent. At times, I cannot, for the life of me, imagine having to fulfil the kind of responsibilities that they, so graciously, fulfilled. 

It was when I pursued my undergrad studies in English at North South University that I finally realised what Mum had forever been pushing me towards. 

In my 3rd year at NSU, during a 2018 International Women's Day programme, I directed and played the role of Sultana in a rendition of "Sultana's Dream". 

That was when my mother's teachings and her inspiration from Begum Rokeya started to become instilled within me. 

Much like my mother Nargis, Begum Rokeya dreamt of a world where women are the leaders, innovators and artists. 

That dream – although bereft of male presence – was a statement, during a time not too unfamiliar from ours, against the blatant subjugation of women. 

The story goes, women live in a female utopia, where men are excluded from the community as women, in a different time, had been kept secluded from society during the practice of purdah. 

Sultana awakes to find herself in a fictional version of her home in Calcutta. Although she is nervous to go outside at first, describing herself as a woman who is practicing purdah and therefore unable to go outside and into spaces with men, this other woman comes in and shows her around the country, explaining all of the technological advancements and improvements the women have been able to make ever since eliminating men from public social life.

Without men, these women have been able to revolutionise society. This world was founded after women were able to gain access to university education and begin to develop their own technological inventions. Sultana is amazed at the utopian qualities of this place and after touring around, falls asleep only to wake once more back in her Calcutta home. Despite that land's verisimilitude, the feminist utopia is revealed to have been only a dream. A dream which showed the promise of a better future.

Learning about this story, learning about the women before me, I had the epiphany of a lifetime. My own life choices made more sense to me. I began working at the age of 15, when most kids don't really have to work, and by this age, I have had two diverse careers, one in teaching and now as a journalist. 

We owe it to them for bringing us here.

It is by dreaming, envisioning, deciding and through the wisdom of major life lessons that we build our lives into art and poetry, my mother always says.

Through hardships and pain, being neglected and subjugated and through our own traumas, something does come alive, I agree. 

To Begum Rokeya, to my mother and to all those who lived a life they sought a revolution for, for the battles they had to silently endure, we thank them earnestly. 

The present is a whole different world altogether. The future can, surely, be better. All we must do now is dream bigger.