My mother was born into a traditional upper-caste, upper-middle-class family. Though her upbringing came with its share of restrictions for women, the mindset in her household was not as conservative as that of my father’s family. My father, hailing from a Peshawari lineage, grew up in a household with a rigid adherence to customs – one of which was the expectation that women in the family wear the burqa whenever they stepped outside.
When my mother was on the brink of marrying my father, he laid down a condition: she must always wear a burqa when leaving the house. My mother, who had never donned that attire in her life, accepted this condition. To her, the burqa was a small price to pay for the promise of love and a future with the man who had captured her heart.
