If Only My Parents Would Stop Pestering Me... A Reportage

These adolescents were agreed that their parents, in pestering them, mean only to guide them and direct them toward what is better... But they were also agreed that their parents do not think with their mentality, nor do they try to understand them as they are... And they always forget what they themselves used to feel when they were of the same age...

Let us listen to these adolescents speak:

Irfan Takieddine

My mother treats me as if I were a child not yet four years old... She worries if I go out on my own... and if I am even a little late past the appointed hour, she raises heaven and earth... If I want to go somewhere, she opens a 'long procès-verbal' and an 'exhaustive interrogation' for me... until I would sooner do without going. As for my father, he wants me to conduct myself like a grown, mature young man... He takes me along on his formal visits, and always expects me to ask people after their health, their children, and their business, in a sedate tone and with measured words like the ones he himself uses...

Walid Khaja

How many times have I given my parents to understand that I cannot bear learning... But they always press me to go to school... And every time, I fail... I know my parents want me educated, well-mannered, cultured; but I also believe that a person learns from life itself, and not within the walls of a school... I am now going on seventeen, and last year I obtained the complementary certificate... I think that is enough for me... But my parents do not think so!... For they give no weight to anything I say... What they say is always right... and what I say is always wrong...

Fayha Attar

Mathematics is exhausting, tedious, and dry, but my parents refuse to let me drop it... even though I have tried to convince them that I shall take up neither commerce nor engineering nor medicine nor the law... My hair is long, and I would like to cut it in keeping with the style and 'the fashion,' but my mother refuses me that: my hair suits my age, as she says... How I would sometimes like to go to the cinema in the company of my school friends, but my mother refuses, saying, 'A well-bred girl does not go to the cinema except in the company of her parents'... Dancing, swimming, and driving automobiles — their time has not yet come... So when, I wonder, will it come??...

Nimat Takieddine

How these continuous, endless remarks annoy me — my mother pursues me with them always... Don't laugh in a loud voice... Don't raise your voice when you talk... Don't keep company with so-and-so — her manners don't please me... And then those 'whys' that have so often worn out my nerves... Why were you late coming home? Why aren't you studying? Why do you leave your hair disheveled like that? Why don't you behave like your sister?... If only my mother realized that my sister and I are two different persons... My sister is older than I... and she is calm by nature... As for me, I want to live according to my own disposition, not to put on calm and sedateness in imitation of my sister...

How I would have liked to continue my studies abroad... But my parents insist that my age does not yet permit it... And how often have I tried to convince them that I have become a young man — my mustache sprouted some time ago — but they insist that I am not yet mature. For I am at the age of adolescence, that dangerous age, as they say, which has so often hurled young people into the pits of destruction... I do not see this age as dangerous... I do not know how they see it...

I do not doubt for a moment that my parents love me... If I fall ill, for instance, they summon the doctor at once, and pass the night awake, feeling my pulse and touching my forehead... But for all that they make no attempt to understand me... They do not grasp that a girl of my age has her own world, and her own opinions... They want me to bind myself to their world... the world of the grown-ups... If I go out alone with my girl friends they open an 'inquest' on me and set about blaming me... If I express my wish to go to the cinema twice running in one week they voice their regret at this disgraceful conduct... Swimming, in my eyes, is an important sport; in theirs, it is not fitting for well-bred girls...