Surrealist art shows your feelings. The images may be real or unreal, but most of the time, they are something imagined that reveals your inner feelings. These paintings look like dreams. This is what Frida Kahlo’s painting What the Water Gave Me (1938) is like.
If I were the artist making this type of painting, I would include a big field where there are many things. On one side, there would be two little smiling girls. They would be playing jump rope and hopscotch. The sky above them would be blue, but a thunderstorm and rain would be approaching.
On the other side of the field, there would be a big chain with locks. Above the field, the sky would be so dark, but there would be some beautiful flowers below. I would pick some flowers easily, but some would have thorns; it would be so difficult to pick those.
This unusual scene shows me, before and after my marriage. Before I got married, I was such a happy and independent girl, but this couldn’t continue. I didn’t want to get married; my father forced me to. He didn’t let me get a job or go to college like my friends. The thunderstorm shows that a lot of adversity was coming. The big chain with locks reflects me after marriage. My in-laws were very restrictive. I couldn’t go out when I wanted, and they always wanted to know who I was talking with on the phone. I became a dependent girl. I constantly heard negative words about me and my family that I didn’t like. I had to cook and clean for my in-laws all the time. The dark sky shows my pain and sadness at that time.
There were many things I didn’t like about being married, but eventually, I accepted them. This is why there are also some beautiful flowers. They show that my husband and two children are beautiful to me. The other flowers with thorns are my in-laws. If I try to pick those flowers, maybe the thorns will attack me and make my hands cut and bloodied. I am afraid of them all the time.
This is why my education is so important to me. When I earn enough money to have a respectable life, I will get away from the thorns. One day, they will realize who I am.
Farzana Boby, age thirty, was born in Dhaka, Bangladesh. She moved to New York in 2018. She is a student in Heidi Fischer’s CLIP class at CUNY’s City College of Technology, where the program director is Gilberto Gerena. Farzana Boby has two young children and is a good cook. She writes, “There is no substitute for education to deal with any situation, so everybody needs education.”