My Protruding Eyes

Yemenat

Ahmed Saif Hashed

Before I understood the meaning of marriage, I expressed a desire to marry a woman perhaps four times my age.

One day, I tried to hold onto her, preventing her from leaving our home because I wanted to marry her, without knowing anything about the reality of marriage, other than her presence in our home.

As I grew a little older and began to understand a bit about marriage, I would look at my face in the mirror and see my ugliness in my protruding eyes.

More than that, I noticed that some of my peers would point out my bulging eyes, and sometimes they would tease me about them, leaving scars within me that perhaps lasted for years.

One day, I asked my mother in a way that implied: Why did God make me ugly with protruding eyes and not equal to my peers? She replied that she heard from my father, “I resemble my grandfather Hashem in his eyes.” It was inherited genes that passed through my father, making me an heir to what I did not want. On another occasion, she tried to comfort me by saying that she craved a beautiful child, whose wide eyes were even more beautiful, while I could not see myself that way.

Perhaps I thought this way one day. I had no choice even in selecting my eyes or my face or anything that pertains to my body. The simplest aspects of my being were not within my control, and I had no say or option in them. I did not decide them, nor did those who created me consult me on how I should be. It was a matter entirely beyond my desire and will!

As I grew older, I would ask myself: Would the one