Good morning Children,
Today we are going to tell the story of the unfortunately very Egyptian marriage of NSFMommy and MBDaddy. Like most Egyptian marriage stories, it’s a very stupid family drama where there are no heroes and even the victim looks bad in the end. We are not sure if there is a moral to the story, even; except that, well, if you ever found yourself in a similar marital arrangement, we recommend that you kill yourself and save us all the headache.
NSFMommy and MBDaddy are not happy being each other’s household partners, and they make sure everyone knows it. They fight constantly, in front of their many children and family members, and the whole neighbourhood watches while their kids take sides in the fight and end up destroying or vandalising the house.
And every time they fight, the neighbours say “this time NSFMommy and MBDaddy will most surely get a divorce or resolve it”, but they keep forgetting that they are both very stupid as we previously mentioned—until they are reminded by the next fight. Despite their being in the wrong, both neighbours and family members all agree that, of the two, MBDaddy is most at fault here.
You see, children, MBDaddy was the stereotypical Egyptian husband; he believed that because he is the man of the house that he is both infallible and entitled to do anything he pleases. To back down or admit fault would severely hurt his image and dignity, which MBDaddy claims is the most important thing to him, and uses it as an excuse to do very bad things, like lying to NSFMommy, belittling her, abusing her, and downright ignoring all of her desires.
He can’t stand NSFMommy because he believes that times are tough economically, and therefore any fighting or listening to NSFMommy’s demands will hinder his ability to put food on the table. And while he would like nothing more than divorcing NSFMommy, he recognises that he can’t run a house with so many troublesome children on his own, which is why, for the time being, he will keep her, hoping that she will come to her senses, keep the children quiet, and be the kind of wife he always wanted her to be.
Unfortunately for MBDaddy, this won’t happen any time soon, because NSFMommy is very mad at MBDaddy, because as we all know, he has been very, very bad. NSFMommy keeps fighting with MBDaddy because he is lying, abusive and corrupt, but she doesn’t want a divorce, because she can’t really afford one.
It doesn’t help that MBDaddy has a Qatari friend who has been an incredibly bad influence on him, and keeps encouraging him to cheat on her with other foreign women, especially the Tunisian first wife and the Palestinian mistress. She hates him for it, and he returns the hate in kind. She insults him for it, and he responds by beating her, causing her to immediately start crying and screaming and scandalising him in front of all the neighbours.
While NSFMommy claims she wants a divorce, she has done nothing to show that she can take care of herself and her children on her own, and in reality would like him to remain responsible for her, but while giving her more say in how their money gets spent and how her household should be run—which he naturally won’t do. This is why NSFMommy believes, or rather hopes, that MBDaddy will drop dead soon.
But the question remains: who will pay the bills? After all, NSFMommy is broke, and no one wants a divorcée with this many children, especially since these kids are demanding selfish pricks who keep making unrealistic demands from them both and are always reminding them of how much better the neighbour’s kids have it compared to them.
This leads us all to the conclusion we all could see coming: MBDaddy can’t stand NSFMommy, NSFMommy won’t talk to MBDaddy, their kids hate them both, and everyone blames everyone. In other news, no one is paying the house bills, and the electricity will get shut down by the utility company any day now.
And like all broken homes, it’s the children who suffer the most. While some of the kids have divided themselves and taken sides with either NSFMommy or MBDaddy, there are those who have become so depressed they don’t talk to anyone, those who have gotten into drugs, and those who have become thuggish hooligans, destroying the house with their fights and stealing from their siblings.
The smarter and more capable of the children, realising a bad situation when they see one, have already moved out to other homes, or even to the street, believing that anywhere is better than here, and anything is better than this. It’s safe to say that like any other broken home, everyone in it will need of years of therapy.
If this story was happening in another time or place, the only logical solution would be to call the police on both NSFMommy and MBDaddy and have the kids move in with Grandpa SCAF. Unfortunately, the police no longer wants to get involved with those two, and Grandpa SCAF has a tendency to abuse the children as well—not to mention that he doesn’t really want them in his house, and doesn’t want to deal with their crap, either.
Thus leaving us with the only logical solution left: MBDaddy and NSFmommy get divorced and move out, leaving the kids home alone to fend for themselves, which they will learn to do eventually. Unfortunately, this won’t happen, because as we mentioned before, this is a silly Egyptian family drama, and everyone in it is too stupid to effect a compromise that will make everyone happy. In other words, why be happy if we can all be miserable together?
If you are waiting for the moral or the point of this story, don’t hold your breath, children. There is no moral here, no lesson to be learned, and no “happily ever after”, either. All that we can leave you with is the eternal advice left to us by a very wise and miserable poet by the name of Philip Larkin on parenthood, from the poem “This be the verse”:
Man hands on misery to man.
It deepens like a coastal shelf.
Get out as early as you can,
And don’t have any kids yourself.
Amen.
The End.
