My father was an engineer who moonlighted as a Bengali poet.
He grew up in a one-room mud hut in a Bangladeshi village neighbouring India and told me about his struggles growing up poor. Like how splitting an egg into six pieces to share with his siblings was a luxury, or how my grandfather made his living as a street vendor.
He worked in the rice fields and fished in the local rivers, swimming through them in flood and rain to cross the border during the civil war.
He topped his classes at village schools and got a scholarship to study in England. He then moved to Australia in the early 90s with one suitcase, a few hundred Australian dollars and a PhD from England. For the first six years, he struggled to find employment. We lived in tiny redbrick apartments in lower-socioeconomic suburbs of Sydney and bought our stuff second-hand from weekend garage sales. Still, he said, the roads were made of gold here and we lived in a palace.
Growing up, I found his writing on the back of old photographs of my parents from when they lived in the UK. Love poems he wrote for my mother after they first got married. We had bookshelves filled with the writings of Rabindranath Tagore, which moved with us to bigger houses in more affluent suburbs. We filled them with newer and flashier things, but still he said we lived in a palace.
Think about where I came from,” my father would say. “And think about how much more you could achieve with the opportunities I never had.
He talked about how people judged his accent at work, or how he was passed over for promotions in favour of younger white men. Despite these barriers, he credits his eventual success to the power that education had to change his life. “Think about where I came from,” he would say. “And think about how much more you could achieve with the opportunities I never had.”
I inherited his gift for writing. I kept diaries and created worlds through words from a young age, but never considered becoming a writer. My dad didn’t have the privilege of writing poetry for a living, and I felt pressure to make him proud. To follow his example of success.
I studied law before working for the government in Canberra. My ability to think in metaphors gradually eroded into public service briefs and acronyms. I became a process robot, the tiniest of cogs slowly rotating in the biggest of machines. One I often felt wouldn’t malfunction without me.
I wasn’t supposed to face the same barriers as my dad, but I felt myself working twice as hard to try and prove my worth
The path to the top wasn’t paved with stones of gold, but of managers who stood in the way. One referred to me as “What’s her face” for months. Explanations of how to say my name phonetically fell on deaf ears and I got stuck. I wasn’t supposed to face the same barriers as my dad, but I felt myself working twice as hard to try and prove my worth.
I became a ghost, floating listlessly in big department buildings. I stopped to look at the one wall in each of them with the faces of all the past ministers, the leaders of our nation throughout history. I noticed that only the photos, not the subjects themselves, transitioned into colour over time, with a sprinkling of female faces from around the 2000s.
I talked to other women of colour in the government who had climbed the levels above me. They admitted there could be less room to make mistakes and there was pressure to exude perfection, but that I had to keep “faking it until I made it” if I wanted to succeed.
I never had a clear picture of what a career woman looked like, just the idea that I had to become one.
My mother was a housewife who had to leave school for an arranged marriage at age 15. My grandmother married at 12, and my great-grandmother when she was 10. While marrying young would not be applied as strictly to me, I, too, would one day be expected to marry a Bangladeshi-Muslim boy.
One of the author's artworks: ‘Balloon Man’ by Famida Zana, 2019. Source: Supplied
My mother cooked, cleaned and filled our home with her art. I watched as language, education and culture persisted in being barriers for her to do more; and thought about her in the moments at work when I struggled to find my voice.
I was taught not to draw attention to myself or on bring shame on my family by wearing miniskirts, shorts or sleeveless tops
She used to say I shouldn’t act or dance or sing. I didn’t play instruments in the school band, or sports that exposed my legs or skin to the harsh Australian sun. I was taught not to draw attention to myself or to bring shame on my family by wearing miniskirts, shorts or sleeveless tops. I wasn’t allowed to go to school discos, have male friends or mix too much with the white girls. But I would somehow have the confidence one day to climb corporate ladders in concrete jungles.
My mother had a talent for sewing and made brightly coloured saris and salwar kameez for us growing up. She wore traditional Bengali clothes, gold jewellery and wore her hair long, down past her waist. She cried the first time my older sister got a short layer haircut, and yelled the first time we wore three-quarter pants. She reminded me sometimes to wear long pants to the office instead of business skirts that would reveal my legs, and to not speak too much to my male colleagues.
Our living rooms were filled with beautiful embroideries she created of animals, flowers and Bengali brides in palanquins. I inherited her artistic gifts, but she worried when I talked about doing it for a living. She dismissed my dress designs and hid my paintings in the closet every time I left home. She feared I would end up living on the street, or that no well-educated Bangladeshi boy from a respectable family would marry me if I was a poor artist.
My parents’ love for me was eternal but limited through the lens of their own life experience.
My paintbrushes and watercolours gathered dust on a bookshelf in my Canberra apartment. Forgotten amidst the clashes of my late 20s, which was spent fighting the mounting pressure to settle into a culturally appropriate marriage. I wanted to try to find love on my own terms, while I was also trying not to burn out from work.
Famida visited and found inspiration at the National Gallery of Australia in Canberra in 2016. Source: Supplied
I often thought about painting pictures of Parliament House, until I found myself climbing the hill to work there. There were signs scattered across its front lawn, left behind by protestors during the pandemic. “Freedom”, “Truth” and “Equality”, they said.
I was there to write stories for a program to help diversify the voices and perspectives reporting Australian federal politics. An opportunity to be a writer, a seat at the table after years of feeling invisible. Finally, I felt I could have a legitimate voice without having to fake it.
I walked the red carpet of the senate wing, down a long endless corridor. There were cameras, microphones and filming equipment every few doors. Journalists from Australian news outlets busily beating away at the heart of Australian democracy. They resembled the faces of the ministers I had seen working across government.
I reached the end of the corridor to go to the toilets, where I saw more immigrant women working as cleaners than as journalists in the corridors outside. They reminded me of my mother, and of the two worlds I fell somewhere in between. Both always on the cusp, but not fully embracing me.
I seemed to fill a box for others, whilst having so many of my own to tick. My parents’ expectations of achievement, society’s expectations of my gender and how I do or don’t measure up in the workplace, all the while trying to understand the value of my voice if no one truly hears it.
I could blow the dust away on forgotten dreams or continue floating restlessly on a balance beam – a woman who makes her mark in history or fades into it, another one quietly lost.
This article was written in the personal capacity of the author and is a reflection of the author’s personal views and experiences.
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