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By Heba Al-Adawy
‘Displaced Hudūd (limits)’
Do you know how many people you displace, when you erect a wall.
Or how many lives you disfigure, when you scratch a line on the face of a map. Yes, those blinking lights on the horizon are not stars…
God created man from a single soul, placed him on the highest summit and opened up different paths, each intersecting and crisscrossing the other in an intricate labyrinth of good and evil. He endowed man with free will, with the capacity to rise to the heights of virtue and fall to the depths of evil. As the first drops of blood permeated the earth, staining the human soul, man realized the immense freedom that came with free will. Each built his own sphere, defined his own boundary. But how could these multiple spheres interact and co-exist when evil reigned in the blood of men? How could one measure his freedom without displacing others?
In all the novels, the lives of the characters are defined by ‘limits’ or ‘boundaries’. Many are victims of displacement, both physical and metaphorical, due to the imposition of certain boundaries. They are affected profoundly and their grief is immeasurable. This paper focuses on the theme of displacement on the national and the individual level. It will highlight the sufferings of the displaced and the forces that displace them. Are they rooted in religious beliefs, nationalist sentiments and differences in gender? Or are they simply personal prejudices cloaked behind these facades?
In the opening chapter of Dreams of Trespass, young Fatima Mernissi paints a chaotic vision of the world, where people governed by religious, national and gender boundaries, are set on displacing others in order to preserve their own ‘freedom’. However these boundaries, governing individuals as well as nations, are not immutable. They are imprecise and constantly shifting, perhaps flawed by their very nature because they are not based on what they seem to represent. Instead they crisscross one another to contradict the very basis of their existence. The most obvious example of this is the treatment of the Palestinians by the Arabs. While politics and history bear testament to the Arab support of the Palestinian cause, these novels, provide a glimpse of an unpleasant contradiction. Whereas the community as a whole identifies with the Palestinians on religious grounds, racial and national frontiers soon become the biases that split the common religious frontier. Thus while it may seem that the boundaries of gender, nationality and religion are the root of all evils, the Arab women novelists reveal how, in fact, personal prejudices are at the core of the conflict. These prejudices, masked behind religion, race and gender, become the walls that divide people.
The sources or perpetrators of oppression, therefore, cannot be put under generalized categories. Although religion appears to be the major segregating factor among people, Fatima Mernissi negates this notion in Dreams of Trespass by citing exceptions to this rule. She alludes to the Golden Era, when people from the three Abrahamic faiths co-existed peacefully. She also refers to the ‘strong cultural and historical bond’ (95) that had existed between the Jews and the Muslims. Similarly the conflict between men and women does not hold for every case. As some women internalize the social norms, they join the ranks of men to prevent the liberation (or transgression) of women. This is depicted in all the novels, especially in Dreams of Trespass, where the constant tussle of modernity and tradition split the women of the household into two ‘camps’, with Fatima’s mother and Chama in one, and Lalla Mani, Lalla Thor and Chama’s mother in another. Thus displacement occurs at the hands of men as well as women, and at times, at that of an invisible yet steadfast phenomenon—the society. Like Daffash, the oppressive brother of Maha and a great supporter of the ‘foreigners’, it is carried out by external as well as internal forces.
Each territory, then, becomes a contested space as politicians wage wars to claim or reclaim their homelands, nationalities fight for self-determination, and women struggle to break down the walls that oppress them. The characters of Liyana Badr suffer directly due to their displaced national frontiers. In Pillars of Salt, Maha and Um’ Saad are exiled, both physically from their homes and symbolically from their rights, as religious and social prejudices cast them away in an isolated mental asylum. In the more contemporary time frame, Nadia from The Woman of Five Seasons fights for her space in the academic and professional realm. On the other hand Asya from the novel, In the Eye of the Sun, struggles to cope with the expectations of her parents and her society as she yearns for sexual liberation. Even in Dreams of Trespass, young Fatima Mernissi searches, with her naïve innocence, for the frontiers that bind her life and the lives of those around her.
Thus every attempt to overthrow the old order in order to recover a right is an enormous struggle. It is an odyssey of obstacles and hurdles, and perhaps the only character who is able to regain control completely is Nadia Al-Faqqih from the Woman of Five Seasons, while Fatima Mernissi remains in the process. The smiles and tears of Maha, Yusra and Su’aad, however, fade in the whirl of time; their narratives are lost and their voices are never heard. With each struggle, complete or incomplete, justified or unjustified, the experience of the displaced remains the most poignant and is powerfully captured by the Arab women novelists.
* * *
Displacement in the realm of politics…
The end of World War II brought significant changes on the face of the world map. Some states were born, some died. Some celebrated the freedom that came with independence; others resisted the infiltration of foreign forces and ideas into their land. All the political conflicts in the novels are rooted in the re-positioning of the Middle Eastern frontiers after World War II. The invisible political frontiers, unlike the concrete brick walls of a domestic ‘harem’, contain the power to separate millions. The consequences of displacing such frontiers are therefore, all the more intense, affecting each gender and every social class, until a mere political maneuver becomes a personal grievance.
The stories, A Land of Rock and Thyme and A Balcony over the Fakihani, by Liyana Badr depict the heart-rending experiences of the Palestinians exiled from their homeland. They embody the pain and the suffering of all those who have lived, and are continuing to live in a state of war. Displaced from the security of their homes, the characters become scarred by political, racial and religious frontiers. Facing the Israeli raids on one hand and the wrath of the Philangists on the other, they become wanderers, living only to surivive. The major concern of the characters is not to evade death, for ‘death had become familiar’, but to collect enough water for their survival. Yusra, the main character in A Land of Rock and Thyme, narrates:
‘Father had been wounded soon after we left and had lived on for another four hours. He saw everybody else, but when they asked him: ‘Shall we send for Yusra?’ he said, ‘let her get the water for her brothers and sisters.’
A situation where a mere bucket of water acquires such precedence only serves to highlight the extreme difficulty of their situation and Liyana Badr depicts this unpleasant reality, unimaginable to the readers. The difficulties faced by the exiled are numerous. They are forced to abandon their family and friends in search for a shelter. Rejected from all sides and sustained by a strong sense of nostalgia, they are embroiled in an unrelenting struggle to regain their territory. The character Su’aad describes some of the problems associated with settling in a foreign land:
'My God, the whole situation was becoming such a maze of difficulties that a trip to the moon seemed straightforward by comparison! You had to give tens of thousands of liras to get a work permit issued to you, and I even heard that some Lebanese, like those from al-Hermel and Akkar, couldn't get permits because their national status was still under discussion.'
Added to all these difficulties, then, is the grief of the death of the loved ones.
In A Land of Rock and Thyme, Yusra struggles to reconcile with the loss of her husband who is killed in an Israeli raid. The story opens with a dream, in which Yusra cherishes the memory of her husband. ‘He always comes to me in my dreams’, she says. Surrounded by the beauties of spring, she is walking with her husband near the Martyr’s Cemetery when suddenly her husband melts into the sea of graves, and she is brought back to the gruesome reality. Even a dream does not serve as a refuge for long—such is the intensity of her grief. Similarly the character Su’aad in A Balcony over the Fakihani watches the red spots on the leaves of a plant and is reminded of the splattered blood of corpses. There are signs of death and decay even in growth, just as there is white hair on a baby’s head. The violence and the bloodshed that the characters have witnessed are etched in her minds. Both Su’aad and Yusra have premonitions of a disaster before the death of their husbands. Su’aad dreams that her husband would leave her while Yusra dreams that her house is perched precariously on a rock and is about to tumble down. Indeed, she is crushed and her house is shattered after her husband’s death.
The literary style of the novellas, with the stream of consciousness method and the repeated flashbacks, is also evocative of the chaos around and within the characters. The language is often barren and simple, suggesting the emptiness in the characters lives. While describing the exodus from Damour, Yusra states:
‘Many people were injured as we left, shot down as though they had been sitting right in front of the rifle. As the snipers fired, the dead dropped one after the other. Those who got out in one piece were the lucky ones.’
There is an understatement of emotions in her narrative which makes it all the more poignant. However there are occasions when the injustice of her situation is so strong that it breaks the monotony of the language. When her brother, Jamal, is shot by a Philangist, she says,
‘I looked at him stretched out there on his back, as if he were asleep or had fainted. There was no blood at all. Then because they…So I didn’t bend over him. I didn’t stop. I didn’t touch him with my hand.’
The straightforward narration is briefly fragmented indicating the horror of her situation. The terror evoked by the Philangists is so immense that neither Yusra nor her mother can even dare to stop by Jamal as he lies writhing in pain. Like the homes that they have abandoned, they must abandon the body of their loved one, they must move on in order to survive.
Moreover Liyana Badr emphasizes the shattered world of Yusra by juxtaposing it with the ‘normal’ world of the people in Lebanon.
‘Everything round us was normal: cars, people, ordinary gas stations, whereas we’d supposed that doomsday had come. Life was extra-ordinarily normal around us- so normal it made you crazy.’
Similarly in A Balcony over the Fakihani, when Umar arrives at Beirut after his treatment in Hungary, he is struck by the stark difference between harmony and turmoil, joy and suffering in the world. Beirut is disfigured and shattered by bomb raids, haunted by gory images of death, while Hungary as symbolized by Louisa is a land of poetry and bliss. He finds the martyrs in a silent protest; ‘why did we have to die when we wanted to live?’ he wonders. The dichotomy between chaos and peace, stability and instability, is so stark that it even encroaches and shatters the peace of the unaffected. In the novel, In the Eye of the Sun, Asya’s thoughts constantly shift towards the agonies of the displaced.
‘In Israel a ten-year-old girl is critically ill after the failed Ankara hijack attempt in which four Turks were killed. In Lebanon the Red Cross estimates two thousand bodies under the rubble in Tel el-Za‘tar, the Syrians have closed the borders and the militias are mounting new offensives against Ain Toura, Mtein and Sannin.’
Thus the Arab women novelists describe the characters as they are displaced from their national frontiers and separated from their civic rights, many of whom end up with the ultimate displacement- death. For those who do survive, memories of the past become their only sustenance. Like the fictitious character of Yusra, like the mothers in Danielle Arbid’s documentary, ‘Alone with war’, the survivors live with faded pictures of their lost ones.
“Half my friends are dead.
I will make you new ones, said Earth.
No, give me them back, as they were instead
With faults and all, I cried.” -Derek Walcott
* *
While A Balcony over the Fakihani focuses on the suffering of the displaced with the construction of new frontiers, Pillars of Salt and In the Eye of the Sun provide a glimpse of the pains of those displaced within their own country due to the invasion of existing frontiers.
The dialectic forces of the oppressor and the oppressed in the realm of politics come into play in Pillars of Salt. Through the ironic voice of the narrator, the readers are given a background of the political situation.
“The English lord after hunting foxes with his pack of hounds for days on end was still bored. He felt like playing a game called Lands’. [..]. A land without people for a people without land, he thought. He gave the land we are sitting on to a Saudi tribe, then shook off the dust of his boredom. Flocks of English army officers and their families invaded the valley.”
In another humorous analogy, the ‘Ajnabi’ speaker, unrestrained by any bonds or affiliations, states: ‘My mind is becoming like an Ottoman inspection center. More and more people can easily get in than get out.’ In these satirized narratives, the speaker seems to be making a valid point regarding the actions of the invader. Discounting the immense sanctity of political boundaries, the imperialists invade countries without any understanding of the culture, religion or lifestyle of the natives. Their actions stem from their notion of superiority and are therefore, a product of personal prejudice. Moreover his twisted narrative presents an objective view, often diminishing the effect of such political measures on the lives of the people, and reflecting the desensitization that often prevails over communities.
This is, however, juxtaposed with the poignant narrative of Maha who suffers indirectly at the hands of the foreigners. ‘The English killed Harb, the twin of my soul,’ cries Maha. With the death of her husband, Maha is left at the mercy of her evil brother, Daffash, who is a supporter of the British. Her pain is excruciating and is reflected in her reaction to the news of her husband’s death:
“I uncovered my head, undid my plaits, and shrieked, ‘Harb.’ I yanked my hair and threw myself on the ground shouting at the top of my voice, ‘Harb’. I tore the front of my dress, filled my palms with soil, and threw it over my head. My outstretched hands and the dust-covered head begged to be buried. ‘Harb, the twin of my soul,’ I howled, and my wounded voice broke over ridges and the tops of mountains, then slid down to the deaf sea.”
The grievance against the foreigners is not only limited to this incident, but begins long before the death of Harb and carries on even after the ‘independence’ of Jordon. The villagers of Hamia rebel against the increasing taxes imposed upon them by the English. At the beginning of the novel, the speaker describes how the English take over the country and form it into a ‘British Mandate’, as ‘their cars and tanks exhaled black smoke into the sky.’ Representing a completely different culture and lifestyle, the foreigners are viewed with caution and resentment. Ironically the freedom possessed by the Western women is looked down upon by the native women even as they struggle to fight their own oppression. When Maha looks at the foreign women invited by Daffash to their house, she cries out: ‘The shame of it! By the gray hairs of my father, these women were not shy of showing their bodies to gazing men.’ Moreover the mental asylum, in which Maha and Um’Saad are confined, is also a remnant of the British colonialism. Thus the shadow of the ‘foreigners’ continue to haunt the people even after their supposed liberation.
The transgression of boundaries by the colonialists and the subsequent displacement of indigenous culture is a predominant concern, even in the elite and westernized setting of the novel, In the Eye of the Sun. Time does not erase the resentment and the grievances of the colonized carry through generations. Caught in an ontological dilemma, the colonized develop a love and hate relationship with their colonial past. Like Asya, they retain a strong nostalgic bond towards their heritage, and are yet pulled towards the western culture which often superimposes their own customs and traditions. Asya often regrets not having studied Arabic Literature instead of English Literature, after all she wonders, ‘What’s English Literature to them or they to English Literature that everyone must live in torment over it?’ Despite studying English Literature for years, she is unable to forge a true connection with the subject because ‘her life and her work are in Egypt.’ Moreover Asya observes, while gazing at river Thames one day, how the glories of the British Empire came at the expense of the colonized. The richer powers achieved freedom and prosperity by exploiting and displacing the rights of others.
‘The statues, the spacious greens where with her parents she used to listen to military bands on sunny afternoons, the great black wrought –iron railings, the intricate tower with the four faced clock: the accoutrements of Empire Built of course on Egyptian cotton and debt, on the wealth of India, on the sugar of the West Indies, on centuries of adventure and exploitation ending in the division of the Arab world and the creation of the state of Israel.’
The effect of colonization is so deep-rooted that at one point Asya begins to think that ‘a sinister and insidious colonialism is implanted in her very soul.’ (512) Perhaps in these lines Asya is lamenting the loss of her traditional values with the infiltration of external influences. Nevertheless, the damage wrought on the exotic land of Egypt by the forces of colonialism is heavy. In one of the most lyrical passages of the novel, In the Eye of the Sun, Asya stands by the river Thames, symbolic of the British past and the Egyptian present, and addresses an anonymous audience, evoking the glories of her nation:
‘You cannot disclaim responsibility for my existence, nor for my being here—beside your river --today. But I haven’t come to you only to take, I haven’t come to you empty handed: I bring you poetry as great as yours but in another tongue, I bring you black eyes and golden skin and curly hair, I bring you Islam and Luxor and Alexandria and lutes and tambourines and date palms and silk rugs and sunshine and incense and voluptuous ways…’
However the glory of Egypt, as it stands in the context of the novel, has receded. War torn, and in the throes of an internal turmoil, Egypt is independent—yet suffering at the hands of the colonialists with the Suez crisis. It is liberated from foreign rule—and yet trapped under the claws of disloyal politicians. And only a lingering sense of nostalgia remains to heighten the sense of pathos.
* * * *
Who is displacing whom…
~ “What hast thou done? The voice of thy brother’s blood crieth unto me from the ground.”- Bible ~
The agonies of displaced political boundaries are dominant in all the novels, and one cannot help but question the reasons behind the conflict. What is motivating this imbalance of justice? Where is it coming from?
In almost all the novels, there is a strong emphasis placed on nationality, especially by those who are exiled. In A Land of Rock and Thyme, Yusra’s husband, Ahmad, gazes at the map of Palestine and voices his desire to turn it into a reality. The house in Palestine that he constantly speaks of is much grander in his imagination than it is in reality because of his strong sense of nostalgia. Moreover when Yusra’s child is born during her political exile, she fixes his identity as a Palestinian ‘from its first moments on earth.’ Nationality almost becomes hereditary, something that flows in the blood of men and is carried through generations. Even the Palestinian elite, Nadia, from The Woman of Five Seasons, weeps over her homeland despite being happily settled outside it.
At the same time, the thread of discrimination on the basis of race and nationality also weaves through the novels. Intermarriages between different tribes are a big taboo in rural as well as urban communities. In Pillars of Salt, Um’Saad is not allowed to marry the man she loves because he is not an Arab. Similarly when Tante Muneera in the novel, In the Eye of the Sun, discovers that a Palestinian is interested in the daughter of a renowned Egyptian family, she cries out incredulously, ‘Palestinian? And he’s going and falling in love with Noora al-Manesterli? I swear her father will have him jailed.’ When Asya objects to this, Tante Muneera continues, ‘they should fall in love, yes, fall in love as much as they want to: with their own people. Among themselves.’ The racial and national frontiers, in these cases, are strong and unrelenting even for those who share the same religious beliefs. Perhaps the most explicit exhibition of animosity as a result of a difference in nationality is when Yusra witnesses the murder of a man as they move to another area in Lebanon:
‘On the way one of them stopped him and asked, ‘Lebanese or Palestinian?’ ‘Palestinian’ Jamal answered. A bullet to the head, just like that.’
As depicted in this extract, no questions are asked. A difference in national identification is enough to snatch a person’s right to live his life; it is enough to render the ultimate displacement.
In the next extract however, other factors such as religion become the justifications for violence.
‘A man was walking next to me, his shoulder brushing mine. They grabbed him by the shoulder. “For God’s sake,” he said to them. “Which God?” they replied. Before I know what was happening, he’d fallen to the ground; there was a revolver and a single shot to the temple’.
At another point in the story, In a Land of Rock and Thyme, Yusra is told by a Philangist, ‘You chose Jumblat. We had nothing against you till you joined the international left’ (18).
So where is the source of conflict? Is it religion, nationality or political affiliation? Or does the existence of boundaries, be it any kind, drive one man to displace the right of another?
But if boundaries are indeed so evil, then how can they act as a protecting shield for some? How is it that they foster solidarity among a nation and eliminate the differences that prevail in a community on an individual level?(nationalism in Dreams of Trespass…Ya Latif)
In Dreams of Trespass, young Fatima Mernissi tries to reason the political situation of the WWII era in terms of religion.
‘Then, since the Allemane were Christians, like Isabella the Catholic, they chased the Jews away because they did not pray alike. But Aunt Habiba said that this explanation did not sound right, because the Allemane were also fighting the French, who were Christians too and worshipped the same God. So that put an end to that theory.’ (99)
However she finds herself face to face with contradictions when she takes religion as the source of conflict. Religious differences do not always dictate the actions of people. Instead what she sees is a complicated mesh of national and religious differences giving rise to warfare. Furthermore she speaks of the unity not only between the two religions, Islam and Judaism, but also between the Arab and the non-Arab race during the medieval times. Referring to the Golden Era, she says:
‘So the Arabs and the Jews lounged around up there in Andalusia for seven hundred years, enjoying themselves as they recited poetry and looked up at the stars from the middle of their lovely jasmine and orange gardens, which they watered through an innovative and complicated irrigation system.’(98)
Thus the legitimacy of religion and states as boundaries that cause displacement is negated by Fatima’s close analysis of the contradictory political events.
Furthermore Danielle Arbid, in the documentary Alone with War, delves into the lines that demarcated the Muslims and the Christians in one of the bloodiest civil wars in Lebanese history. An answer is difficult to find. Some insist that it was neither a war of religion nor of classes. And what exactly it was, they do not know. Others seem to justify their argument in terms of self-preservation or vengeance. ‘If you had seen your brother die’, says one militant, ‘would you have fled or borne a weapon’, and he answers himself, his eyes carrying a haunted gleam, ‘…you would’ve borne a weapon.’ A militant from the other camp, insists that he was fighting to defend his own extermination. So how can one justify one side at the expense of another?
For the most part, people are unknowingly and unthinkingly entangled in violence. They do not know who they kill, and say that it is nothing personal. What they do know, however, is that their loved one has been a victim of aggression or that they will soon be a victim of aggression. Thus they are caught in a vicious cycle of violence perpetrated by those who carry notions of their own superiority and harbor disrupting prejudices against others. The speaker in Pillars of Salt, despite his convoluted and twisted tales, hits spot on the truth when he says, ‘Yes, my masters, THE LAND. The source of all greed and every conflict.’ The lust for power thrives at the behest of such prejudices, giving rise to corruption and greed. And once a life is shed or a right is displaced in pursuit of power, chaos like turbulent waves travel far and wide.
"We created you from a single pair of a male and a female, and made you into nations and tribes, so that you may know each other (not that ye may despise each other)." – Al-Quran (49:13)
* * * * *
Displacement in the domestic arena….
From a single soul, God created man and woman; Eve from the rib of Adam as his essential counterpart, so that any injury inflicted to one would be felt by another. Yet throughout history, man has persistently followed a course of self-annihilation by displacing and oppressing the rights of his own counterpart. The Arab women novelists provide a rare insight into the lives of women in the Middle Eastern region. Their joys and sorrows are vividly juxtaposed as they become victims of displacement and aggression usually by men, but also in other instances, by women and societal norms.
From the onset of the novel, Pillars of Salt, Fadia Faqir depicts a society where men enjoy untrammeled freedom, while women are repressed and subjugated. The story teller alludes to an old inhumane practice of the ancient Arab tribes in which they would bury new born girls because girls were considered a burden. ‘When the tribe was told that they had a daughter instead of a son, their faces turned black.’ (3) Although this practice was abolished with the advent of Islam, the novels show that this practice still exists, manifested in a different form. Boys are still preferred and prioritized over girls. When Maha does not conceive a child after her marriage, there is immense pressure on her by her family and the society to produce a ‘son’. ‘May Allah give you a son.’ says her mother-in-law every time she meets her. Maha also prioritizes boys and tells Harb, ‘Allah knows that I want hundreds of sons. Your sons’ (69). It is ironic that a daughter is not even an option, especially given the fact that the daughters in this novel are more loyal to their parents than the sons. This kind of attitude towards the female sex, embodied by both men and women, is also exhibited in the story, A Balcony over the Fakihani. During his treatment in Hungary, Omar compares the hospital to a prison, saying that the ‘the gates open up to just two alternatives: death or life—wheat or barley, as my mother always says, or boy or girl, as my wife always says.’ (54) Once again there is a very subtle discrimination against the female sex in these analogies. Just as death is to life and barley is to wheat, a girl is inferior compared to a boy.
Moreover women are still ‘buried alive’ by being imprisoned behind the walls of their house. At times, such seclusion of women comes from sincere intentions. As Maha grows older, her father discourages her from working outside because he feels that ‘a woman’s place is in a well closed room’ (20). In Dreams of Trespass, Fatima Mernissi describes how women are confined in the harem. To venture out of this frontier is a struggle, not easily achieved. Fatima describes how ‘Every move had to be justified and even getting to the gate was a procedure’ (21). The women in the harem yearn to attain freedom, to be able to observe the sky from different horizons, and walk unescorted in deserted streets. Even their embroidery with the image on wings expressed their desire to break away their bonds.
The injustices towards women are heaped up; in some cases they are reduced to entities that neither receive nor deserve any justice. In Pillars of Salt, Nasra is raped by Daffash; her honor is snatched away from her and yet the society is blind to the crime committed by Daffash. Instead Nasra is blamed for being the seductress. At this point, Maha realizes ‘how high were the mud walls imprisoning us’ (13). Whether it is an issue of marriage or that of inheritance, women are deprived and subjugated. Um’ Saad is married to a butcher against her will even though in their religion, Islam, a marriage cannot take place without the consent of women. Similarly Daffash forces Maha to marry Sheikh Talib after the death of Harb so that he can establish strong connections in society. ‘“Imam Rajab will ask you questions. You answer yes.”’ Daffash orders to Maha. However Maha is neither meek nor timid; she runs away on the wedding day and later returns to fight for her right of inheritance. Upon returning, she is ostracized by the community while Imam Rajab’s voice cries the order: ‘Stone the sinner.’ The society is quick to assume that she is an adulteress, while ironically, the real adulterer is exonerated. This episode occurring in a novel set in the 1920s is reminiscent of the countless honor killing, (or Karo Kari in Pakistan), incidents that occur to this date. In these honor killing incidents, a man can abuse a woman claiming that she dishonored the family without giving the woman any chance to defend herself. Often women are blamed as adulteresses when they refuse to be married off forcibly. Some are gang-raped and some are killed. In Pillars of Salt, Maha is confined in a mental asylum, where the pain of being separated from her son is, perhaps, worse than death.
Furthermore physical abuse is widely practiced by men on women. This is represented in the novel Pillars of Salt, where Maha is abused by her brother and Um’ Saad suffers first at the hands of her father and then her husband. Maha describes the routinely abuse inflicted on her by her brother:
‘Daffash used to go to the city every Thursday morning and come back Sunday evening. I knew the routine very well. Monday morning was the hardest of times. He dug out quarrels from under his fingernails. Where was his dagger, his breakfast, dog. Where were his sandals? He yanked my hair. Filthy rat, ugliest woman on earth. Do what I tell you.’ (21)
The physical abuse inflicted on Maha by her brother intensifies once Maha is left vulnerable after her husband’s death. After Maha rages against the foreigners and refuses to cook for them, Daffash arrives home to punish his sister for that:
‘“I will break both your arms.” With his ammunition belt Daffash started beating me. The cold metal of bullets flayed my skin. I must protect my breasts to be able to feed Mubarak. I sat on the floor, folded my legs underneath me, wrapped my hands around my breasts, and bent my back. I did not know when the beating stopped. No.’ (164)
Similarly, Um’ Saad also suffers from physical abuse by her husband. Without even a speck of respect for his wife, Ab’ Saad uses Um’ Saad to fulfill his sexual desires and later discards her by bringing a new wife. When Um’ Saad protests against this injustice, she is treated in the most inhuman manner:
‘He smashed one of the chairs, picked up the legs, then broke them one after the other on my sides. I remembered Abu Saad the butcher, the stink of blood, and the early days of my marriage when he used to beat me before sleeping with me.’ (179)
What Fadia Faqir depicts in these passages are perhaps the worst examples of abuses on women, inflicted in both rural and urban settings. She provides a glimpse of the debasement of women that occurred in society back in the early twentieth century. Shockingly such violence still occurs, and is recorded in the novel, In the Eye of the Sun, when the main character, Asya, visits a hospital to find numerous women as victims of domestic violence.
When women are not physically abused by men, they are objectified and degraded as entities with no faculties of reason and good sense. In Pillars of Salt, Um’ Saad describes how most men simply consider women as ‘vessels’ (159). Her claim is validated when her husband brings a new wife after Um’ Saad grows old. ‘He said he got married to a second wife because of my gray hair,’ (179) she says. In A Woman of five seasons, Ihsan showers his wife, Nadia, with gifts. However there is a kind of condescension in his affection, which Nadia senses and dislikes. Treating her as his possession, he seems to assert control over every aspect of her life, from determining what she should wear and read, to who she should meet. Even Ihsan’s brother, Jalal, whom Nadia respected for his idealism and sincerity later shocks Nadia with his inappropriate behaviour towards her. However Nadia tips the balance of power on her side and doesn’t allow herself to be misused by Jalal.
‘I’d always supposed Jalal was what he seemed, that he had real power to touch my inner being, to see it in a sexless way and communicate with it. But to him I’m just a female—and he’s a man. I—Nadia al-Faqih—no one will be able to know or possess her.’(108)
The subjugation of women takes different forms. In A Woman of Five Seasons, Ihsan tries to limit the intellectual endeavors of Nadia. Her education is interrupted because of Ihsan’s demands and she becomes a mere puppet at the whims of her husband, describing how he would insist on her becoming pregnant and would ‘rant and rave’ when she didn’t. ‘Why did I let him plan the first chapter of my life?’ (42), she asks herself. Later he discourages her from reading books and replaces them with nonsensical magazines. His contempt for education is obvious, ‘All these impetuous, cultured people and their rebellious ways! You must stand by me’ (36). He tries to steer Nadia in his course and restricts her autonomy to do what she feels. Moreover the career opportunities are also limited for women so much so that they are ‘driven blind by boredom’ (36). Nadia describes the worlds of men and women as completely disparate, with men living in a free world and women in ‘their own restricted world.’ Moreover in the novel, In the Eye of the Sun, Asya regrets that she never had a chance to really choose her career. ‘If the whole world were open to her, if she could be anything at all that she wanted, would she choose to teach English Literature at University of Cairo?’ (449). Although the expectations of her parents had mainly determined her path, it is implicit that there were limited career opportunities for women in her culture beyond the profession of teaching.
Thus the female characters depicted in all the novels are displaced from their rights in the different spheres of life. They are engaged in an ongoing struggle to attain autonomy, while facing injustices heaped upon them from all sides. Whether or not they succeed to recover their rights, they elicit a feeling of admiration from the readers for their resilience in the face of adversity.
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What motivates the oppressor as he displaces the rights of others and makes them his own? In all the novels, the displacement of the rights of women is mostly carried out in the name of religion. The story teller in Pillars of Salt, representing the voice of the community, begins the novel with a verse from the Quran commanding mankind to abstain from falsehood and deceit. Ironically, however, the narration of the tragic displacement of Maha and Um’ Saad that follows contains a biased, fragmented and corrupted truth. Furthermore he mentions how ‘Eve, made out of our father Adam’s crooked rib, was cast out of heaven’. Thus he justifies the injustices that are unleashed upon women and sets the tone for the biases emerging from religion when it is misconstrued.
In A Woman of Five Seasons, the male characters exhibit a condescending attitude towards women, ridiculing their equality with men. ‘It’s ok, I’d say, she’s just one of Adam’s ribs, ha ha’, (73) Faris says in one occasion regarding his wife. At another point in the novel, he reiterates his condescension, ‘Have you forgotten she’s a female? The rib of a male?’ (77). He is convinced of his superiority as a man by quoting religion and emphasizing that Eve was just an insignificant part of Adam, even though he is not particularly religious himself. Thus religion is simply a means of justification for people. It is misinterpreted, practiced widely and thus often metamorphosed into tradition.
Polygamy is one example of a widely practiced tradition in the some areas of the Middle East, which has its roots in the misinterpretation of religion. In Pillars of Salt, Abu’ Saad gets himself a new wife without the consent of Um’ Saad simply because he desires a younger woman. Similarly in A Woman of Five Seasons, Faris marries another wife without any substantial reason and this raises an outcry from his old wife. This is also reminiscent of the old man in the movie, ‘Yakubiyan’, who marries another woman only to fulfill his sexual desires and justifies his action by quoting the permission for polygamy in Islam. However the position of Islam on polygamy is conditional. The Quran explicitly states, ‘If ye fear that ye shall not be able to deal justly with the orphans, marry women of your choice, two or three or four, but if ye fear that ye shall not be able to deal justly with them, then only one.’ (4:3). At another point, the Quran says, ‘Ye are never able to be fair and just as between women, even if it is your ardent desire.’ (4:129). Thus it is clear that the permission of polygamy is only valid when it is dependant on extenuating circumstances and is carried out without injustice. However religion recedes into the background, only resurrected when one is in need to justify himself.
And what is more, the female characters also accept and internalize these norms. In Pillars of Salt when Maha is abused by Daffash, Maha remembers what her mother would say on such occasions: ‘What do you expect? He is a boy. Allah placed him step higher. We must accept Allah’s verdict’ (33). This shows how majority of the women do not protest against the abuse of men; instead they accept the superiority of men and their own position as the oppressed.
The reason that the women accept their situation also stems from the misinterpretation of religion. The mention of men as a degree higher than women in the Quran actually refers to the responsibilities of the former. Men as the bread earners are responsible for providing for the family, where as women are exempted from such pressure. Moreover the Quran emphasizes on the exalted position of the mothers, the equal treatment of wives and the compassion for daughters. Thus religion itself does not advocate inequality between people. Instead the verses are taken out of context and used in a discriminatory way by people to displace the rights of others and establish their own hegemony. And just as slavery continues despite its prohibition in Islam (some of Yasmina’s co-wives are slaves), polygamy and the inferiority of women become accepted norms in society.
Furthermore the novel, Dreams of Trespass, illustrates the ambivalence of religious frontiers. Religion is used both by those who want to restrict the freedom of women and those who want to be liberated. Fatima Mernissi describes how her mother ‘had always rejected male superiority as nonsense and totally anti-Muslim—“Allah made us all equal,” she would say” (9). At the same time, there are examples when some characters quote religion in order to limit even the most trivial activities of women. When the co-wives in Yasmina’s farm decide to wash their dishes in the river, Lalla Thor is scandalized and believes it to ‘against Muslim civilization’ (68). What follows after this incident is a comical debate between the two camps in the household, one for ‘liberation’ and one against it. The co-wives say that they ‘gladly renounce their proposed project, if Lalla Thor could produce a fatwa (decree) from the Qaraouiyine Mosque religious authorities banning women from washing dishes in rivers’ (69). Thus the very fact that the interpretations of religious commandments vary with different perspectives highlights that individual prejudices are at work behind the oppressive restrictions. Moreover the behavior of Daffash as he displaces his sister from her right of inheritance and puts her through a series of endless persecutions demonstrates that the struggle to assert power drives all conflicts.
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~ Epilogue~
They are walls of barbed wire, not boundaries, that tear apart souls.
You watch a helpless woman imprisoned in a distant cell, a mother clutching her bleeding heart at the sight of a mangled corpse, a child whose world is scarred by bomb raids. All in the name of your Lord? Your nation?
‘When did my identity become thus?’
All the characters in the novels are victims of displacement on some level. The novel, Pillars of Salt, portrays how both Muslims and non-Muslims, Arabs and non-Arabs, are sources of aggression in the village of Hamia. In a parallel structure of the oppressed versus the oppressor dichotomy, the natives fight the British to attain freedom and the women struggle against the male-dominated society in order to retrieve their rights. In violence, both the British and the natives are equal, and the frontiers of religion and nationality are eliminated. Similarly in the oppression of women, we have Abu’ Saad from the Middle Eastern culture subjugating his wife, and Gerald from the Western culture oppressing Asya on a very different level, as a ‘sexual imperialist’ in the words of Asya. Moreover when Abu’ Saad marries another woman, the new wife also demeans Um’ Saad and says with contempt, ‘Is that thing your wife?’ While the injustices towards women in the novels come mainly from men, this incident reveals how women also play a role in oppressing their own gender. Thus displacement does not result from the boundaries of religion, nationality or gender. It arises from the evil within men, an evil that cloaks itself behind different facades and creates walls between people.
Moreover the emotional relationship between Omar and Louisa in A Balcony over the Fakihani demonstrates how the boundaries of religion, nationality and gender can be overcome with understanding, respect and love. Omar describes how ‘there was poetry in her, and the music, and a gipsy’s fingertips to touch the strings and turn them to raging fire.’ The character of Louisa represents the beauties of a different culture which Umar, in his chaotic world of war and bloodshed, has not been exposed to. His emotional relationship with Louisa enables him to see a different nation or culture with more appreciation and empathy.
‘Before I met Louisa I never used to bother to learn anything about the countries I was visiting; I was like someone on a military mission; who familiarizes himself with what he needs to carry out his task and leaves it at that. My own task here had been to get well and then move on’ but now here I was, getting to know streets and food and cafes and people I met—even little nuances began to attract my attention. I described my life at home to her in minute detail, and she got to know the names of my family and friends, and became familiar with our political situation. [….], and it was as if she had become a member of the family.’
Hence a strong bond is forged between them, so much so that Louisa continues to remain in Omar’s thoughts despite his sincere love for his wife, Su’aad. Both Omar and Louisa retain their identities in terms of religion and nation, without letting them create obstructions. Thus boundaries of religion, gender and nationality are inevitable since all human beings define themselves in terms of certain precincts. However these boundaries need not be walls that oppress and displace. They can be crossed without being disfigured. After all, ‘a wall is just a wall and nothing more at all. It can be broken down.’
(Assata Shakur)
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