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I was Seven Years old and My Mother Told Me to Lie to My Auntie
My introduction to cognitive dissonance, the Oppressor and the Oppressed
My bubble about my mother’s perfection did not burst when she said to me, “If your Auntie asks you if a letter came from Grandfather, you just say no, it didn’t.”
I felt tremendously confused. It felt like the pavement had cracked beneath my feet. A letter HAD arrived. I saw it with my eyes. So was my mother asking me to lie? But she said lying is wrong. It says so in the Koran, Allah’s message to people on how they should live.
We were walking along the busy road to Auntie’s house. Mum was pushing the pram with my baby brother covered up with a thick blanket against the North England cold. My older sister walked along on one side of it and I, on the other.
On the outside, nothing had changed. But something huge had shifted inside me. I don’t recall thinking about the event much, in my teenage years. I have no memory of the actual visit to Auntie nor if she asked me anything about that letter.
I could ask my mother now, all these years later. But she’d only get defensive and say something cutting about why the heck do I have to have such a long memory?
It’s funny how as a child you just have these isolated events, which you have strange…
