ENG

As a family man I have come to appreciate and embrace the peaceful and yet exhilarating moment when I look back to the eventful unfolding throughout my life. It has been a journey of success, failure hardship and light moments. In my early days I had no idea of what being a family man feels like despite the fact that I could see the set up in our family and those of my friend’s, but being the man in the family was a thought that never exist in my mind. Being brought up with an Islamic background, it calls for so much curiosity and the whole concept of marriage is engulfed in mystery especially in one’s tender age. This is because there is a lot of sex segregation as the religion advocates for utmost purity and embraces marriage as holy matrimony that must be observed with caution and respect. In my early years I had no idea of what marriage required. At a tender age, I was customarily engaged to my wife, a girl whom I barely knew but my mom and my sister oversaw the approval process. It is a customary that a wife is identified at an early age and the girl grows up in an upright manner and totally reserved for their husband. My wife was in elementary school by then, she probably had no idea that I was going to be her future husband until later and she had to observe her ways till we got engaged. Marriage was to be the most life changing aspect in my life and little did I know.

Few years ago, back when I was studying English at Kennesaw University, I was just a simple guy with little to show but I worked with determination each day knowing that I was prepared for more. I lived a simple life, I came from a middle-income family and what I could afford was the usual basics of life. College life wasn’t as easy as there was so much to cover in course work.

I was a determined young man so, I had to put some extra work. I remember sitting in my small room and wondering what the future held for me. I knew in the back of my mind that there were many obligations that awaited me. This only pushed me to work hard and to be a self-sufficient man capable of supporting my family and making sure my siblings would look up to someone as their inspiration and role model. I loved reading articles in all the fields but the most thrilling I found to be those of political science and social analysis. The Middle-East is a place of many trades and occurrences as we all know it. I liked to keep my mind focused on my future goals that were highly inclined to the political world.

It’s always the dream of every young mind to achieve great things and become a highly respected personality. I did not expected that I would be married after few weeks of my engagement.I put my mind to financial and image recognition, but the rest was something that crossed my mind when I had too much of free time to myself. This was the time that my dad would cross my mind; he was a responsible man who worked through thick and thin to ensure his family had access to all that was necessary despite many financial constraints. He ensured that my siblings and I had all the things that were needed throughout our college. My mother was a happy woman who always saw the family’s happiness. In Muslim culture women have a major role in ensuring that the family is okay starting with the head of the family, the father. This was what brought me to the ideas of a having a happy family of my own. All that I imagined about a family was the aspect of togetherness and seeing the kids off to school while keeping a decent home.

Being free spirited was an awesome thing, just getting on with life and all that was expected from me was good health, good grades and to be presentable and well kept. Before I got married I called my mother and I told her that I do not want to marry now. I did not feel that I was ready to be married. “Finish your English language program then come back before you start your academic classes because, the girl is waiting for you and she stopped going to her college because she wants to study with you in the U.S.A”. My mother said . I couldn’t say no to her and I did what she asked me to do. I would describe this as the event that change my life. Getting married led me to realize the many responsibilities that come along with it. Being single was a whole different experience, I cared less about my diet as I would find myself comfortably eating dry pizza for dinner and the following morning wake up to milk and cornflakes and that would be all for the day. A wife in the house meant that all had to change, from my eating habits to my time management. Women are meant to ensure that their husbands are full and clean, it comes as a natural obligation to them in our culture to cook and clean and therefore so much had to change that I fell into a sudden comfort zone. Little did I know it was all a constantly changing sequence of events.

I learned a lot of things from my marriage and the most important thing that I have learned that it is hard to find people who think of you before they think of themselves. When I love or like someone I usually think of him or her before myself and expect the people who love me to do the same, but I found out that it just exists in my mind. However, I knew there would be an addition to the level of responsibilities in the house, and therefore I had to work a lot. I worked as a handyman with a Jamaican leady because the salary that my government gives us is not enough for rent, bills and food etc.

I currently have to think of every expense and income that comes my way. Besides the financial part, there is an aspect of being the first role model for my wife and maybe kids in the future who sees you as the protector of the family.