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The Quietest Crime of the Century

December 17, 2025 by Marmarin

It begins plainly.
As all disasters do, once the world has decided not to call them that.

Afghanistan fell under the control of one of the most notorious terrorist regimes of the 21st century. Not in secret. Not in the shadows. In full view of the world. And almost immediately, the most fundamental right of girls and women was removed: education. Efficiently. Publicly. Without embarrassment.

Girls were told to stop attending school at twelve. Then secondary schools closed. Then universities. Then training centres. Then libraries, parks, and public life itself. An entire gender was edited out of learning, thinking, and imagining a future. Not as a misunderstanding. Not as a debate. As policy. As punishment.

This is where global outrage was supposed to arrive.

Instead, something softer, quieter, and far more convenient happened.

Afghan women did protest. Even in Western streets. But we failed to perform loudly enough. We did not dominate headlines. We did not trend. We sat with shock and grief, watching daughters, nieces, sisters, and students disappear from classrooms. We learned that prolonged injustice has a useful side effect: it exhausts its witnesses. Silence followed—not consent, just survival.

We waited.

We waited patiently, because patience is what the world prefers from the oppressed. Perhaps after Ukraine. Perhaps after Palestine. Perhaps once the outrage calendar cleared. We waited for international media to pause, briefly, and acknowledge that half a population had been banned from education. We waited for voices with reach to say this is not normal, not cultural, not temporary.

Occasionally, someone did speak with risk. When Bassem Youssef chose backlash over comfort, it mattered. Courage still matters. But even then, the borders were visible. Afghanistan remained off to the side. Our suffering did not travel well. Solidarity, like everything else, appeared to require the right passport.

So we waited again.

For urgency.
For repetition.
For memory.

Instead, the programming continued.

Talk shows aired. Panels convened. Monologues landed perfectly on cue. Familiar figures were invited back as universal symbols of “women’s struggles,” because symbols are efficient and do not require follow-up. Afghanistan, meanwhile, remained an inconvenience—too remote, too inaccessible, too resistant to being neatly explained between commercial breaks.

Afghan women appeared briefly, when necessary. As inspiration. As tragedy. Never as an emergency. The banning of girls from school became a passing reference, a tragic footnote, something acknowledged and quickly replaced. There were no countdowns. No sustained coverage. No nightly reminders that millions of girls are being denied education by force.

Not because it stopped.
But because it stopped being visible.

Afghanistan no longer offers good footage. Journalists cannot move freely. Cameras cannot enter classrooms—because there are none for girls. Out of sight became out of obligation. In the vacuum, new narrators stepped in: bloggers declaring Afghanistan “peaceful,” praising a so-called liberal regime that governs through fear, erasure, and total control over public and private life.

A tidy solution. No footage, no problem.

This is how neglect works.

Not loudly.
Not angrily.
But politely.

Media platforms congratulated themselves for “raising awareness,” once. Stories were aired, clipped, archived. Attention moved on. The bans remained. Daily. Methodical. Unaffected by applause.

And so the world adjusted.

The shows went on.
The segments refreshed.
The laughter landed.

Meanwhile, in Afghanistan, girls wake up every morning knowing that learning is forbidden to them. Women who once taught, studied, and worked now sit confined, watching years dissolve into obedience. This is not history. It is present tense. It is deliberate. It is one of the largest assaults on female education in modern times.

But it has poor visibility.
It does not serve algorithms.
It does not fit neatly into digestible outrage.

So here we are.

A generation of Afghan girls waiting.
Not for sympathy.
Not for symbols.

Just for the world to look long enough to be unable to look away.

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October 30, 2025 by Marmarin

Faith Amid the Absurd**: As an Afghan woman, I have learned to live with folly as a constant companion. My nation’s tragedy is treated as an exemplary tale rather than a call for justice. When an Afghan woman speaks, she is told to stay silent. *The Modern Empire’s Favorite Performance*: Meanwhile, in the world’s grand theater, state violence is not hidden; it is performed. There are scripts for everything: democracy delivered by drone, humanitarianism enforced through sanctions, and feminism exported through occupation. The actors are the same: presidents, generals, CEOs, and UN ambassadors applauding one another for “courageous restraint.” The victims play their roles too. They appear on screens long enough to draw sympathy, then vanish once the next crisis auditions for attention. The news cycle moves on, empathy resets. The audience claps. Curtain down. Behind it all lies one of the most grotesque jokes of modern history: the oppressor’s monopoly on morality. The same nations that lecture the world on freedom built their empires on slavery. The same powers that condemn extremism have armed dictatorships to serve their markets. The same voices that call for peace manufacture weapons that guarantee war. *The Irony of Liberation*: I often find myself defending the Palestinian nation, not out of politics but out of faith, because in Islam, to stay silent in the face of oppression is itself a sin. Yet, another truth burns within me: my primary duty is to the women of Afghanistan, my sisters who are imprisoned without walls. They are being tortured under the guise of purity, sexually violated by the same men who preach virtue and stripped of education, work, and voice, all to ensure they remain invisible enough to be forgotten. They are being humiliated into silence. Every law passed in their name becomes another chain around their necks. And every time the world calls it “complex,” another door to their freedom shuts. The international community loves its metaphors, resilience, empowerment, capacity building, as long as those words don’t require them to act. Feminist movements chant “sisterhood,” but go mute when the sisters don’t look European enough for the photo op. The hypocrisy would be laughable if it weren’t so lethal. *Colonial Logic in Postcolonial Packaging*: As Fatima Bhutto observed, the crises of the global South are still filtered through European frameworks as if the same colonial lens that created these disasters can somehow heal them. Western think tanks hold symposiums on “developing nations,” much like doctors congratulating themselves on the infection they caused. The United Nations, that supposed temple of global morality, bends not toward justice but toward power. It was never meant to hold European or American leaders accountable; its purpose is to discipline everyone else. They call it international order, but what it truly represents is a hierarchy of impunity. And so, Biden remains off the hook. Netanyahu remains off the hook. They can bomb, starve, and occupy with the confidence of men who know the judge is a friend and the jury is asleep. The UN’s judges and lawyers are bullied into silence, forced to recite the same tired lines about “complex geopolitics.” The chamber that once promised justice now hosts a theatre of selective outrage, a tragicomedy written by those who fund it. *The Forgotten Grave of Afghanistan*: Afghanistan, of course, has been retired from global empathy. Once a stage for televised liberation, it is now just another bureaucratic file gathering dust at the UN. Its tragedy has been downgraded to a “state issue,” a polite way of saying it is “no longer profitable.” Women there are dying beneath earthquake rubble because non-mahram men are forbidden or too afraid to touch them. Their deaths are not accidents; they are policies disguised in religious language. Their lives are worth less than the fabric that covers them. Yet, to the world, this is not news; it’s merely a local custom, a cultural tragedy, something too inconvenient to indicate. *Democracy and Eloquence*: Something is often taken for granted, perhaps because it wears a flag and a necktie or, in our case, a turban and a long beard. This is state violence itself. We have been conditioned to perceive violence only when it bleeds in the streets, not when it signs legislation, issues decrees, or delivers humanitarian speeches with a trembling voice and a clean conscience. Representative democracy is dissolving before our eyes, quietly, like a sugar cube in warm water. Dissent has become a decorative slogan, and authoritarianism no longer storms through the door; it enters politely through policy. We are asked to welcome it, even to thank it, because it arrives in the name of security, order, and democracy. From the surge in political violence to the unholy alliance of legacy media and corporate interests, from the suffocating nationalism on our screens to the comfortable silence of many feminist movements regarding Gaza, this is a conversation no one wants to have. Speaking about it honestly means admitting that the freedom that sacred word we all proclaim so proudly has been quietly sold to the highest bidder….

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Autoimmune Nation

October 26, 2025 by Marmarin

After reading the opening pages of Gabor Maté’s When the Body Says No, I could not help but translate his metaphor into the living pathology of Afghanistan itself. The nation, once nourished by its own diversity of spirit, now suffers from a profound autoimmune disorder, its body turning violently against its own cells. Saadi Shirazi, with his timeless clairvoyance, once wrote:

“Human beings are limbs of one body,

Created from the same essence.

If one limb is afflicted with pain,

The others cannot remain at ease.”

But centuries later, that wisdom has become a diagnosis rather than a proverb. The men in power, swollen with self-righteous inflammation, have mistaken the women of their land for foreign invaders. They strike with decrees instead of antibodies, targeting classrooms, dreams, and the very idea of thought. What they call governance resembles nothing more than the immune system gone rogue, attacking its own tissue until paralysis sets in.

Education, once the lifeblood of progress, has become the site of infection. Half the nation’s brain, its women, has been chemically suppressed, sedated by superstition and sanctified oppression. The body politic convulses, mistaking disease for discipline, decay for devotion. They do not see that by disabling the feminine intelligence, they are amputating their own future, starving the organ that once nurtured them.

This is not piety; it is pathology. A fever disguised as faith. The Afghan male authority has become the immune system of ignorance, hyperactive, hypersensitive, attacking its own flesh with divine conviction. And yet, like every autoimmune illness, this self-destruction masquerades as protection. They believe they are defending purity, when in truth they are disfiguring the very body that sustains them.

Eventually, the disease consumes even its host. The hand that silences the girl also trembles when it tries to write. The mouth that forbids her speech forgets how to pray. The nation, caught in a state of spiritual sepsis, will not heal until it learns the simplest truth Saadi left behind: that no limb survives by devouring its own.

Until then, Afghanistan remains a tragic anatomy, half alive, half in denial, its soul gnawing on itself in the name of God….

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The Franchise of Virtue: When Pain Becomes PR

October 16, 2025 by Marmarin

They call her a global icon, a beacon of hope, a miracle child who rose from the ashes of violence. The girl who “defied the Taliban” now sits on talk shows sipping tea with celebrities who can’t pronounce the name of her hometown. Meanwhile, millions of girls in Afghanistan wake up every morning to the same nightmare she once escaped, but the cameras have already packed up and gone home.

Malala became the brand, the face, the digestible headline. The West loves a single story, especially when it fits neatly into a TED Talk or a documentary narrated by someone with a comforting accent. They handed her the mic, and she quickly learned how to speak their language, hope, peace, empowerment, words that sound noble but sell even better. She’s not Afghan, not Pakistani, not Western, she’s something more profitable, she’s universal. The perfect poster child for a world that wants to feel good about feeling bad.

Every panel needs a survivor, every gala needs a hero, and every award ceremony needs a girl who smiles through her scars. She learned to milk the sacred cow of trauma, not because she’s greedy, but because the system taught her it’s the only way to be heard. She’s the diplomat of tragedy, the influencer of resilience. The irony is that while her story once symbolized courage, it’s now the soundtrack of a moral marketplace, trauma with a logo, hope with a sponsor.

But somewhere, in the dusty classrooms that never opened, the real revolution remains unfunded. The girls with dirt on their feet and fire in their eyes don’t trend. Their courage doesn’t translate into hashtags. They don’t have PR teams or press releases. They’re the invisible majority, still whispering in classrooms that don’t exist, learning from shadows, teaching from memory. No one makes documentaries about them because their stories aren’t convenient. They don’t offer good lighting or the promise of redemption. They are too real for the world’s appetite for curated grief.

So yes, applaud her. Let the audience cry on cue. Let the world feel redeemed through her story. Because nothing says “progress” quite like one girl with a Nobel Prize while millions of others fade quietly into the dark. The illusion is soothing, one success story to drown a thousand silent failures.

And of course, the saviours line up too, clipboards in hand, their smiles polished for impact reports. They host luncheons in glass towers to discuss “the girl problem,” while sipping fair-trade coffee harvested by girls who never went to school. They call it awareness, they call it advocacy, but really, it’s just business in moral disguise. Every donation buys another guilt-free night of sleep, and every campaign gives us another reason to believe the world is changing. And as long as one girl stands on stage saying thank you, the rest can remain unseen, unheard, and uncounted.

After seeing Malala back on social media, I felt a sense of discomfort without even listening to or watching her. It’s not the words, it’s the choreography, the perfectly timed humility, the effortless empathy that smells faintly of public relations. I couldn’t help but question how she manages to stay relevant in this increasingly social media-driven society, bravo indeed. She’s mastered the art of righteous relatability, not too serious, not too rebellious, just enough to trend without offending the donors.

Out of curiosity, I glanced at the podcast’s comment section. A digital shrine of gratitude awaited me. Every soul was thanking the host for “bringing her on,” for “introducing her story,” as if she were some newly discovered species of inspiration. Nobody questioned, nobody reflected, nobody even blinked. The audience performed its ritual of admiration with the precision of a standing ovation rehearsed for years. In that endless scroll of emojis and exclamation marks, not a single thought dared to wander.

And maybe that’s the real tragedy, not the bullet, not the exile, but the way the world packaged one girl’s pain into a franchise of virtue. Because when suffering becomes a brand, truth becomes optional, and empathy becomes entertainment.

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Finding Words in Silence: A Journey Through Grief

June 24, 2025 by Marmarin

I feel as though I have so much to say,
a world buried beneath my ribs,
yet when I reach for the pen,
or let my fingers touch the keys,
nothing arrives.

It is not emptiness,
but something heavier,
like grief without a name,
like sorrow without a door.

Perhaps it’s not the lack of thought
but the absence of an audience,
or maybe I’ve mistaken silence
for the sound of a heart trying to speak.

My head swims in melancholia,
slow-moving fog
of childhood echoes,
unspoken farewells,
ghosts of joy
too fragile to survive the telling.

These are not stories,
they are remnants.
Not tales to entertain,
but fragments to be honored.
I want to write them down.
I want the world to see
the museum of my ache.

But the words retreat,
and what pours out
is silence,
not the kind that soothes,
but the kind that strangles.

I sit with too much feeling
and too few phrases.
I long to stitch my sorrow
into something beautiful,
to give grief a body,
to hold memory in my hand
and say:
this is what it cost me.

I don’t need applause.
I need a witness.
A sanctuary where nostalgia
is not weakness,
where ache is not indulgence,
where even a trembling voice
is enough.

So I return to the page,
again and again,
not because the words come,
but because they might,
because inside the silence,
something stirs.
Because inside the grief,
a story still waits
to be born.

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Hello, my beloved siblings,

April 15, 2025 by Marmarin

May life grant you peace, even if peace has rarely visited our doorstep. Lately, I am haunted by the weight of all we’ve lost—not just time, but lifetimes of tenderness we never knew how to hold. I miss the fragile joys of youth, the moments that slipped past us unnoticed, the laughter we swallowed, the dreams we buried.

Their ghosts walk beside me still.

Even if I wanted to forget, I couldn’t. And perhaps, I shouldn’t. They are etched into me, and I into them.

I ache for the good days we imagined we had—but never truly did. I remember sharpening pencils over and over, hoping it would make someone sit and write, to follow the rules I thought were best. I was young, certain, foolish. I believed discipline could shape success. I had no idea that I was trimming wings.

Dearest siblings, forgive me for my smallness—for mistaking conformity for care. I didn’t recognize the brilliance in you, the way your minds worked outside the lines. I only wanted you to thrive in a world I didn’t understand myself.

This letter is for you—for the versions of you that never got to live freely. The world still owes you a life untainted by expectation and fear.

And I owe you, too. I owe you everything.

I see now how we—all of us—were failed. And yes, I carry that failure. I carry it in every breath, in every ache. Back then, I longed to speak of sorrow, of longing, of hope. But to whom could I speak? We had no language for pain.

Still, I won’t pretend innocence. I judged you. Compared you. Criticized you. Let go of your hands when I should’ve pulled you in close. In my silence, I betrayed you.

We were never taught the language of affection. Our home—more outpost than haven—was ruled by discipline, not connection. And so we grew without the tools for love.

They say life can be learned. I believe that now. Even love, even cruelty, even silence—they are all passed down. And we? We are miswritten texts from a broken lineage. We were denied joy, and handed shame.

But I no longer blame. I have come to see: they did not know any better. We are the echoes of an unfinished war, survivors of an education that taught obedience and fear—but not compassion.

If only we’d learned from Rumi, from Shams, from Saadi. If only poetry had raised us instead of pressure.

Growing up, I thought we shared nothing. But now, I see we are bound in wounds we could never name. I bury myself in history, philosophy, sociology—trying to decode our damage. Perhaps you’ve never read those books, but I know you’ve lived their truths. The ache in your silences, the brilliance behind your defiance—they say more than words ever could.

You are meaning to me, and I to you.

Today’s children know more than we did. Or at least, they have more tools to make sense of their world. We must be careful. Our children are watching. Our actions will shape what they believe they deserve.

You cannot understand today if you are still shackled to yesterday. Let go of the rusted rules. Think beyond our broken culture.

We were test subjects in a failed experiment. The system burned, and we were blamed for the smoke. Then they rebuilt the cage, only tighter—hoping this time, it would hold. But we are not the same. We are the children of fire now.

And I love you. Fiercely. Quietly. Endlessly.

I admire you—not for what you became, but for surviving what you were never meant to endure.

I know some of you should’ve been out in the open—on fields, on courts, in places full of light. Instead, you were imprisoned—by silence, by pain, by expectations. Forgive me. Forgive me for living while you were locked away.

Even now, unanswered calls pull me back into that panic—the fear that I won’t know if you’re safe. That I’ll be left guessing again.

Come with me now. Walk back with me through the ruins of our childhood. Remember the bicycles? The first poems memorized by heart? The cousins who challenged us without ever understanding what they were up against? You were not ordinary. You were lightning. And we—we missed it. Forgive us.

You were extraordinary, and we were just trying to keep up.

There’s still more I want to say—so much more. Will you walk this memory with me?

We had to memorize a verse five times to remember it. You absorbed it in one go. Because you were wired differently—beautifully.

I envy every athlete I see. Not for their strength, but because they remind me of yours. And I mourn what we lost. What we didn’t see in time.

Let me tell you everything from the beginning. Let me unbury the stories of our survival—and my guilt.

As a girl, I wanted to live simply. I wanted to go to small gatherings with friends, to laugh without burden. But I couldn’t. I had to watch over you. You, with your wild hearts, made me feel embarrassed and ashamed when I should’ve felt proud and protective. I was selfish. I was too young to be anyone’s guardian.

And then—like thunder—it was gone. My youth. Your childhood. Both stolen by time.

We were bent by forces too large to see. And I learned too late that time only makes you regret—not responsible, just haunted.

When I left, you gave up. On school, on hope. And I—fool that I was—thought I had finally escaped. I didn’t know I had left my heart behind.

I dreamed of leaning on you, of having a sibling strong enough to protect me from life. But I hadn’t stayed to help you grow into that role.

And your distance—the walls you built—became my prison, too.

I blame myself.

If only I had sat with my conscience sooner. If only we had spoken, truly spoken, as equals. Perhaps we could have saved something.

But I was still just a girl. And fear was all I knew.

Years later, I understand: had I taken responsibility, perhaps our lives would look different. A piece of my heart always beat for you. But I wasn’t a good sister. Nor a good mother. I was always trying to return to my first duty—but I never arrived.

And now, I walk like a ghost. Alive, but without soul. Every breath is borrowed.

You wanted freedom, and we—small-minded and afraid—forced tradition upon your wildness. I can’t untangle my guilt from your pain.

I owe you the dreams you lost because of us. The ones we shamed. The ones we silenced.

We never taught you how to say goodbye to them gently. We tore them from your hands.

From the start, we built walls around your mind—because we feared what was inside. And what society feared, we feared more.

We feared you, because you were free.

You were never like us. And that terrified us.

You lived on your own terms. And we—who lived in fear—resented you for it.

We accepted our cages. You broke yours.

We forgot that you were not cursed—you were brave.

No one saw the storm inside you. And when it broke, they called it rebellion. Or madness. Or worse.

But you were never alone.

You are not the only one whose brilliance was beaten into silence. I, too, lay on the floor—helpless, voiceless. But I saw you stand.

You stood tall when others would’ve fallen. The more they tried to break your pride, the stronger you became.

Even when it was us, your own, doing the breaking.

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The Cult of Certainty

April 11, 2025 by Marmarin

In recent months, I’ve found myself wading into the ever-expanding sea of podcasts—a genre that promises everything from entrepreneurial mastery to spiritual enlightenment, all wrapped up in an hour of charming banter and self-assured advice. At first, I was intrigued. Who doesn’t want to learn how to live better, work smarter, love deeper? But the more I listened, the more I found myself caught not in a wave of inspiration, but in a current of discomfort.

It’s not the subjects that bother me—ambition, relationships, parenting, business. It’s the tone. The podcasters and their guests speak with a startling lack of humility. They sound less like thinkers and more like preachers. There is little room for doubt, no cautious language, no soft hedging like “this worked for me” or “in my experience.” Instead, they declare: This is how you should manage your business. This is how you must love your wife. This is how you ought to raise your children. Their language is absolute, delivered with an air of divine entitlement, as if they’ve been chosen to lead the rest of us through the fog of our inferior lives.

What’s particularly fascinating—and somewhat unsettling—is that many of these voices, regardless of where they originate, have found the Middle East to be a fertile hub for their brand of confident broadcasting. The region, with its rapidly growing tech infrastructure and appetite for modernity, has become a glamorous stage for this type of hyper-polished lifestyle evangelism. This isn’t accidental. There is significant support—financial, social, algorithmic—behind the push to promote a curated version of success: sleek, unambiguous, unyielding. It’s the kind of life you can filter on Instagram and monetize on YouTube.

But as I listen to these podcasts, I can’t help but question the entire premise. How can any one model of living, any singular formula for fulfillment, possibly account for the richness and diversity of human experience? Humans are not factory-assembled objects; we are the sum of our ancestry, our culture, our trauma, our dreams, our failures, and our stubborn contradictions. The notion that a single philosophy could be universally applied to us all is, frankly, laughable. It’s like trying to prescribe the same diet to a cactus and a whale—technically lifeforms, but that’s where the similarities end.

And yet, these podcasters go on, unwavering, echoing one another with unnerving certainty. Their catchphrases often sound like motivational threats: “The only thing standing between you and success is you.” Really? Not poverty? Not inherited trauma? Not institutional discrimination or lack of access to education and resources? Apparently, self-doubt is the only real systemic issue we need to tackle.

Of course, I’m not suggesting that all podcasts are devoid of value. Many are genuinely thought-provoking, even healing. But the ones that dominate the airwaves—those with the sleek branding, high production value, and the unmistakable whiff of sponsored superiority—rarely offer space for vulnerability, contradiction, or even the simple truth that life is messy and uncertain.

What I long for is a different kind of podcast—one that doesn’t speak at us, but with us. One that embraces nuance, uncertainty, and the complexity of being human. I imagine a title like Honestly, I Have No Idea But Let’s Think About It Together. Now that would be worth subscribing to.

Until then, I’ll continue to listen, albeit with a skeptical ear and a generous pinch of salt. And perhaps, just perhaps, I’ll hold out hope for a world where wisdom doesn’t always arrive wrapped in entitlement and an overpriced microphone.

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Two Days Too Soon

April 10, 2025 by Marmarin

My sweet Sori spins in cheer,
With cake and candles drawing near—
Yet the date, my love, is not quite right,
We’re two whole sunsets off tonight.

She celebrates before the moon
Returns us to her birthday soon,
But I, who bore her, body torn,
Refuse to praise a day unborn.

I held the time inside my soul,
Each gasp and ache, a silent toll.
A storm of sweat, a sacred hour,
That brought to life my blooming flower.

So no, my love, not just today—
The stars have not aligned that way.
Call me stubborn, old, or wise,
I just won’t tell sweet birthday lies.

It’s not that I don’t want your glee,
But truth still means the world to me.
You came in pain, in roaring grace,
On that one date, in time and place.

So twirl in ribbons, eat your treat,
Dance to your offbeat birthday beat.
But know, my love, the crown shall gleam,
On the day that matched the dream.

For I’m the keeper of your tale—
I wrote it in the storm and gale.
And when the real day finds the sky,
I’ll sing your name and toast and cry.

But till then, darling—hold the throne,
The queen of time shall stand alone.

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A Game of Guess Who?

April 8, 2025 by Marmarin

I recently listened to a group of psychologists discussing arranged marriages, specifically the notion that parents tend to select a partner for their child based on mirroring familiar family dynamics. Essentially, the logic is: “He reminds me of your uncle—quiet, responsible, and has his own cow.” This kind of psychological rationale attempts to normalize something that, in many cases, defies logic entirely. It struck me as peculiar—almost comically so—that professionals trained to understand the infinite complexity of human behavior would reduce romantic compatibility to a familiar pattern, as if trauma bonding is just another love language.

It becomes even more bizarre when you consider that two individuals—each born into vastly different environments, molded by distinct cultural, emotional, and educational experiences—are expected to fall into harmonious union merely because their parents say, “He’s from a good family.” Ah, yes, because nothing screams compatibility like matching last names or shared shame around public displays of affection.

Let’s be honest: arranged marriages are often a glorified game of Guess Who? except the stakes are lifelong and the winners rarely smile. “Does he have a stable income?” Yes. “Did his mother die of diabetes?” Also yes. “Can he communicate emotions without causing a scene at a wedding?” Sorry you lost. Try again.

Incompetency in arranged marriages can wear many disguises. There’s the brooding poet type who writes haiku’s about his loneliness but can’t boil an egg or ask how your day was. There’s the mama’s boy who needs written permission from his mother to buy new socks. And then there’s the classic—emotionally unavailable but financially present. A man who believes buying you a washing machine on your birthday is the height of romance. “Love language? Mine is appliances.”

Psychologists, with all due respect, often overlook the subtle tragedies embedded in these unions. They talk of compatibility as though it’s a software update—just click ‘agree to all terms’ and wait for love to download. But real life isn’t an algorithm. It’s messy, layered, and often deeply unfair—especially when choices are dictated by a committee of elders who still believe mental health is cured with turmeric milk.

Perhaps the darkest humor in this is that even when these marriages falter—when silence becomes the primary form of communication and resentment ages like fine wine—the families still hail them as “successful.” Why? Because they stayed together. Never mind the chronic anxiety, emotional starvation, or whispered midnight prayers asking for an early exit.

So yes, I find it odd—alarming, even—when psychologists lend their professional weight to justify or sanitize a process that often prioritizes tradition over emotional intelligence, and social appearances over authentic connection. At the very least, can we agree that choosing a life partner shouldn’t feel like selecting a durable carpet?

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Five with three Dad, part 2.

March 31, 2025 by Marmarin

The worker sat alone by the fireplace, shadows from the flames crawling across the walls. The herbal tea in the worker’s hands had long since gone cold, but the worker barely noticed. The worker’s mind twisted in the knots of Casey’s story—five kids, three dads, and a smirk that lingered like the last embers of a dying fire. That smirk flashed behind the worker’s eyes every time the worker tried to blink it away, a permanent stain on memory.

The worker had said, with deliberate conviction, that Casey had every reason to follow through with the treatment. Actually, Casey has five reasons to go through with the treatment, and the worker repeated it—five living reasons. The worker said it like a prayer, offering the words to anyone who would listen—colleagues, supervisors, even the hollow walls of the shelter’s break room. But no matter how many times it was spoken, the truth gnawed at the worker.

God forbid if she doesn’t go through with it. God forbid.

The thought clung, venomous and unrelenting. It followed the worker home, slithering through the cracks in the worker’s resolve. The image of Casey walking away, leaving a seven-month-old infant adrift in a world without her mother’s touch, gnawed at the worker’s insides.

The weekend devoured the worker whole. Casey had infected the worker’s thoughts, a shadow that wouldn’t fade. Other intakes had come and gone—stories of sorrow, struggle, and lives precariously balanced on the edge. But none took root like this one. Casey’s story thrived in the recesses of the worker’s mind, feeding on guilt and multiplying with every passing hour.

The worker tried to distract with the television, but it offered no solace. Channels blinked by, parading an endless loop of canned laughter and manufactured joy. Commercials for children’s toys, scenes of glowing mothers cradling perfect babies—each frame like a serrated edge, digging deeper.

It seemed the universe was mocking the worker. Every pixel whispered the same question: Will she go? Will she save herself?

“The universe is testing my sanity,” the worker muttered to the empty room. The worker’s voice barely stirred the stillness. No response. Only the crackle of the fire and the drone of the television.

The worker tried to summon hope and recall the fleeting moments when Casey spoke of her children. There had been something there—a flicker beneath the smirk, a brief and trembling devotion. Casey knew a child was waiting. Somewhere, a seven-month-old reached for a mother who would never come. She knows it, the worker thought. She has to know it.

But the thought wouldn’t settle. The worker curled tighter beneath the blanket, fingers knotting as if the pressure would anchor the worker. Prayers stumbled from the worker’s lips—desperate, fractured pleas for Casey to make the right choice, for the treatment to pull her back from the edge.

By morning, the world had regained shape, but the gnawing tension remained. The office’s fluorescent lights hummed their dull song as the worker moved through the motions. Hands trembled as the worker sifted through the files, but it wasn’t long before it appeared—Casey’s name, bold and unyielding—a bruise on paper. A reminder.

And then—disbelief.

The screen told the worker everything. Casey had booked out. One day after registration. Walked away, just like that.

But it didn’t end there. The next line twisted in the worker’s gut like a serrated knife.

A query.

Casey wanted to come back.

The words throbbed on the screen. The network had closed its doors as quickly as Casey had tried to pry them open. No vacancy. No bed.

The worker stared, the sterile light burning the worker’s eyes. What had driven Casey to return? Was it regret? Desperation? Had the weight of her choices become unbearable? Or was it all part of the game—the next act in a long, twisted performance?

Five kids, three dads. The phrase echoed like a taunt, a dark mantra, an accusation, a warning.

And the infant. That seven-month-old, still waiting. Tiny hands grasping at emptiness.

The worker’s hands clenched, nails biting into the flesh of the worker’s palms. More intakes would come. More stories. More women like Casey, tethered to the jagged loops of addiction and regret. But none of them would be this. None would etch themselves into the worker like Casey had.

With shut eyes, the worker whispered, “It doesn’t help.”

The smirk remained.

God forbid.

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