The Power of Female Friendships
I pride myself on the strength of my girlfriends. So how did I lose my oldest friend?
I consider my female friendships amongst my life’s greatest accomplishments. Leaving my family and childhood friends in Dhaka, Bangladesh to go to college in America as an 18 year-old, the friends I made far away from my actual family became my new family. I pride myself in the fact that after almost 25 years (!!), my college roommates are still my closest friends.
I also pride myself in the childhood school and family friends I managed to stay in touch with. From Turkey to London to Indonesia, I have so many people from my past that I stayed connected to. It’s one of the greatest blessings of my “international education” which spans from Bangladesh to London to Italy to America.
But there was one friend I lost along the way and that is my friend Ahood. She and I met in the third grade while we were both studying at the American International School in Dhaka, Bangladesh (AISD). From third to seventh grade, Ahood and I were inseparable. She was my first real “best friend” but we somehow lost touch after she left Dhaka in the 1990s.
I still don’t understand how that happened, but it was pre-Internet and social media days so it was much easier to lose touch. I have been racking my brain on how I ever let her go. Even though back then we would have to write letters and make (expensive) long-distance phone calls, I just do not understand or remember how we lost touch.
The pandemic may have wreaked havoc on so many aspects of our lives, but what I consider my biggest “COVID rainbow” is reconnecting with Ahood over WhatsApp while in lockdown. We have been chatting almost daily for the last three years and this month, we met up in Abu Dhabi after THREE DECADES.
We picked up just where we left off. Old friends are nothing short of magic but for women, girlfriends are so much more.
"Women's friendships are very different from men's friendships and they're very important to our health," American actress and feminist, Jane Fonda said in an interview. "Because you guys, you kind of sit side by side and watch sports or cars or women. Women sit facing each other, eye to eye, and they say, 'I'm in trouble. I need you. Can you help me?' We're not afraid of being vulnerable."
From the second we saw each other again, that’s exactly where Ahood and I were— back in each other’s corner, back to being each other’s greatest source of support. The one bad thing? The continents that continue to divide us. But what gives me the most comfort is knowing I will never let her go again.
And now we have the Internet and social media to make sure we always stay in touch.
Inshallah.
I can so relate to this. My girlfriends that I’ve had since high school, 35+ years, are some of my deeply beloved treasures.