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Elizabeth DuMont-McCaffrey
Arab Women Novels
Final Paper
Spring Semester: 2008
Throughout the course of this class, we have read and scrutinized five novels written by Arab women. Each author tells a distinct story, but one aspect that they all share is the portrayal of the importance of deep relationships among women and among families. Of all the five novels we read, each details strong women solidarity and tight-woven familial relations and the books without these qualities star unhappy women.
The first book we read, Pillars of Salt by Fadia Faqir, begins our trend of solidarity of women and of families in the Arab world. The story takes place in Jordan, in a room in a mental hospital where two women, Um Saad and Maha have been put away. Maha has lived a more or less good life, which is exemplified by her good relationships, while Um Saad’s life has been one of abuse and despair.
Maha’s family contains three members. She has a brother, Daffash, and a father, Sheik Nimer. Her mother, Maliha, is dead and Sheik Nimer speaks of her as the love of his life. Maha and her father are very close but Daffash is not a good member of the family.
Daffash is very westernized and wants to make many changes to their traditional Bedouin family farm. He wants to, for example, buy a Jeep Land Rover, something that Maha and Sheik Nimer are against.
Maha and Sheik Nimer portray their unbreakable solidarity many times within the text. Generally, in Arab culture, the sons are supposed to be left land after the death of the father. However, in the case of Sheik Nimer, he decides that he would rather have his daughter own his land after his death so he specifically changes his will to say that he wants the person who worked on his land to be entitled to it after his death. This is not because he does not love his son, all fathers love their sons. This is because he knows that Daffash has not done anything to upkeep the land, all of the farming and planting has been done by Maha. Sheik Nimer in this case decides to be fair rather than traditional.
Another instance when Maha and Sheik Nimer show their deep familial relations is when the sheik becomes ill. When Maha’s father gets sick, she moves back in with him, from her husband’s house and works to nurse him back to health. When her father gets really sick he begins calling her Maliha, which is her mother’s name, proving that her father had strong feelings toward his wife and it was not a marriage of convenience like some marriages are.
Maha’s marriage is also not a marriage of convenience. Maha falls genuinely in love with her husband, Harb, who is a soldier for the Palestinian cause. They are a very romantic couple and instead of spending their first night together in their home with people waiting outside to prove Maha’s virginity, they lie to the people and spend their first night in the Dead Sea. Maha has a very intimate relationship with Harb but not very long into their relationship he dies in war. Fortunately, Maha is pregnant with his child Mubarak and when he is born, Maha treats him like a king.
Fadia Faqir juxtaposes Maha’s family, which although has a bad element, Daffash, is generally loving and strong, with Um Saad, whose family life is horrible. Um Saad’s father was a revolutionary in Syria, but when the war got very bad her family fled to Jordan where she spend most of her life before going to the mental hospital.
Growing up, she was often abused and tortured by her parents. Both her mother and father would gang up on her and try to hurt her feelings. Her mother actually referred to Um Saad as “broken neck” because she wished that her daughter had been a son and wished her daughter would die by breaking her neck. When she brought home the man who she wanted to marry, her parents did not accept him and would not allow them to get married. Their reason was that he was Circassion, and therefore not Arab, but they also seemed to get satisfaction from torturing their daughter. A few weeks later, Um Saad is instructed to put on nice clothes for a wedding. It is not until she actually entered the wedding that she realized that she was at her own marriage to a disgusting old butcher.
During the course of her marriage, not much gets better. She never develops a good relationship with her husband. They just learn to tolerate each other. He likes her singing and she gets used to the smell of meat. Over time, Um Saad has five children but none of them are mentioned often, all of them side with their father and none ever visit her in the mental institution.
When her husband marries another, much younger woman, she finally goes over the edge once and for all. Um Saad is kicked out of her room so that the young wife can sleep with him. She is forced to sleep on the kitchen floor while she listens to sounds of her husband and his new, beautiful, blonde wife having sex in her bed. When she finally confronts her husband he beats her within an inch of her life with a chair.
This juxtaposition of Maha’s solid and kind family life compared to Um Saad’s horrible family life is one of the main themes in the novel although the comparison is not stated. Although they both end up in a mental institution, Um Saad has been turned crazy by abuse and Maha is still quite stable. Um Saad has lived a horrible life and this is just the grand finale of despair while Maha lived a perfect life and this is one of the only things that can be considered bad about it.
I believe that this novel has an underlying moral that if one’s family is close and honest with each other, their lives will be good, as we see with Maha. However, if the family becomes unraveled, like when Sheik Nimer dies and Daffash tries to steal Maha’s land, marry her off, and take her son Mubarak away, lives turn from good to bad. A negative change in the family resulted in a negative turn in Maha’s life.
It is also ironic, almost funny the way the close family seems more civilized than the bad family. It is ironic because Maha is Bedouin, which is considered low-class and uncivilized among Arabs. Um Saad is from the city and spent her entire life there and yet her life is not civilized at all. Although Maha’s way of life could be considered primitive because it includes family farming and a simple lifestyle it can definitely not be considered uncivilized, especially when compared to atrocious lives like Um Saad’s spent entirely in Amman.
Faqir confidently describes the role of close families in having positive and fulfilling lives, but along with this she proves that women’s solidarity is a huge factor playing a role in the contentment of women.
Maha is a character who is very close with the women in her community. In some cases the solidarity of women is so strong that it surpasses the solidarity of the family. An example of this occurs at the beginning of the novel when Nasra, one of Maha’s best friends is raped by Daffash. Nasra is a character who remains relatively unexplained during the course of the story. She does not seem to have a family and has a strange way of speaking that could imply that she perhaps has some sort of disability.
When Nasra rushes to Maha crying, Maha is infuriated and tries to kill Daffash. In the end of the situation, Daffash is perfectly fine but Nasra will never be able to get married because her virginity is gone so she is now considered tainted. This example of women solidarity is very important because Maha was willing to kill her own brother in order to save her friend.
Another example of the strong bonds of women in Maha’s life is the custom of all the women of the town coming together every day. Every day they convene and weave together while their children play. It is also a time for them to chat with each other and do things they enjoy doing like singing. They spend so much time together that Maha repeatedly refers to the women as her sisters, which is what they act as.
In the novel, Daffash brutally beats Maha more than once and in these cases, her “sisters” always come to the rescue. For example, Daffash beats her when she embarrasses him in front of Samir Pasha and his English friends. When Daffash, her own brother, is done with the beating, her “sisters” take care of her and nurse her back to health. Nasra and the other women of the village wash her, make herbal healing remedies and wait with her as she heals.
However, the ultimate act of sisterhood in the story is the last experience Maha has in her village. Daffash has been trying to marry off Maha so that he can get back his land that had been given to Maha in their father’s will. Maha refuses and so one day when she returns to her house, the whole population of men from the village are there waiting to see if she will agree to get married or get carted off to a mental institution. Maha again refuses and Daffash argues with her. Daffash loses his temper and punches Maha and the situation becomes violent. Then Hamda, one of Maha’s “sisters,” begins to choke Daffash while another women hits him on the head with her pipe but slowly all of the women are stopped. “Hamda’s body being flung on the ground. Nasra standing there without hands. Halimeh struggling, a hand blocking my voice.” The women have lost. Maha is sent to a mental institution indefinitely and will probably spend the rest of her life there.
Women are an especially important aspect of Maha’s life because they replace her family. Maha’s mother died when she was very young and her father and husband died within about a year of each other, leaving Maha alone except for her evil brother Daffash. However, Maha may have no family (other than her son Mubarak) but she is not alone. She sees her “sisters” every single day. They are a network of support and love for her and they end up being agents of her protection. These women replace her family and become her new family. Maha surely would not have been able to protect herself against Daffash without the support that she had from the local women.
This is a great contrast to Um Saad whose story does not show any contact between women other than the contact she has with her mother and with her husband’s new wife and both are very negative relationships.
As mentioned before, Um Saad’s mother was very bitter because Um Saad had not been born a boy and did not want Um Saad to live let alone have any type of meaningful relationship with her. Um Saad could never have the relationship with her mother that Maha had with the women in her community. It is doubtful that they sang or worked together because the mother was so filled with hatred.
The only other mention of Um Saad having contact with a woman is when her husband remarries to a beautiful young, blonde woman. In this case, there is no written conversation between Um Saad and the new wife. The new wife does not seem apologetic for taking Um Saad’s husband or her bed. She does not seem to care about Um Saad at all and does not see any bond that they share as women. It is unlikely that the new wife would ever protect Um Saad because she stands by while Um Saad is brutally beaten and taken to a mental institution to stay for the rest of her life. The new wife just does not care about Um Saad at all.
However, there is one woman who cares about Um Saad, and that of course is Maha. Maha and Um Saad share a room at the mental hospital and they become the ultimate example of women solidarity throughout the book. At first, Um Saad does not want to be friend with Maha because of Maha’s low class status but Maha’s caring and nurturing bring them together although they have very different lives.
Maha is Um Saad’s first time bonding with a woman, and may even be her first friend in her lifetime. Although these women are trapped in a cell they are content. They tell each other the stories of their lives, they laugh together and get in trouble from the doctors for making noise together. Although the situation a basically a prison, this is probably the best time Um Saad has had in her life. Finally someone cares about her and treats her like a human being.
In this novel, I doubt that showing examples of solidarity among women and among families were Faqir’s main goals. In fact, her novel delves into many other issues along with these, including the theme of westernization being bad (Daffash) and the war in Palestine. However, although she may be trying to prove one thing, she succeeds in proving that women who have good relationships can be content no matter the circumstances. Maha lives a much more poor and simple life than Um Saad and so one could assume that Um Saad’s life would be happier and easier but Um Saad has no one and Maha has the love and support of her family and then the local women. Maha is never alone and thus even when horrible things are happening to her, like beatings and death of loved ones she can always be comforted and cheered up by her friends.
Faqir proves that deep relationships among women are an important part of life in the Arab world, which has a male-dominated culture along with most of the rest of the world. She proves that since so many bad things occur in the lives of women, that women need to be a mechanism of support and protection for one another. Women cannot choose their family and often times life would be horrible for women left in situation where they are alone with their brutal relatives.
A perfect life would be one in which the family is strong and bound, like Maha’s family before her husband and father die. However, when the family unit fails, women solidarity prevails.
The next book that we read, A Woman of Five Seasons by Leila Al-Atrash, also has clear examples of solidarity between women and among families in Arab culture. However, in this story they are not as clear-cut as the extremes between Maha and Um Saad in Pillars of Salt.
In A Woman of Five Seasons there is a bad relationship between the main characters who are husband and wife, Nadia and Ihsan. Also, although it is mentioned that Nadia and Ihsan have children, they are hardly ever discussed or mentioned in the text, except when Nadia gives birth because children are a hindrance to her education.
In other situations, however, other than the direct family unit, the closeness of the family appears many times in ways that are distinctly Arab. For example, at the beginning of the story Jalal, Ihsan’s brother falls in love with Nadia and wants to marry her. Ihsan, who is a jealous younger brother, sees that Faris is in love with Nadia and decides to marry her himself. Ihsan comes to his family and asks them for Nadia’s hand in marriage while Jalal is there. Jalal could say that he did not want Ihsan to marry Nadia because they were already in love. Instead, however, he grants permission to Ihsan and watches as his brother marries the woman he loves.
This is a distinctly Arab custom. In the United States, this idea of protection of younger members of the family is present but not at such a high degree. For example, I doubt that the same situation would occur in an American household. Although Americans care a lot about their family, the Arab family unit seems much tighter and more formal, with many rules you are expected to abide by.
Another anecdote within the story that relates to strong families within Arab culture is the story of Afaf. Afaf is Ihsan and Jalal’s sister and is married to Faris, Ihsan’s business partner. She is a relatively dumb woman, which prevents a relationship from occurring with Nadia, who is very elitist about education.
In the story, Faris marries another, much younger woman and does not inform Afaf about this. However, she eventually finds out through the grapevine. Afaf is devastated because this means that he has been lying to her, and loves her less than she thought and is embarrassed that she had to hear about it from others and not from her own husband. In this case, her family again joins together and solves the problem as a unit. Ihsan, Afaf and Jalal all meet together in Ihsan’s living room and discuss the problem and decide that they will solve the problem by finding Faris and forcing him to divorce his new wife and come back to Afaf. This then happens and Faris and Afaf are stuck with each other again.
It seems strange however, that all of the family solidarity in this novel is solidarity among the extended family, with blood relatives, while all of the relationships between husband and wife seem very dysfunctional. Afaf needs the extended family to step in and solve the problems within her own family unit. Ihsan ends up cheating on his wife and Jalal divorces his. All of these problems are occurring within the family unit, but the individual members of the families are able to stay strong because they are very connected to and protected by their extended families.
This type of extensive relationship with the extended family is a culture very different from America. In America, parents do not necessarily go to a family member for advice, but rather some sort of marriage counselor. Also, families hardly ever live close to each other and when grandparents become old they are sent to live at nursing homes as opposed to keeping them cared for by the family.
Along with aspects of solidarity within the family, Leila Al-Atrash also brings up women solidarity and puts similar symbology with that of Faqir. At the beginning of the novel, Nadia is a free woman who wants to pursue her education and life. However, once she marries Ihsan, her life becomes much more repressed and lonely. Her husband does not treat her like a human being. He forces her to have babies, and ruins her educational prospects by doing this. Along with this he treats her as a sex object. He also wants her to be a certain way and therefore makes rules that take away her freedoms. For example, he does not like the color red (Nadia’s favorite color) so he does not allow her to wear it. Also, he does not want Nadia to be smart, or the possibility that she is smarter than him so he does not allow her to read books. Instead her buys her gossip magazines that she despises and only allows her to read those.
When Nadia marries Ihsan there is no solidarity with women in her life. In fact, she attends many dinners with Ihsan as his trophy wife, but never seems to be able to make a connection with any of these women. In fact, she hates them. She believes all the other women to be less intelligent than her and the type to gossip and spread rumors.
The only time she seems to make a connection with a woman in the part of the novel where she is repressed is when she goes to a large dinner where Leila Haled is speaking. Leila Haled is a character in the novel who is a hero in the P.L.O. and she comes looking for money and support from the rich women of the community. Instead, they present her with a large ceremonial sword, which all the women swoon over. However, Leila is not amused by it since it is only decorative and cannot actually do anything to help in the P.L.O. struggle. Nadia at that moment feels a connection to Leila Haled because she feels the same way.
The first time, however, that she makes direct contact with a woman and forms a solid relationship with one is when she decides that she wants to by land and they go to see a realtor, Jessica. After some discussion with Jessica, who may or may not be a lesbian, Nadia decides to begin a real estate company with her, which is one of the first steps of her transformation into a free and strong woman.
From that point, with the support of Jessica, she does many strong things to stand up for herself against Ihsan. She begins by wearing red again, but in the end she has control of much of his company and assets.
One important comparison from this novel to Faqir’s novel is that in both cases women’s solidarity brings about the strength to become independent women. Um Saad is trapped in her bad relationships. It is not until she has a real connection with a woman that she begins to understand herself. The same type of situation occurs with Nadia who has no connection with any women, but as she becomes friends with a strong woman, she like Um Saad, is able to pick herself up and become a strong woman and take control of a situation in which she is unhappy.
It seems as though both authors are saying that when you are trapped in a bad marriage situation, without family or women’s support, it is hard to get out of it when you are all alone, but if you have a connection with even one strong woman, the whole situation can turn around and an unhappy woman can quickly become happy and strong.
The next book that we read was a Balcony Over the Fakihani by Liyana Badr. It was set up differently than the first two books in that it was not a novel but three separate stories that are intertwined. In the first story, A Land of Rock and Thyme, the ultimate tests of family are given and solidarity can only be inside ones body because they are too weak to show emotion.
The main family in the story lives in a refugee camp in Lebanon. The family is going through horrendous times. They live from day to day and their only goal every day is to get water and bring it back for their family.
One day Yusra, the main character in the story and a daughter in the family, is waiting in line with her sister to get water. Water is the most important thing for the family and they wait in lines for multiple hours and sometimes even days in order to get water. As Yusra waits in line for the water a man asks her how her father is and she replies that he is fine.
After a few hours of waiting for water, Yusra returns home only to find that her father has been killed in her absence. She is very upset that someone in the family did not come to get her so that they could say parting words to each other. Instead, when her father was asked if he would like to see his daughter before he died he said that she should stay in line for water because water is more important.
Although this may seem like an uncaring act with more thought it becomes an act of family solidarity. The father cared more about his whole family’s well being than he cared about not being able to see his daughter on his deathbed. He sacrificed a last look at his daughter for their health.
This is very different from the solidarity of families we have seen in the other books because in the other novels there is no imminent danger. The family solidarity shows itself through everyday acts while the women stand together against oppression from men.
In this story there is no time for woman’s solidarity or oppression of women. People need to care only for themselves and their immediate family and cannot be concerned with feminism or standing up to oppressive men. There is no time for them to be oppressed. Their lives are literally on the line and they could die at any moment. In drastic situations it seems like solidarity of the family is much stronger than woman’s solidarity.
Although women’s solidarity is obviously an important aspect of life for women leading normal lives, the idea of women’s solidarity over family solidarity, like at the end of Maha and Um Saad’s life, seems utterly ridiculous.
The second story of the book, A Balcony over a Fakihani, begins in a calm, non-violent situation and thus woman’s solidarity thrives. Su’ad and Umar are married and while Umar is at work, Su’ad spends time with her friends. She is friends with women who are very different from each other with the single bond of womanhood. Her friends include Husniyyeh, a laundry woman, Im Salman, a gossip, and Im Hamdi. “Im Hamdi always used to help me out with things, epecially when I was pregnant and eventually gave birth to twins-a boy and a girl, Ruba and Jihad. And then there was Jinan, who was always coming to see me to help her meet the women of the block and invite them to a discussion or celebration organized by the Women’s Union.”
Jinan is a great friend of Su’ad and Umar and sits on the balcony having conversations with them often. She shows her great friendship to them at the end when there is a bombing and Su’ad cannot locate Umar. In this scene, Jinan is the one who says that she will keep watch for Umar while Su’ad goes to find her children who she had left at a friend’s house before the commotion.
Later on, they find out that Umar is dead. Jinan seems to be as sad as Umar’s own wife Su’ad. Jinan is devastated by the death of Umar and describes it more in the book than Su’ad.
This is a different manifestation of women’s solidarity than in the other books because in the other stories the women first become good friends and then use their friendship to stand up against men together. In this story, the men and women seem to all be friends. Jinan is equally friends with Su’ad and Umar, although she may be a little bit closer to Su’ad because Umar works during the day.
However, they never join together against men. When Umar cheats on Su’ad, Jinan has a laugh with Umar and does not particularly take the side of or feel for Su’ad. The only time that they join together is when they need to work together in the time of bombing and crisis. Even in this case, Jinan waits for Umar. This is not necessarily a sign of women’s solidarity but just of friendship with Umar.
The last story, The Canary and the Sea, is solely about a man so there are no aspects of women’s solidarity in this portion of the book. However, there is a hint of family solidarity in one anecdote within the story.
The story is about a soldier in the Palestinian cause. In it, he tells the story of some members of his family escaping from Palestine. Before he was born his grandmother was trying to leave with her son, the main character’s uncle and when getting onto a bus they were separated, the grandmother on the bus and the boy on the ground. There was no way to go back.
Over the years, the grandmother never forgets him and puts out radio broadcasts looking for him and finally after many years he responds and she goes and meets him at the border of Palestine. Neither of them can cross it. In the end they are too far apart to recognize each other. However, that is not important. The important part is that the finally could be reunited after thirteen years apart.
In this case the book is once again showing that family is the most important thing and will always stand solidly together even if they were apart. The grandmother never forgot about her son and for thirteen years longed for him without knowing what happened to him. This is not something that one would do for a non-family member. This anecdote shows that even if the family is broken up physically they can still stay connected and solid mentally. Even when they did not recognize each other they felt happy and close to one another.
The interesting thing about this book compared to the other novels discussed thus far is that the whole book (almost) takes place in a time of crisis. In times of crisis, norms change drastically and that could be a reason that the theme of solidarity between women does not occur quite as much throughout the book.
Badr does not allow time in her book, except for the calm times on the balcony, for discussion of women’s issues. When times of crisis ensue, women are not trying to revolt against their husbands, they are doing all they can to survive and make sure that their husbands (even though they may not get along in times without crisis) are healthy and their families safe.
This novel sort of puts women’s solidarity in perspective as a luxury. Women do not necessarily need solidarity to live, but they need it to cultivate healthy relationships.
The next novel that our class read was Dreams of Trespass, by Fatima Mernissi. This novel was different from the others in many ways including that it was told from the point of view of a child and that the family lived in a harem.
This story was filled with instances of family solidarity because the family hardly ever saw anyone else because they lived in a harem. Even though by Western standards, harems are considered evil, this book changed some of my ideas about them. For example, one of the harems mentioned in the book reserves the third floor of their harem for family members who need a place to stay, like widows, divorcees and orphans.
This is an example of built in protection. The women and children of the family always have somewhere to go when they are on their own and need protection, they will never be left alone.
Also, the family system is very solid. Instead of living solely with your immediate family, the entire extended family lives together in a sort of communal fashion where everyone eats together, all of the children play together, and the women do all of their weaving together. It is a set up in which everyone is always being watched and nothing dangerous can happen to any of the women or children.
There are obviously a lot of downsides to living in a harem including, obviously, the repression of women. However, although there are many downsides to the harem system there is no doubt in my mind that it fosters solidarity among families and does not allow any family members to slip through the cracks, a common problem among extended families in the United States.
Also, along with living communally, individual immediate families spend a lot of time alone as well. In Fatima, the main character’s, immediate family, the family takes special time out to spend among themselves. In this time they play games and sing and are a small unit but they feel secure all the while because they know that they belong to a much larger family structure.
Solidarity among women is a much more important theme that is brought up in this novel. The entire book is based on questions, asked by Fatima, about the reason for harems and about if they are beneficial for women. There is no concrete conclusion at the end but that some of the women are happy and some are unhappy in the different types of harems.
Women in harems spend so much time together that they end up being the closest companions. Unlike the men, they spend all day together cooking, weaving and telling stories and growing together.
At Fatima’s grandmother Yasmina’s harem, the harem is more like a commune where the women ride horses and run around. They show their solidarity in simple ways. For example, a new wife was brought to the harem and she was from Africa. The other wives did not want her to be lonely or feel homesick, so they planted a banana tree next to her home.
At Fatima’s own harem, the rules are very different, unlike Yasmina’s harem they are not allowed to roam around on a large piece of land with psychological borders, instead they are confined to a enclosed building with no windows looking outside the compound.
Instead of doing things that are wild and fun, like ride horses, they are confined and closed in. They have to make their own fun. They do so by joining together and enjoying simple pleasures. One way that they do this is by weaving. Some women like to weave old-fashioned patterns and pictures, while some like to weave strange or abstract designs. The two groups of women join separate teams and become weaving rivals. Although they are two separate groups, I believe this does show women’s solidarity because you have to be much stronger to show your differences than to keep everyone the same.
The women also show their solidarity by supporting each other in their private endeavors. For example, one of the wives, Chama, always does plays for all of the rest of the wives and children. Also, most of the plays that Chama does are related to feminism. For example some of the plays tell the story of famous Arab feminists like Huda Sharowee or stories about strong women like the story of Princess Budur from A Thousand and One Nights.
In this play based on the story, a woman, Budur, wakes up one morning to find that her husband is gone. So, in order to live in Arab society alone and protect herself, she makes herself look like a man. One day she goes to see the king and he is so impressed by Budur (who he thinks is a him) that he proposes marriage between him and the king’s daughter. The two are married but in order for Budur to not get caught as a woman she pretends she has to pray all night so that they will not have to sleep together. Finally, the king’s daughter gets upset and asks and Budur tells her that she is not really a woman. The king’s daughter decides to keep the secret and they become companions pretending to be husband and wife.
This story is very symbolic because the women stick together in a male-dominated society. That is probably why the story appeals to the women in Fatima’s harem in the first place because they can relate to having to keep secrets for the other women and staying together in solidarity. Also, they may be using the plays to teach the younger girls, like Fatima the importance of women solidarity.
Lastly, one way in which the women show their solidarity is their weekly trips to the hammam. The hammam is a place where only women can go and it is their time to revitalize for the next week.
Before the women go to the hammam they spend hours getting prepared. They put clay in their hair and on their skin, even though their husbands do not like it, and they put henna on their skin. They also make strange concoctions and put them on their skin in various places.
Then, they get picked up and they go to the local hammam where they can spend hours beautifying in the steam and water. They can also talk to each other and love spending time away from home and without men’s supervision.
Although they are not free, this is the most free that these women get and that is the reason that their favorite time of the week is this time spent at the hammam. Although they may not be that unhappy living in a hammam any time that they can take as free individuals for themselves. The hammam makes them feel like women again who are unrestrained by everything that represses them within their harem. They spend this time rejoicing and singing and being proud to be a community of women.
I think that this story gives a very detailed account about women solidarity because of their situation in harems. Although the women have different ideas about the meaning of the word harem and their relationships to harems they spend so much time together that even if they do have differences, they all still love and support each other. For example, when Chama tells her stories sometimes she begins to cry and all of the women in the family support her. Also, when the men leave the women put the radio on stations with popular music and when the men return the women all pretend that they do not know who turned it on.
Women’s solidarity is more a part of these women’s lives than in any of the other women in the books we have read because they spend literally all of their time with the same people. Since they have little freedom they have learned how to really make the best out of a controlled life and have cultivated relationships with the other women that although are sometimes rivalries are incredibly close relationships.
The final book that we read was called In the Eye of the Sun by Ahdaf Soueif. It was a great culmination to the books that we read in class because the lack of family solidarity and women’s solidarity leading to the main character, Asya’s, lonely life proves that these concepts are very important parts of life in the Arab world.
Asya, marries when she is young and moves to England to do her Ph.D. in linguistics. Her husband does not live with her in England because he works for the U.N. In England she has only minimal contact with her family back at home. She gets letters from her mother and a visit from her sisters but seems very separated from them. It is not until the end of the book, when her life begins to fall apart that she even asks for help from her mother. In her immediate family, her husband Seif is psychologically and physically separated from Asya and thus she ends up cheating on her husband and ruining any relationship that could have remained between them. In short, Asya’s contact with her family is much less than in any other book thus far and it makes her feel very lonely and worthless.
As for Asya’s solidarity with women, she does not have any friends who are women in England. In Egypt, her homeland, she has three very close girlfriends but as time passes they seem to lose contact because they a get stuck in their own lives. Her friend Chrissie loses control of her own life because her husband marries another woman without Chrissie finding out and so getting her husband back consumes Chrissie. Her other friends also have separate problems which break their friendships apart and force them to focus on their own individual lives.
Thus in England, Asya is completely alone. She has no family to turn to and no friends to watch over her. This is probably one of the main reasons that her life falls apart. If she had friends or family, she probably would not have lusted after Gerald, a skeezy British man who Asya leaves her husband for.
Asya’s life is kind of a funny in comparison to the other books because it proves all the Western ideals that Americans believe wrong. A lot, or even most, Americans leave for college at age 18 and never return home. They do not have close relationships with their families, especially their extended families, and hardly ever sustain relationships with the same women for their entire lives.
As Asya lives this Western lifestyle, she falls through the cracks. She has no one to support her, no solidarity. This is what the Western ideals consider a perfect life. However, in this scenario, all of the women in the traditional Arab lifestyles have a better life than Asya. Asya works alone on her Ph.D. from morning until night, while Fatima and the women in her family weave together and perform communal plays.
It seems like as women in the Arab world become more Westernized they lose the support that makes them happy. Is that really worth it?
It is understandable not to want to live in a harem but it seems counterintuitive to rid yourself of solidarity, the only thing that made women in the harem happy, while gaining other independences.
It is peculiar looking back on these books and thinking about who were the happiest characters. I would argue that the happiest were Maha, from Pillars of Salt and Yasmina from Dreams of Trespass. Both of them were happy because they had such extensive support networks that they could never become lonely or depressed. Even with horrible oppression, like that Maha was facing, she never seemed unhappy, she was always supported by her fellow women and her family and that gave her the strength to go on.
The women who were most unhappy in the books, were the women without any support from their family or other women. Asya, even though she was doing interesting and impressive things in her life, had no one to share them with and thus they meant nothing. Asya was alone. Um Saad was also alone even though she was surrounded by people. The novel focuses on the point that although she is from the city, and thus should be more civilized, she has no meaningful relationships with anyone. Nadia is another woman who is very unhappy in her life at the beginning of the novel. However, once she gains a good relationship with Jessica, her life turns around and she is able to be happy and flourish.
These books all prove that traditional Arab culture and treatment of women may not be ideal but it was set up for a good reason, because people never fall through the crack and live lonely lives. In Arab culture, the people surround each other.
The West, which Americans believe is always right and never oppressive, has allowed people to become so independent that they no longer pursue meaningful relationships. Perhaps, the West could even have allowed people to become too free and independent.