Flowers for the Women Wearing Veils - Volume I — Page 431
! ! 431 It is essential that women transform themselves. Currently , your condition is that of the dead. You r mental capacities are not yet honed to appreciate knowledge in a conceptual manner, nor do you have the command of your language to express your views clearly. When women come to see me , they expect that I will listen to their stories of distress. This k eep s me from performing many important tasks. O ut of two hundred men, o nly ten men will behave in this way, while out of one hundred , ninety women will act in this manner. I postpone a hundred other things in order to listen to them because they are from Jama'at - e - Ahmadiyya , they are in distress and I wish to sympathize and be kind to them , but [due to their manner of prolonging the conversation] they end up wast ing time. Women tend to engage in lengthy conver sations. For example, they will begin by saying , ‘ I entered someone’s house through the door on the south side of the courtyard. The courtyard was only the length of three to four charpai [a traditional Indian bed, made of fibers woven together]. I crossed the c ourtyard and the porch and then entered the hom e. ’ This type of conversation tells me that there is no real issue worth discussing at all. The biggest need here is that you find something to occupy yourself. Women from farming families are occupied with c hores with in their households. They are used to working hard. However, women who live in the cities, know nothing except for conversing. Wealthy women spend their time cursing their servants. The entire day passes in this absurdity. They spend five minutes yelling at the servant because he did not clean a cup, whereas they could have cleaned it themselves in only one minute. Some people climb the Qut u b Minar [a tourist attraction in Pakistan, which has high minarets] for two minutes in order to etch their names , to say that the son of so and so came here on such and such day. They cannot bear to think of simply going up for two minutes and return ing. R ather they deem it necessary to l eave a mark. Minart - ul - Masih is a sacred plac e, but some ignorant folks go up there and carve their names. On the contrary , you dare to live in God’s world for some fifty to sixty years and yet , you do not exert yourself to leave a memorable mark on this world. Would you say that your mother, your paternal grandmother, or maternal