Some women shouldn’t become mothers

Last week, while wandering through a museum with my mother, I told her that she never should have had kids. She thought I was joking. Made a comment about how I wouldn’t have existed then and something about the best parts of her life.

We had come to visit the Silk Roads exhibition at the British Museum at my mother’s request. She is an Irish woman who followed a man to Egypt, lived in Cairo for a decade, converted to Islam and speaks, reads, and writes Arabic to a standard that is the envy of many a native speaker. She is no stranger to the lure of the Silk Roads.

We were somewhere between Samarkand and the Sogdians when I brought this up, although I’m not entirely sure how we got onto the topic. My mother responded that Egypt had brought her the three most important things in her life; her Islam, me, and my brother. I conceded on the point of her faith but refused to yield when it came to the birth of myself, or my brother. I told her there were better things she could have done.