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Voices from Behind the Mud Walls

Posted by AWN, Paper#7 on December 2, 2002 at 11:44:17:

Voices from Behind the Mud Walls:
Three Works of Arab Women

Arab Women Novelists
Mid-term Essay
Fall 2002

In Liyana Badr’s novella, A Balcony over the Fakihani, the main character, Su’ad, meets and falls in love with a man named Umar, who towards the book’s end is killed in battle. What occurs between the meeting and the death constitutes the author’s attempt to process the environment in which she grew up. Similarly, Pillars of Salt, by Fadia Faqir, and A Woman of Five Seasons, Leila Al-Atrash, focus on and investigate women’s lives in the Arab world. At the very least, three issues are at work in these books. One string explores the oppressions and the joys, the perversities and the passions of Arab women. Another theme is Arab men’s behaviors and attitudes toward women. The final topic, which encompasses the other two, is the idea of literary form; that is, the particular ways in which the authors represent their experiences through writing. Taken together, these novels, in both shape and content, explore what it means to be a woman in an Arab, a man’s, world.
One early scene in A Balcony Over the Fakihani is emblematic of the novella as a whole, as well as of the novels of Faqir and Al-Atrash; it encapsulates the authors’ artistic approach to the handling of their lives, the hostilities they must endure, the roles of Arab men and women, and the different ways both act within their setting. To begin, Badr artfully sets the stage in an almost journalistic fashion, parodying a newspaper’s objective approach in the face of so much human tragedy: "May 1973—tank gun and machine gun fire on Shatila camp (Badr, 45). This crafty setup is part and parcel of the way in which the author handles her topic. Only through art can she comprehend and process these events. In this respect, "The sky was lit with green and red stars, and the thunder and lightening wasn’t real thunder and lightening, but bullets from machine guns and small arms."
In the midst of such fighting, Su’ad noticed "a white hair in the middle of her head. I couldn’t believe a baby’s hair could turn white" (46). Her disbelief is compounded when Im Hamdi sees the white hair and "cried out and wailed." Su’ad, in turn, is overcome by emotion. The two women hug and cry. Meanwhile, at the sound of a woman crying, "the men came out of the neighboring rooms in their pajamas and undershirts" (46). This image of the men coming to do their manly duties is purposely clichéd. They do nothing, they say nothing—they are simply there, giving no comfort. One surmises they would rather not be there, that they feel unrightfully disturbed, and having discovered the commotion is only two women crying over whatever it is women cry about, the men shuffle back to their activities. And thus Su’ad declares, "It was as if what had happened had happened only to us" (46).
It will be helpful to keep this scene in mind as we explore the rest of the novella, as well as the other two stories, for these small paragraphs illuminate the larger picture. That is, in view of the illustrated problems that women must face, we determine that they live a highly uncertain existence.
It is for this reason that A Balcony over the Fakihani commences with a question: "Why did my heart become troubled when the carpet plant grew so big?" Having just begun the book, the reader can only conclude that the response to the question is of less importance than the query itself—the fact that she has come to such a point, has survived (so to speak), and is able to ask such a question. "It grew," the author continues, "It branched and grew tall till that day dawned" (33). How vague. The plant grew? Why do we suspect she is referring to something else? It grew until "that day dawned"? What day? What dawn? Again, the reactions to our inquiries about the vague words are less important than the questions themselves.
It is with such queries in mind that we are plunged into paragraphs filled with contentedness of life, of children playing and people chitchatting, of "losing ourselves in our recollections" (34). Yet juxtaposed to this idyllic setting is the casual recounting of the terrible: "Hajjeh Salimeh, whose death we learned of only from a brief letter" (34). War is an inextricable part of life. Just as the discovery of the baby’s white hair occurs in the midst of war, so too do children frolic and adults shoot the breeze.
A part of this concurrence of life and death, that is, the straightforward display of Su’ad’s world, is the cultural subjugation of Arab women. When Su’ad walks with Umar, she "didn’t dare tell him how embarrassed [she] felt to have him so close in front of all these people" (40). And further along, Su’ad "became embarrassed because of the people around" (52). One must ask why she is so humiliated. Is it the result of how she feels personally, or of how she perceives those observing her feel? Clearly, the latter is most evident, and the former a secondary reaction. Here, Su’ad is made self-conscious in the truest sense of the word.
Yet why wouldn’t the women be so, given the impression men have of them? As Umar reflects, "What did these women understand about life?" (52). To this question, the reader must defend that the women understood the implications of the baby’s white hair. Umar may understand war, but does he understand children? Can he understand the future, entrenched as he is in death? That Umar cannot see that women have any practical knowledge of life is representative of men’s failure to comprehend the value of women in society. To be sure, Umar initially loves Su’ad. However, as soon as he is out of her reach, he falls for kind Lousia. We learn, thusly, that Umar regards women solely in terms of beauty, and that his allegiance is indeed disgustingly fair-weathered. "Old hags," a man calls the women who work in a hospital (53). Umar echoes this phrase as he travels to the sanatorium, which might as well be "the end of the world," for the institution is devoid of youth and beauty, and without them, what’s the point? (53). Very little, it seems, as the sanatorium is like a "prison" (53).
Ironically, this period of convalescence in the "prison" is one of the most alive, prose-wise, in the entire novella; and, also ironically, it is from a man’s perspective that we gain some of the most insightful information about the interactions of both men and women in the Arab world. About his wife, Umar contends, "Whenever I remembered her, I was struck by what seemed like a tremor in my heart, like a fluttering butterfly which would almost take wing, then suddenly sink like a heavy stone" (55). Would Umar ever admit as much to Su’ad? If he ever had, the author fails to inform us, and so it appears that a man is not free to tell a woman his true feelings.
Even when he has returned home, Umar continues (unintentionally) to offer enlightening commentary about an Arab woman’s role. In reference to the women (whom he calls "girls") who are training for battle, he says "they used to come back…covered with dirt and sand—we couldn’t believe our eyes" (69). Women dirtying themselves—unbelievable! Maybe, however, this judgment is unfair; at least they are allowed to fight. With righteous indignation, he continues, the girls tried to "show us they knew more about military things than we did" (70). As if!
Throughout A Balcony over the Fakihani, as in our initially examined scene, Badr uses artful prose to convey the war and oppression in her life. In her literary ambition the different narrative perspectives, for example, are a key element of modernism. So Badr’s approach, like that of cubism, seeks to represent truth from many perspectives. Similarly, the fragmented narrative, in which the passage of time is obscured, is inherently modern. Moreover, the author dispenses with traditional character development in favor of a more patchwork character construction.
Continuing with this theme, in the novella’s denouement, the author turns to inventive prose in order to convey tragedy. The war starts and the poetry begins: "The noise!… / Suddenly / it shrieks into the sky, whizzes around us" (71). That Badr has taken the bold step of switching to verse underscores her strivings towards so-called high art. Certainly the poetry is effective at intervals. Yet it just as often falters. "Boom!" she writes, then again "Boom!" to which the reader might respond, Boo! (71).
Contradicting Umar’s earlier pronouncement about the earth’s end as he travels to the sanatorium, we learn that this last battle is the true "end of the world" (73). Who can argue? for "all hell is loose" (72). Not the author, offering merely, "Who can…?" (72). As in the beginning, the reader is given questions to which there are no answers.
In the end, a further inquiry remains, Is Badr’s artful approach successful? One must concede, largely it is not. For every solid, lyrical sentence, there are five or six tin-eared phrases. The red and green sky from early on is a fascinating image, but the wasteful repetition of thunder and lightening takes away from it. The comparison of a butterfly to love is painfully trite; and the mixed metaphor of love as a butterfly sinking like a stone is just bad writing. The "thick, congealed stench" emanating from the morgue is achingly accurate, but so near the book’s close, no amount of pitch-perfect description can rescue what has come before (83).
As regards her modernist style, the refusal to construct a realistic passage of time, to develop characters and, ultimately, a plot, requires enormous technical skill to be successful. Think Faulkner, think Woolf, think Beckett. But surely do not think Liyana Badr. Unfair though these comparisons may be, Badr has set a very high bar for herself. And while her ascent is often beautiful to watch, it is tempered (if not destroyed) by the pain involved in witnessing her fall vastly short.
Pillars of Salt, on the contrary, is a far more effective work of art. The novel opens with the bold declarative, "I" (5). Maha, and by extension Faqir, has asserted herself. At the same time, the first word cannot help but bring to mind the opening of Moby Dick ("Call me Ishmael!"); Faqir has immediately aligned herself with a decidedly Western idea of the assertion of the self, as well as the Western literary tradition. Indeed many authors have appropriated Hawthorn’s famous line – for example, Philip Roth in The Great American Novel and, most recently, Jonathan Safran Foer in Everything is Illuminated. Thus from the outset, Faqir differentiates herself from the entrenched, still-oppressed Arab women; she has transcended.
But what of Maha? Just as quickly we learn that she is subject to the same harsh treatment and intense critical social eye as is Su’ad. She is only a "filthy bedouin woman"; for her "to be out at night is a crime of honor" (6, 10, 155). A woman is expected to be uncorrupted. When her best friend Nasra is raped by Maha’s brother Daffash, Nasra "lost her honor…She was nothing now" (11). "Poor Nasra," thinks Maha, she will never be able to marry, never be able to have children, never be able to have a future (118). And what can a woman do in response? Nothing. Maha rhetorically laments, "Why couldn’t I defend myself? Why couldn’t I hit back? Why couldn’t I pluck out his eyes?" (165). As with Su’ad’s interrogatives, these "Why"s are more valuable than the potential "because"s. Still, the fact remains that through no fault of her own Nasra’s life is ruined; she is forced to be responsible for and to accept the consequences of a crime perpetrated against her, while Daffash is free to continue living his life as if nothing has occurred. As such, women are surrounded by "mud walls imprisoning us" (13).
In addition to the unrealistic image of chastity that a woman is forced to embody, Maha must conform to a certain ideal when it comes to her relationship with another man. When Harb asks Um Saad to meet her late at night and she refuses, she laments, "Harb would despise me and already I despised myself" (15). Employing the hunter/hunted metaphor, Harb becomes attracted to Um Saad because she initially rejects him; she has appeared to him as untouchable, pure, and thus he pursues; quickly, gratefully, she accepts. Again, a woman has absorbed and internalized a man’s reaction.
Furthermore, like Su’ad, Maha is besieged by the leering eyes of the villagers. She realizes she "must not let the women of the tribe see how excited I was" (22). She is not free to fully enjoy her life. In fact, Maha cannot even be left alone on her wedding night. The joy in consummating the love for her husband is destroyed by nosy, noisy people, sticking their heads into the bedroom, in search of confirmation of Maha’s sexual purity. Shocking, the stock put into a woman’s innocence. Later Maha elucidates: "I was a virgin and virgins must not respond to their men. He might think I was a loose woman" (51). In perhaps the most explicit example of such subjugation of women, Um Saad and Harb converse:
"You are my woman," Harb grasped, holding me firmly.
"I am your woman," I repeated. My fingers were dug deep into his back.
"You belong to me," he insisted.
"I am yours," I whispered (54).

Here, regardless of the love the two have for each other, the woman is clearly reduced to property. In fact, examples of the accepted repression of women are ubiquitous in Pillars of Salt. To pick just three more, when Daffash rapes another woman, we do not even learn her name; she is simply, awfully, only "Salih’s wife"; secondly Sheikh Nimer informs, "If your husband does not come back soon, you must move back to your father’s house"; and Um Saad flatly states, women "are just vessels. That is how men see us" (66, 105, 159).
Faqir expands on the symbol of a vessel when she introduces an important and intriguing issue that is a part of the overall impractical impression of women in the Arab world. Maha is having trouble getting pregnant. Her world becomes infertile: "completely childless and arid" (68). She yells at her husband as if defending the core of her very being, "I am not barren. Do you hear me? (69). She is humiliated: "Every living creature would know about my visit [to a medical practitioner] and start weaving stories and finding reasons for my barrenness" (69).
This fear, however, is nothing compared to the fear of being sterile forever; thus she submits to tortuous procedures in the hopes of getting pregnant. First a scalding hot compress is thrust inside her. Next she is stabbed with red-hot pokers (regard the inventiveness of suffering: "Some bars were long and sharp, some were short and heavy, others were thin and winding"(92). What rationale is behind such tortures? Superstition. Custom. The very forces which vanquish Arab women. The barren/pregnant dichotomy and the issue it raises are potent indicators of the real world implications of false belief. Not once is the problem attributed to Harb; the possibility cannot be contemplated. Instead, "agony became [Maha’s] daily companion" (97).
Finally, when Maha does in fact become pregnant, her husband dies. To fulfil her wish of pregnancy and thus ease her humiliation under the villagers’ watch, Maha must pay the highest price. It is as though she is not allowed to have a full, fruitful life. For in a woman’s world, there is only so much room for life.
What differentiates Pillars of Salt from A Balcony over the Fakihani is the success with which Fadia Faqir handles her triple narrative. Each narrator illuminates the perspectives of the other two. That Um Saad and Maha narrate from within a mental hospital, that they have cast their eyes back into the past, indicates that they are still haunted by former events. In words, they can revisit those episodes, and in the telling, relive them. And perhaps, in the process, the pain will diminish.
Leila Al-Atrash, in A Woman of Five Seasons, wastes no time diving into that pain. From the very first lines, a woman is "My lovely kitten" (1). We see, in this literal pet name, the subjugated role of women. To Ihsan, his wife is young, innocent, fresh. And yet, Nadia will not respond. The reader gets the impression this is not the first time Ishan has tried such soothing appeals in order to "curb his desire" (1). It seems as though Nadia is only pretending to be asleep, waiting for her husband to end his heated ministrations. Clearly, this is a marriage in name only, one in which the woman’s desires are never voiced aloud.
In a parallel context, the horrific retelling of the electrocuted woman underscores the need to socially conform. She performs her task despite acute pain, to the point of payment with her life. "What made her even think of doing it?" Ishan wonders, to which one might further inquire: What made her think she could not even stop? (31). What would Ishan do if he arrived home and the ironing wasn’t done? What would he do if his neighbors knew that Ishan couldn’t get his wife to do his ironing? What kind of a man would he be then? Instead of protesting her confined role, the woman dies, and in death is as silent as she was in life. Indeed that which speaks most loudly is the custom.
As in the first two books, adherence to such custom is pervasive in A Woman of Five Seasons. One aspect of this observance is by way of a woman’s reputation. Ihsan tells his wife that he wants "all the women in Barqais to be talking about [her]" (11). One can assume that Ihsan’s own merit is enhanced by the positive reputation of his spouse. Therefore Nadia is all at once a trophy, property, "kitten," and neither human nor respected as such.
Part Two of the novel elucidates the idea of women as property. Ihsan’s brother Jalal also loved (and perhaps still loves) Nadia. Hence the reader must wonder whether Ihsan married Nadia because he truly cared for her or because he hated his brother. One suspects a combination of the two; that is, by loving Nadia, by marrying her, he can supercede Jalal’s hate; in the taking of his brother’s beloved, Ihsan performs the highest form of revenge.
Like the other two authors we have examined, Al-Atrash employs another modernist technique: stream-of-consciousness. For example, Ihsan thinks, "You’d dreamed, for so long, of walking with her in the rain, your arms around her, her soaked clothes clinging to her body, the raindrops sprinkling from the threads of her soft, cascading hair—and that dream never came through" (3). There is an efficient lyricism at work in these words. Although we may not agree with his thoughts, at the very least we can understand them. And that is precisely the indication of successful use of the stream-of-consciousness technique: to enter another’s mind and feel as though one is at home, to naturally hear thoughts and consider ideas not unlike one’s own.
Another way that the author draws the reader into the story is through the use of the second person. We are constantly informed, You did this and You did that. While one might be wont to return, No I didn’t do this and No I didn’t do that, the overall affect is one of assimilation: the reader is made a part of the story, for better or worse, and must respond accordingly.
In truth, such strategic involvement of the reader in exploring the condition of the Arab woman may be found in each work addressed thus far. Nevertheless, as mentioned, from a strictly literary perspective the novels of Badr, Faqir, and Al-Atrish, at various points lack considerable artistic worth. Yet let us not forget their undoubted cultural relevance. For, the real value of A Balcony Over the Fakihani, Pillars of Salt, and A Woman of Five Seasons lies in the basic fact of their existence, and their common didactic ability to freshly expose to an engaged reader the severely oppressed and disadvantaged position of Arab women, in a society conversely evocative of men’s behaviors and opinions. The right to create cannot be crushed. It is exactly this freedom that has allowed artists across the globe to express their world-views. Salman Rushdie in Britain, August Wilson in America—the list goes on. It cannot be stopped.

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: Voices from Behind the Mud Walls: : Three Works of Arab Women : : Arab Women Novelists : Mid-term Essay : Fall 2002 : In Liyana Badr’s novella, A Balcony over the Fakihani, the main character, Su’ad, meets and falls in love with a man named Umar, who towards the book’s end is killed in battle. What occurs between the meeting and the death constitutes the author’s attempt to process the environment in which she grew up. Similarly, Pillars of Salt, by Fadia Faqir, and A Woman of Five Seasons, Leila Al-Atrash, focus on and investigate women’s lives in the Arab world. At the very least, three issues are at work in these books. One string explores the oppressions and the joys, the perversities and the passions of Arab women. Another theme is Arab men’s behaviors and attitudes toward women. The final topic, which encompasses the other two, is the idea of literary form; that is, the particular ways in which the authors represent their experiences through writing. Taken together, these novels, in both shape and content, explore what it means to be a woman in an Arab, a man’s, world. : One early scene in A Balcony Over the Fakihani is emblematic of the novella as a whole, as well as of the novels of Faqir and Al-Atrash; it encapsulates the authors’ artistic approach to the handling of their lives, the hostilities they must endure, the roles of Arab men and women, and the different ways both act within their setting. To begin, Badr artfully sets the stage in an almost journalistic fashion, parodying a newspaper’s objective approach in the face of so much human tragedy: "May 1973—tank gun and machine gun fire on Shatila camp (Badr, 45). This crafty setup is part and parcel of the way in which the author handles her topic. Only through art can she comprehend and process these events. In this respect, "The sky was lit with green and red stars, and the thunder and lightening wasn’t real thunder and lightening, but bullets from machine guns and small arms." : In the midst of such fighting, Su’ad noticed "a white hair in the middle of her head. I couldn’t believe a baby’s hair could turn white" (46). Her disbelief is compounded when Im Hamdi sees the white hair and "cried out and wailed." Su’ad, in turn, is overcome by emotion. The two women hug and cry. Meanwhile, at the sound of a woman crying, "the men came out of the neighboring rooms in their pajamas and undershirts" (46). This image of the men coming to do their manly duties is purposely clichéd. They do nothing, they say nothing—they are simply there, giving no comfort. One surmises they would rather not be there, that they feel unrightfully disturbed, and having discovered the commotion is only two women crying over whatever it is women cry about, the men shuffle back to their activities. And thus Su’ad declares, "It was as if what had happened had happened only to us" (46). : It will be helpful to keep this scene in mind as we explore the rest of the novella, as well as the other two stories, for these small paragraphs illuminate the larger picture. That is, in view of the illustrated problems that women must face, we determine that they live a highly uncertain existence. : It is for this reason that A Balcony over the Fakihani commences with a question: "Why did my heart become troubled when the carpet plant grew so big?" Having just begun the book, the reader can only conclude that the response to the question is of less importance than the query itself—the fact that she has come to such a point, has survived (so to speak), and is able to ask such a question. "It grew," the author continues, "It branched and grew tall till that day dawned" (33). How vague. The plant grew? Why do we suspect she is referring to something else? It grew until "that day dawned"? What day? What dawn? Again, the reactions to our inquiries about the vague words are less important than the questions themselves. : It is with such queries in mind that we are plunged into paragraphs filled with contentedness of life, of children playing and people chitchatting, of "losing ourselves in our recollections" (34). Yet juxtaposed to this idyllic setting is the casual recounting of the terrible: "Hajjeh Salimeh, whose death we learned of only from a brief letter" (34). War is an inextricable part of life. Just as the discovery of the baby’s white hair occurs in the midst of war, so too do children frolic and adults shoot the breeze. : A part of this concurrence of life and death, that is, the straightforward display of Su’ad’s world, is the cultural subjugation of Arab women. When Su’ad walks with Umar, she "didn’t dare tell him how embarrassed [she] felt to have him so close in front of all these people" (40). And further along, Su’ad "became embarrassed because of the people around" (52). One must ask why she is so humiliated. Is it the result of how she feels personally, or of how she perceives those observing her feel? Clearly, the latter is most evident, and the former a secondary reaction. Here, Su’ad is made self-conscious in the truest sense of the word. : Yet why wouldn’t the women be so, given the impression men have of them? As Umar reflects, "What did these women understand about life?" (52). To this question, the reader must defend that the women understood the implications of the baby’s white hair. Umar may understand war, but does he understand children? Can he understand the future, entrenched as he is in death? That Umar cannot see that women have any practical knowledge of life is representative of men’s failure to comprehend the value of women in society. To be sure, Umar initially loves Su’ad. However, as soon as he is out of her reach, he falls for kind Lousia. We learn, thusly, that Umar regards women solely in terms of beauty, and that his allegiance is indeed disgustingly fair-weathered. "Old hags," a man calls the women who work in a hospital (53). Umar echoes this phrase as he travels to the sanatorium, which might as well be "the end of the world," for the institution is devoid of youth and beauty, and without them, what’s the point? (53). Very little, it seems, as the sanatorium is like a "prison" (53). : Ironically, this period of convalescence in the "prison" is one of the most alive, prose-wise, in the entire novella; and, also ironically, it is from a man’s perspective that we gain some of the most insightful information about the interactions of both men and women in the Arab world. About his wife, Umar contends, "Whenever I remembered her, I was struck by what seemed like a tremor in my heart, like a fluttering butterfly which would almost take wing, then suddenly sink like a heavy stone" (55). Would Umar ever admit as much to Su’ad? If he ever had, the author fails to inform us, and so it appears that a man is not free to tell a woman his true feelings. : Even when he has returned home, Umar continues (unintentionally) to offer enlightening commentary about an Arab woman’s role. In reference to the women (whom he calls "girls") who are training for battle, he says "they used to come back…covered with dirt and sand—we couldn’t believe our eyes" (69). Women dirtying themselves—unbelievable! Maybe, however, this judgment is unfair; at least they are allowed to fight. With righteous indignation, he continues, the girls tried to "show us they knew more about military things than we did" (70). As if! : Throughout A Balcony over the Fakihani, as in our initially examined scene, Badr uses artful prose to convey the war and oppression in her life. In her literary ambition the different narrative perspectives, for example, are a key element of modernism. So Badr’s approach, like that of cubism, seeks to represent truth from many perspectives. Similarly, the fragmented narrative, in which the passage of time is obscured, is inherently modern. Moreover, the author dispenses with traditional character development in favor of a more patchwork character construction. : Continuing with this theme, in the novella’s denouement, the author turns to inventive prose in order to convey tragedy. The war starts and the poetry begins: "The noise!… / Suddenly / it shrieks into the sky, whizzes around us" (71). That Badr has taken the bold step of switching to verse underscores her strivings towards so-called high art. Certainly the poetry is effective at intervals. Yet it just as often falters. "Boom!" she writes, then again "Boom!" to which the reader might respond, Boo! (71). : Contradicting Umar’s earlier pronouncement about the earth’s end as he travels to the sanatorium, we learn that this last battle is the true "end of the world" (73). Who can argue? for "all hell is loose" (72). Not the author, offering merely, "Who can…?" (72). As in the beginning, the reader is given questions to which there are no answers. : In the end, a further inquiry remains, Is Badr’s artful approach successful? One must concede, largely it is not. For every solid, lyrical sentence, there are five or six tin-eared phrases. The red and green sky from early on is a fascinating image, but the wasteful repetition of thunder and lightening takes away from it. The comparison of a butterfly to love is painfully trite; and the mixed metaphor of love as a butterfly sinking like a stone is just bad writing. The "thick, congealed stench" emanating from the morgue is achingly accurate, but so near the book’s close, no amount of pitch-perfect description can rescue what has come before (83). : As regards her modernist style, the refusal to construct a realistic passage of time, to develop characters and, ultimately, a plot, requires enormous technical skill to be successful. Think Faulkner, think Woolf, think Beckett. But surely do not think Liyana Badr. Unfair though these comparisons may be, Badr has set a very high bar for herself. And while her ascent is often beautiful to watch, it is tempered (if not destroyed) by the pain involved in witnessing her fall vastly short. : Pillars of Salt, on the contrary, is a far more effective work of art. The novel opens with the bold declarative, "I" (5). Maha, and by extension Faqir, has asserted herself. At the same time, the first word cannot help but bring to mind the opening of Moby Dick ("Call me Ishmael!"); Faqir has immediately aligned herself with a decidedly Western idea of the assertion of the self, as well as the Western literary tradition. Indeed many authors have appropriated Hawthorn’s famous line – for example, Philip Roth in The Great American Novel and, most recently, Jonathan Safran Foer in Everything is Illuminated. Thus from the outset, Faqir differentiates herself from the entrenched, still-oppressed Arab women; she has transcended. : But what of Maha? Just as quickly we learn that she is subject to the same harsh treatment and intense critical social eye as is Su’ad. She is only a "filthy bedouin woman"; for her "to be out at night is a crime of honor" (6, 10, 155). A woman is expected to be uncorrupted. When her best friend Nasra is raped by Maha’s brother Daffash, Nasra "lost her honor…She was nothing now" (11). "Poor Nasra," thinks Maha, she will never be able to marry, never be able to have children, never be able to have a future (118). And what can a woman do in response? Nothing. Maha rhetorically laments, "Why couldn’t I defend myself? Why couldn’t I hit back? Why couldn’t I pluck out his eyes?" (165). As with Su’ad’s interrogatives, these "Why"s are more valuable than the potential "because"s. Still, the fact remains that through no fault of her own Nasra’s life is ruined; she is forced to be responsible for and to accept the consequences of a crime perpetrated against her, while Daffash is free to continue living his life as if nothing has occurred. As such, women are surrounded by "mud walls imprisoning us" (13). : In addition to the unrealistic image of chastity that a woman is forced to embody, Maha must conform to a certain ideal when it comes to her relationship with another man. When Harb asks Um Saad to meet her late at night and she refuses, she laments, "Harb would despise me and already I despised myself" (15). Employing the hunter/hunted metaphor, Harb becomes attracted to Um Saad because she initially rejects him; she has appeared to him as untouchable, pure, and thus he pursues; quickly, gratefully, she accepts. Again, a woman has absorbed and internalized a man’s reaction. : Furthermore, like Su’ad, Maha is besieged by the leering eyes of the villagers. She realizes she "must not let the women of the tribe see how excited I was" (22). She is not free to fully enjoy her life. In fact, Maha cannot even be left alone on her wedding night. The joy in consummating the love for her husband is destroyed by nosy, noisy people, sticking their heads into the bedroom, in search of confirmation of Maha’s sexual purity. Shocking, the stock put into a woman’s innocence. Later Maha elucidates: "I was a virgin and virgins must not respond to their men. He might think I was a loose woman" (51). In perhaps the most explicit example of such subjugation of women, Um Saad and Harb converse: : "You are my woman," Harb grasped, holding me firmly. : "I am your woman," I repeated. My fingers were dug deep into his back. : "You belong to me," he insisted. : "I am yours," I whispered (54). : Here, regardless of the love the two have for each other, the woman is clearly reduced to property. In fact, examples of the accepted repression of women are ubiquitous in Pillars of Salt. To pick just three more, when Daffash rapes another woman, we do not even learn her name; she is simply, awfully, only "Salih’s wife"; secondly Sheikh Nimer informs, "If your husband does not come back soon, you must move back to your father’s house"; and Um Saad flatly states, women "are just vessels. That is how men see us" (66, 105, 159). : Faqir expands on the symbol of a vessel when she introduces an important and intriguing issue that is a part of the overall impractical impression of women in the Arab world. Maha is having trouble getting pregnant. Her world becomes infertile: "completely childless and arid" (68). She yells at her husband as if defending the core of her very being, "I am not barren. Do you hear me? (69). She is humiliated: "Every living creature would know about my visit [to a medical practitioner] and start weaving stories and finding reasons for my barrenness" (69). : This fear, however, is nothing compared to the fear of being sterile forever; thus she submits to tortuous procedures in the hopes of getting pregnant. First a scalding hot compress is thrust inside her. Next she is stabbed with red-hot pokers (regard the inventiveness of suffering: "Some bars were long and sharp, some were short and heavy, others were thin and winding"(92). What rationale is behind such tortures? Superstition. Custom. The very forces which vanquish Arab women. The barren/pregnant dichotomy and the issue it raises are potent indicators of the real world implications of false belief. Not once is the problem attributed to Harb; the possibility cannot be contemplated. Instead, "agony became [Maha’s] daily companion" (97). : Finally, when Maha does in fact become pregnant, her husband dies. To fulfil her wish of pregnancy and thus ease her humiliation under the villagers’ watch, Maha must pay the highest price. It is as though she is not allowed to have a full, fruitful life. For in a woman’s world, there is only so much room for life. : What differentiates Pillars of Salt from A Balcony over the Fakihani is the success with which Fadia Faqir handles her triple narrative. Each narrator illuminates the perspectives of the other two. That Um Saad and Maha narrate from within a mental hospital, that they have cast their eyes back into the past, indicates that they are still haunted by former events. In words, they can revisit those episodes, and in the telling, relive them. And perhaps, in the process, the pain will diminish. : Leila Al-Atrash, in A Woman of Five Seasons, wastes no time diving into that pain. From the very first lines, a woman is "My lovely kitten" (1). We see, in this literal pet name, the subjugated role of women. To Ihsan, his wife is young, innocent, fresh. And yet, Nadia will not respond. The reader gets the impression this is not the first time Ishan has tried such soothing appeals in order to "curb his desire" (1). It seems as though Nadia is only pretending to be asleep, waiting for her husband to end his heated ministrations. Clearly, this is a marriage in name only, one in which the woman’s desires are never voiced aloud. : In a parallel context, the horrific retelling of the electrocuted woman underscores the need to socially conform. She performs her task despite acute pain, to the point of payment with her life. "What made her even think of doing it?" Ishan wonders, to which one might further inquire: What made her think she could not even stop? (31). What would Ishan do if he arrived home and the ironing wasn’t done? What would he do if his neighbors knew that Ishan couldn’t get his wife to do his ironing? What kind of a man would he be then? Instead of protesting her confined role, the woman dies, and in death is as silent as she was in life. Indeed that which speaks most loudly is the custom. : As in the first two books, adherence to such custom is pervasive in A Woman of Five Seasons. One aspect of this observance is by way of a woman’s reputation. Ihsan tells his wife that he wants "all the women in Barqais to be talking about [her]" (11). One can assume that Ihsan’s own merit is enhanced by the positive reputation of his spouse. Therefore Nadia is all at once a trophy, property, "kitten," and neither human nor respected as such. : Part Two of the novel elucidates the idea of women as property. Ihsan’s brother Jalal also loved (and perhaps still loves) Nadia. Hence the reader must wonder whether Ihsan married Nadia because he truly cared for her or because he hated his brother. One suspects a combination of the two; that is, by loving Nadia, by marrying her, he can supercede Jalal’s hate; in the taking of his brother’s beloved, Ihsan performs the highest form of revenge. : Like the other two authors we have examined, Al-Atrash employs another modernist technique: stream-of-consciousness. For example, Ihsan thinks, "You’d dreamed, for so long, of walking with her in the rain, your arms around her, her soaked clothes clinging to her body, the raindrops sprinkling from the threads of her soft, cascading hair—and that dream never came through" (3). There is an efficient lyricism at work in these words. Although we may not agree with his thoughts, at the very least we can understand them. And that is precisely the indication of successful use of the stream-of-consciousness technique: to enter another’s mind and feel as though one is at home, to naturally hear thoughts and consider ideas not unlike one’s own. : Another way that the author draws the reader into the story is through the use of the second person. We are constantly informed, You did this and You did that. While one might be wont to return, No I didn’t do this and No I didn’t do that, the overall affect is one of assimilation: the reader is made a part of the story, for better or worse, and must respond accordingly. : In truth, such strategic involvement of the reader in exploring the condition of the Arab woman may be found in each work addressed thus far. Nevertheless, as mentioned, from a strictly literary perspective the novels of Badr, Faqir, and Al-Atrish, at various points lack considerable artistic worth. Yet let us not forget their undoubted cultural relevance. For, the real value of A Balcony Over the Fakihani, Pillars of Salt, and A Woman of Five Seasons lies in the basic fact of their existence, and their common didactic ability to freshly expose to an engaged reader the severely oppressed and disadvantaged position of Arab women, in a society conversely evocative of men’s behaviors and opinions. The right to create cannot be crushed. It is exactly this freedom that has allowed artists across the globe to express their world-views. Salman Rushdie in Britain, August Wilson in America—the list goes on. It cannot be stopped.

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