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Return
to Childhood: The Memoir of a Modern Moroccan Woman,
by Leila Abouzeid.
Translated from the Arabic by the author, with Heather Logan Taylor. 94
pages, foreword. Austin, TX: Center for Middle Eastern Studies at the
University of Texas at Austin, 1998. $10.95 (Paper) ISBN:
0-292-70490-9
In
this memoir, Moroccan writer Leila Abouzeid revisits some of the same
time and territory as she did in her novel, The
Year of the Elephant—both stories take place in the 1950s against
the background of Morocco's struggle for independence from French
colonial rule. But while her novel opens right after Moroccan
independence in 1956 and follows a fictional character of her mother's
generation trying to reclaim her life after having been repudiated by
her husband, her autobiography opens some years earlier, on the day that
her father, a resistance fighter, was put in jail: “That day marked
the beginning of our troubles, which my mother would describe in detail
over and over again, to the end of her days. But her perceptions were
different from mine, for I was a child” (p. 4).
Abouzeid, as a young child, makes sense of her world almost entirely
through women's talk, especially the stories told by her mother and
grandmother. This is what makes Return
to Childhood so fascinating to an American audience, both in form
and substance. Abouzeid has created a genre which mixes techniques of
oral history, autobiography and fiction, using multiple voices and a
nonlinear structure. The women talk in rich, humorous detail of current
events, family disputes, herbal remedies, and magic. As a child,
Abouzeid lives within this traditional women's world, looking at the
turbulent events in her family and the world around her with the eyes of
a young child. Then, at her father's insistence, she starts going to
school, taking the first step in becoming the ‘modern Moroccan
woman’ of the book's title. As Abouzeid’s own voice emerges and her
perceptions begin to mature, she provides a rare insight into the
complex, wrenching process of modernization and a boldly subversive
critique of history and politics, taking on not only the French
colonialists, but also the Moroccan establishment and the opposition.
Almost
a decade ago, Abouzeid’s novel The
Year of Elephant inspired me to begin recording oral histories of
Moroccan women who had participated in the independence movement and
armed resistance. Abouzeid noted that the resulting book, Voices
of Resistance, documented “a history twice condemned to
omission: because it is oral and because it is women’s.” Of course I
was an outsider to Moroccan culture, and almost all of the women I
interviewed were registered as veterans of the resistance and focused
their narrative on stories of resistance activities. Return
to Childhood is even more subversive, written by an insider and
focusing on women’s stories of ‘private’ life and family disputes.
For a Moroccan woman to use the autobiographical ‘I’ and to write
about her private life is still quite unusual, given the strictures of
Moroccan society. In fact Abouzeid originally intended Return
to Childhood for an American audience, to challenge American
stereotypes about Muslim women. She has created a wonderfully frank,
personal and poetic account of growing up in Morocco, a slim volume that
is a pleasure to read and that will contribute a valuable new resource
for courses on women in Islamic societies.
Alison
Baker
New York City
Women
in Saudi Arabia Today,
by Mona Al-Munajjed. 153 pages, indexes, bibliography. New York: St.
Martin’s Press, 1997. $59.95 (Cloth) ISBN
0-312-12988-2
The
statement Al-Munajjed makes in Women
in Saudi Arabia Today, that “Saudi women have become one of the
most rapidly changing elements of society” (p. 6) is remarkable given
that fifty years ago all Saudis were still living as they had for
generations. A kingdom only since 1932, Saudi Arabia was a scene of
centuries past, its people mostly illiterate, nomads outnumbering by 70
percent the settled folk whose custom was to live several generations
together in extended families. Seen by family men only, women stayed at
home, occasionally visiting other secluded women.
All that is history! Oil revenues jumpstarted and bankrolled change on a
scale and within a time slot (just a few decades) that surely has no
parallel in history. Today the kingdom is developed, modernized,
industrialized, connected to the rest of the world, and Saudi women have
changed with the times. Since the first school for girls opened in l960
they have moved onward and upward, still veiled and cloaked in public
but with new horizons beyond the traditional confines of marriage and
motherhood. What has not changed is that all Saudis are Muslim and
subject to Islamic law.
For background information the author discusses women before the advent
of Islam, during Islam’s early days, and how controversy and ambiguity
have persisted in the effort to determine a Muslim woman’s correct
role. Islam gives women certain rights (to own property, to inherit, to
divorce, for example) but their status has been profoundly affected by
segregation, veiling, and seclusion required in patriarchal societies
tying family honor to the conduct of its women. Schools of thought,
learned Islamic scholars, Muslim societies, and people themselves all
have their say, but no consensus as the debate goes on: are these
obligations part of Islamic law or just wrongly conceived as such?
Interviews
with one hundred of today’s Saudi women exposed their views on
women’s proper roles, pointed to the impact of change from old to new
on their lives, beliefs, wishes, goals, and what they want for the
future. Some educated, some not, from city, from village, with extended
family or just husband and children, single women, professional women
(most also wives and mothers), ladies expressing acceptance and claiming
good adjustment to the changing times, others by choice or necessity
clinging to the old. In opinions on mixing of sexes, women working with
men, the concept of family honor, increasingly prevalent single
households, the conflict between traditional demands and modernization
is evident but, remembering the Arabian women of half a century ago, it
is also evident how much and, in the light of history, how fast Saudi
women have changed. The attitudes of young educated women would seem to
indicate further changes, although “the mixture of norms, beliefs and
principles emanating from the patriarchal system are still exerting a
considerable influence” and “education cannot in such a short time
erode completely what has always existed” (p. 80). In the final
analysis two important truths stand out: Saudi women “cherish as
precious the local traditions and customs that constitute their cultural
heritage,” (p. 80) and Islam will continue to be the framework of
their lives.
Marianne
Alireza
Pasadena, CA
Street Politics: Poor People’s Movements in Iran,
by Asef Bayat. 232 pages, chronology, photographs, notes, bibliography,
glossary, index. New York: Columbia University Press, 1997. $17.50
(Paper) ISBN
0231-10859-1
In
Street Politics, Asef Bayat
illuminates the struggles of ordinary Iranians to overcome poverty and
attain a modicum of security in a society ruled by a seemingly
omnipresent state. He draws on interviews with activists, journalists,
squatters, and vendors; on the theoretical and empirical literature
about the poor; and on his own life experience, to study collective
mobilization by people whom officials and scholars often
overlook―the dispossessed. Advancing a theory of informal
politics, Bayat breathes fresh air into Iranian studies and into social
science.
Central to Bayat’s work are his conceptualizations of ‘street
politics’ and the ‘new poor.’ Street politics are those
“conflicts and the attendant implications between a collective
populace and the authorities, shaped and expressed episodically in the
physical and social space of the streets” (p. 15). The street is the
locus of political expression for those lacking access to institutions
through which to articulate and aggregate their interests―the
poor. Besides economic attributes, the poor have mainly “a social and
cultural identity” (p. 23). Characterized by low income, skill, and
status, Iran’s new poor emerged as a result of Reza Shah’s and
Mohammad Reza Shah’s modernization policies. Overlapping with the
industrial working class, the poor include squatters, the unemployed,
the homeless, members of the under‑world—that is, beggars,
prostitutes, and street vendors. Examining instances of grassroots
activism during the late 1970s and since the Islamic Republic’s
inception, Bayat elucidates how the poor have used the public space of
Iran’s urban streets to challenge state authorities to address their
plight and/or to gain autonomy from a state that refuses to do so. As
atomized individuals, the poor rely on the passive networks that typify
the street. These networks spontaneously activate when the poor confront
threats to their survival―the eviction of squatters, denial of
employment opportunities, and intimidation of vendors by the Islamic
Republic.
Bayat deserves praise for critically and eloquently applying social
science theory, comparing Iran's poor with those in other Third World
societies, highlighting empirical details, and providing a
comprehensive―if slightly disorganized―photo insert. Most
impressively, however, Bayat’s theory of informal politics refutes
five myths, that: 1) Iranian and other Muslim poor people passively
accept their fate, 2) Islamic fundamentalism was a totalizing discourse
that inspired Iran’s revolution of 1978‑79, 3) Iran’s poor
have attained the class consciousness needed to advance their interests
by fomenting revolution, 4) the Islamic Republic has enlisted the
whole-hearted support of Iran’s mostazafin,
or deprived, and 5) scholars must conduct their research dispassionately
to ensure accuracy.
Although the poor are interested in and capable of planning ahead, they
support associations and strategies that address their immediate needs.
They do not articulate class consciousness as conceptualized by even the
most sophisticated Marxists. The poor take piecemeal and often
extra‑legal steps, in the absence of other alternatives, to secure
a dignified life. This life entails economic subsistence but also
physical security and, thus, the preservation of sexual modesty for the
family’s women. Not surprisingly, then, the poor have not embraced the
Islamic Republic. The ruling clergy’s rhetorical appeals have not
translated into policies that improve the mostazafin’s
lot. Quite the contrary. The clergy has cracked down on squatters, the
unemployed, and vendors, because they threaten the political,
socio‑economic, and moral order. In short, Iran’s poor are
neither fatalistic Muslims resigned to their marginality nor fanatic
Muslims agitating for revolution and theocracy.
Bayat shatters the myth that scholarship stands separately from the
lives of those who engage in analysis. His passion for the subject
matter derives from his “own life experience.” Recounting his
personal history in the preface, Bayat risks the charge of bias. Yet
such history is a vital factor informing the social scientist’s
selection of subject matter and methodology―if only more scholars
would admit this instead of hiding behind the academic veil of
objectivity.
Both
the substance and tone of Bayat’s study reminds readers that political
outcomes do not result only from the grand deeds of officials, elites,
or civil societies. Rather, politics may reflect “the ‘quiet
encroachment of the ordinary’―a silent, patient, protracted and
pervasive advancement by ordinary people on the propertied and powerful
to survive hardships and better their lives” (p. 7). In sum, Bayat
reminds readers that politics cannot and should not be analyzed
antiseptically, because it shapes and is shaped by the travails and
triumphs of ordinary people seeking meaning and dignity in life.
Haleh
Vaziri
InterMedia Survey Institute, Washington, D. C.
Nadia, Captive of Hope: Memoir of an Arab Woman,
by Fay Afaf Kanafani.
(Autobiographies and Memoirs of Women from Asia, Africa, the Middle
East) 338 pages, introduction, glossary, index. Lebanon, PA: The Maple
Press Company, 1999. $59.95 (Cloth) ISBN
0-7656-0311-X
‘Nadia’ is the name the author gives herself as a distancing
device which enables her to write her sometimes painful memories.
Another device is the decision to write in English, rather than her
native Arabic. The life is extraordinary in personal terms, as an
historical document, and as an emblem of “an Arab woman.”|
‘Nadia’ was
born in Beirut in 1918, her mother’s family prominent for scholarship
and wealth, her father a bounder whose love of the flashy life
overwhelmed his prudence. The charming, greedy father challenged his
wife’s family and estranged them, jeopardized and ultimately lost the
family’s assets, and abused his daughter sexually and emotionally. Her
mother’s avoidance and failure to oppose this abuse engendered
permanent resentment from her daughter.
Nadia
excelled at school and developed ambitions for an independent life.
These were thwarted when her father in effect sold her as
daughter-in-law to a cousin from a wealthy family in Haifa. She had to
marry her cousin, who was no more ready for marriage than she was. At
age sixteen she was withdrawn from school for this marriage and sent
away to Haifa. Although warmly indulged and loved by her husband’s
family, in her marriage intimacy was absent and frustrated abuse took
its place. She writes about these relationships with surprising
openness. As a young wife in Haifa during the 1930s and early 1940s
Nadia saw all around her the growing unrest and confusion among the
Palestinians. Her husband’s family frustrated her by its passivity and
failure to recognize their prospects until her husband was killed by a
shot in the back from a never identified assailant. At last the family
fled, always believing the troubles would blow over. Nadia found herself
back in Beirut still a young woman, with three young sons and a fierce
determination to raise them herself, independently, in defiance of
custom and law. This is the reason she gave for refusing marriage to her
long-time flame and suitor.
Instead
Nadia began the second part of her life. She managed to complete studies
in statistics, finance and taxation. These credentials, unusual for a
woman, qualified her for an equally unusual sequence of jobs in the
newly independent Lebanese government and a substantial appointment in a
foreign embassy, living in Baghdad, her first time on her own. Her sons,
whose wholehearted support of her independent path was crucial, stayed
behind in Beirut but communicated weekly by means of their own
‘magazine.’ She describes living at the Baghdad YWCA, fully enjoying
the life of an increasingly sophisticated career woman, again refusing
marriage to her dashing persistent suitor.
In the third part of her life, again in
Beirut, her sons grown, Nadia did marry and enjoyed ten years with her
second husband until he was desperately wounded by a bomb in the
Lebanese civil war. He lingered on in perilous condition, tenderly cared
for by Nadia, but died in a few years. Ultimately Nadia moved to the
United States where she lives today.
This
is an extraordinary woman. Nadja,
Captive of Hope is fascinating and provocative, a personal view
through the eyes of an exceptionally bright person coping with family
and traditional constraints and hardships and amazingly managing to have
her way and win loyalty, respect, and love. Nadja,
Captive of Hope will inform and inspire many readers.
Susan
Schaefer Davis
Haverford,
PA
Gendering
the Middle East: Emerging Perspectives,
edited by Deniz Kandiyoti (Gender, Culture, and Politics in the Middle
East). 177 pages, endnotes, index. Syracuse: Syracuse University Press,
1996. $16.95 (Paper) ISBN
0-8156-0339-8
Gendering the Middle East is
part of a recent efflorescence in scholarship on women and gender in the
Middle East, an area of research which is coming into its own, and even
developing a certain maturity, despite the relative paucity still of
much empirical data. Its purpose is to “evaluate the extent to which
gender as an analytical category had been incorporated into studies on
the Middle East” (p. ix). The contributions are multi-disciplinary,
and include the fields of social science, history, anthropology, and
literature. Two of the articles focus on Iran, four on Palestine/Israel
and two on Egypt. Kandiyoti’s introduction analyzes the main currents
of feminist scholarship since the 1960s: feminism and nationalism, the
rise of social science paradigms and developmentalism and dialogues
within feminism. It finally asks, where to from here?
The two contributions on Iran, by Joanna de Groot and
Parvin Paidar, present an interesting contrast in style. Both authors
argue that gender is central to both Iranian studies as a whole and in
Iranian political discourse. Paidar chooses to trace the “development
of feminism in relation to Islam” (p. 51) by situating the emergence
of a feminist movement within Iranian history, starting with the
Constitutional Revolution of 1906-11 and ending with the contemporary
Islamic Republic (before the election of Khatami). De Groot analyzes
trends in scholarship, offering suggestions that are not particularly
revolutionary but useful nonetheless, such as greater use of comparative
approaches in scholarship, and greater attention to “men as gendered
subjects” (p. 45).
The four contributions which deal with Palestine and Israel take very
different approaches. Annelies Moors situates her anthropological study
of women in the Nablus area within debates on the complex relationship
between gender, property, and power. She effectively demonstrates that
gender is a ‘relational concept’ (p. 69), highlighting the way women
inherit property, and how rural‑urban differences in economic and
family structures, differing kin relationships, and marital status all
affect women’s material and personal power. Sheila Katz, somewhat
ahistorically, examines the gendered nature of two competing
nationalisms in Palestine in the period before 1950, focusing on such
common nationalist themes as the feminization of the land,
nationalization of domesticity, and the centrality of manhood to
nationhood. Although she calls for using gender as a tool of analysis to
write an “integrative history” (p. 101) of Palestine, her weaving
back and forth between Jewish and Arab narratives, and eclectic use of
sources instead leaves an impression of a fragmented history. Simona
Sharoni exposes the “gendered practices, discourses and assumptions”
(p. 108) implicit in international relations and conflict resolution,
using the Oslo Accords as an example. She relates the central,
unacknowledged role played by women in the negotiations leading up to
the Accords, and challenges the “discourse of militarized
masculinity” (p. 111) that is central to Israeli culture and political
power. In a critical, self-reflexive essay, Rosemary Sayigh examines the
problematic of gender in her attempts to reconcile divergent agendas and
relationships between researcher and research community in her work
collecting women’s life stories in refugee camps in Lebanon.
Hoda el Sadda, in the (unusually) lone article on Egyptian
women, traces the development of the novelist Salwa Bakr, who develops a
distinctive female literary voice in a literary culture which assumes
that “good literature is not gendered” but, rather, “objective and
universal” (p. 127).
Like most anthologies, this one suffers
from some unevenness and eclecticness in scope and focus, but most of
the individual contributions stand on their own as valuable articles
which contribute to our understanding of gender in Middle East studies.
Some, such as Paidar’s, would also be good for teaching purposes. As a
whole, the book effectively highlights how, despite some progress,
gender remains ghettoized and only partially and selectively
incorporated into Middle East studies.
Ellen
Fleischmann
University
of Dayton
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