Once I Was A Princess

Reading Jaqueline’s account in ‘Once I Was A Princess’ made me inexplicably angry for some reason.

It would have been difficult for her to go through life being a foreigner in a country, much less in a royal family, where the protocols are heavily enforced.

I felt anger at her husband’s continued emotional and physical abuse, of the countless times he raped her, at her helplessness. I felt anger towards the royal family’s lack of support, the way they turned a blind eye towards the obvious abuse and the inability of the women to do anything about it.

I was frustrated at the so-called ‘religious education’ she received. I cannot believe she was told ‘Under Islamic beliefs, women were also the gender most likely to seduce the other through sheer weakness of morals and inferior intelligence… women were inherently evil and had to be educated away from their natural inclinations to sin and corruption… to question or debate or even dare to attempt reinterpretation of the Koran to make it more relevant to the twentieth century was considered blasphemous.’ Among other things.

I shed tears for her heart wrenching loss; the loss of her identity, the loss of her children, the loss of her love for a man who was evidently cruel, manipulative, abusive and racist.

I was shocked and disgusted at some of the things she talked about, by the outbreaks of racism and personal attacks she had been subjected to by people I regard my own countrymen, even as far as in Melbourne.

Amir was unfortunate to be at the receiving end of my anger, and I’m sorry it happened.

There were so many emotional parts in the book that touched me on so many points that made me relate to this unknown faceless woman again and again, that I actually felt like my heart was ripped out and left to bleed.

Perhaps her feelings of isolation echoed my recent feelings of being alone, despite being surrounded by so many. Of feeling increasingly separated from people I call friends, of the nagging worry at the back of my mind that I may one day decide to get up and walk away from it all and start afresh once again.

Her talk of abuse brought to mind the pain and worry I feel about several friends, her description of emotional abuse too close to the mark of how I imagined my friends might have felt, and my fears that the cycle would start for one of them, and it would be beyond my grasp to help those I loved the most.

I was disturbed at the sporadic accounts of discrimination against her, of the random attack made by several Malaysian students studying in Melbourne, no less, and am angered at how ignorant and stupid some people can be.

The unfairness of having her children being ripped away, and the worry of what they may be put through, after reading her own experiences in the palace was heart wrenching. I could only imagine what may have happened, and hope that they remained unscathed. As for the mother, I could only begin to imagine the process of being separated from her own children, children where she had fought so desperately to keep and having all that taken away without even a warning.

It’s been awhile since a book made me cry like that. Perhaps only because it was all true, all real and all too close to home.

I am disillusioned, by the glimpses of human nature of my own countrymen, by the legal systems, by everything. At least for the time being.

I hope things have changed, and I fear they have not changed much. I hope attitudes have changed, and I wonder if they have. For once I wonder if I can be optimistic, if I can return to Malaysia and look past the prejudices we harbour, and wonder if I can be the same person I am here in Melbourne.