Ya Ummi(my mother), I cannot live my life with a woman who has no key to my mind and does not share my concerns. She cannot – will not – read anything. She shrugs off the grave problems of the day and asks if I think her new tablecloth is pretty. We are living in difficult times and it is not enough for a person to be interested in his home and his job – in his own personal life. I need my partner to be someone to whom I can turn, confident of her sympathy, believing her when she tells me I’m in the wrong, strengthened when she tells me I’m in the right. I want to love, and be loved back – but what I see is not love or companionship but a sort of transacton of convenience santioned by religion and society and I do not want it.

Ya Ummi(my mother), I cannot live my life with a woman who has no key to my mind and does not share my concerns. She cannot – will not – read anything. She shrugs off the grave problems of the day and asks if I think her new tablecloth is pretty. We are living in difficult times and it is not enough for a person to be interested in his home and his job – in his own personal life. I need my partner to be someone to whom I can turn, confident of her sympathy, believing her when she tells me I’m in the wrong, strengthened when she tells me I’m in the right. I want to love, and be loved back – but what I see is not love or companionship but a sort of transacton of convenience santioned by religion and society and I do not want it.

– Ahdaf Soueif –

The Map of Love

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