Finished: July 2
Pages: 239
When I was in Borders the other day, I was looking for another Geraldine Brooks book to read. Having read People of the Book, I wanted to read her other novels, so I grabbed this one. At the time I thought it would be similar to People, a fictionalization of real events. Instead I was pleasantly surprised to find a book that is a work of non-fiction, based on Ms. Brooks' experiences as a foreign correspondent living in the Middle East for 6 years. Her look into the lives of Islamic women of all different backgrounds and opinions gives a remarkably even-keeled informative look into this world, a world of which I am sorely lacking information.
I like learning about different cultures, and while all books, even ones written with journalistic integrity cannot help but be biased towards whatever beliefs the author holds, I feel that Ms. Brooks tried very hard to be open-minded and come with honest questions seeking honest answers. I must be honest, I was impressed by the obvious scholarship shown in her meticulous research, as well as being impressed by the caliber of interviews she was able to have over the course of her time in the Mid-East. There are conversations in the book with the wife of Khomeini, as well as his daughter; King Hussein of Jordan and his wife Queen Noor; as well as her ability to get regular women and men to talk to her, those people who are not in the spotlight but dealing with the same issues. She quotes the Koran and the hadith (stories about the life of the Prophet that are not strictly in the scriptures of the Koran, as well as the laws and regulations of a number of different countries, cases that have come before the various courts and the reactions of the people.
This one quote, to me, sums up the eloquence with which she speaks candidly about all her subjects:
It wasn't until I went to Cairo and started seeking out Muslim women that I realized I hadn't made a close female friend since I left school.
I'd forgotten how much I liked to be with women. And yet there was always a sourness lurking a the edge of even the sweetest encounters. Squatting on the floor of a Kurdish friend's kitchen, helping the women with their bread making, I realized what an agreeable thing it was to be completely surrounded by women, to have a task that was ours alone. As the women's deft fingers flung balls of dough under my rolling pin and the fire roared beneath a baking sheet of blackened metal, I felt contentment in shared work well done.
But an hour into the labor, as my shoulders ached and scalding sweat dribbled down my back, I began to resent the boy toddler who kept ambling up to the steaming pile of fresh bread and breaking off tasty morsel in his fat little fists. His sister, not much older, was already part of our bread-making assembly line. Why should he learn so young that her role was to toil for his pleasure?
The nunlike clothes, pushed to the back of my closet, remind me of all those mixed feelings. Every time my hand brushes the smooth fabric of the chador, I think of Nahid Aghtaie, the Iranian medical student who gave up an easy life in London to go home and work at low-paying jobs to advance the goals of her revolution. I remember her, in Qum, drifting toward me over the marble-floored mosque to tell me that she'd prayed for me "to have nice children." And then I think of her beautiful face-the small visible triangle between brown and lip-radiant on the morning of the murder of Rushdie's Japanese translator in July 1991. "This," she said triumphantly, "shows the power of Islam." I told her that, to me, it no more showed the power of Islam than an Israeli soldier's shooting of a Palestinian child showed the power of Judaism. Why not, I asked her, cite the "power of Islam" in the humanitarian work that Iran was doing for the flood of Iraqi refugees that was then pouring over its borders? "Because nobody notices when we do such things," she said. "But every news report in the world will note this execution."
Eventually I became worn out by such conversations. Friendships with women like Nahid were an emotional whipsaw: how was it possible to admire her for the courage of her convictions, when her convictions led to such hateful reasoning?
The title of the book comes from a quote said by Ali, the husband of Muhammad's beloved daughter Fatima and the founder of the Shiite Islam. He said, "Almighty God created sexual desire in ten parts; then he gave nine parts to women and one to men" (39). In the Catholic school of thought, she goes on to say, girls are seen as the less sexually active gender and so must therefore always be careful around those sex-crazed boys. Islam is the opposite, women must be careful because they are the sex-crazed ones. There are also a lot fewer rules in the Koran than in the Bible regarding sex. It is interesting to see how different and yet still repressive so much of any society can be.
Anyone who wants to learn about the different ways that Muslim society views women should read this book. It is exceptionally well-written and eye-opening.
Good Reading,
Caitlin
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