Zaat

For my next reading assignment I chose to read Zaat by Sonallah Ibraham. This book was highly recommended by a former presenter in our class so I thought I would check it out. Unfortunately I found this one of the hardest books to read. Zaat is an average woman in Egypt who is in an arranged marriage. The book talks about the corruption in Egypt, but it jumps around a lot and the book is kind of hard to follow. The chapters alter between reading about Zaat and her life and different excerpts from the newspaper she works for and articles that are printed in the paper about the corruption in Egypt and it's government.
The story doesn't flow, but jumps from event to event with very little information. There is one part in the story that did talk a little more in depth. Zaat is diagnosed with breast cancer, but the way she was diagnosed was very sketchy at best. She is told she needs surgery to have them removed, but after discussing this with her husband she decides against the surgery. Being a survivor myself this part kind of lost me. There are so many things wrong with this part of the book that I'm not sure where to begin.
After reading this section of the book I completely lost interest in the book and really had to push myself to finish it. The book does have a few good points in it with dry humor, but overall I did not enjoy this book at all.

Turkey

Last week while I was out sick we had a guest speaker who talked about Turkey. I'm not very familiar with the history of Turkey, but I did find a couple nice web sites about the country. Turkey is the home of the Ottoman Empire and the first capital was Bursa.
Unfortunately I found more web sites on how to cook a turkey than I did on the country of Turkey.


This is a web site that talks about the history of Turkey during the Ottoman Empire.
http://www.kultur.gov.tr/EN/BelgeGoster.aspx?17A16AE30572D313E603BF9486D4371D56573D7CD94618A3

This web site talks about the dress of the women during the Ottoman Empire. There were several types of dress for women in this time period. This web site even talks about the dress for non-muslim women in the capital city of Bursa.
http://www.kultur.gov.tr/EN/BelgeGoster.aspx?17A16AE30572D31371BE64510F6C8BC92E327A7616BC3132

This web site tells about the different sultans in the Ottoman Empire which I thought was pretty cool to see.
http://www.kultur.gov.tr/EN/BelgeGoster.aspx?17A16AE30572D313A79D6F5E6C1B43FF1ABB7EB6D1B95756

Iraq War presentations

On Wed we listened to Dr. Ellin give qutie an interesting talk about Israel and the wall surrounding the West Bank. I was surprised at his views on the wall. He talked about the wall being built to help keep the suicide bombers in check and the bombings have decreased quite significantly. All the other aricles and videos we've seen gave a completely different view of the wall. This really makes you think about the facts we are given by our own news media. He also gave us handouts disputingJimmy Carters book "Palestine: Peace not Apartheid" which we had read for class. The paper disputed several points in Carters book. In one section Carter claims the 1949 armistice demarcation lines becamo the borders for the new nation of Israel and were accepted by both the United States and Israel and recognized by the United Nations. The paper claims the lines were not borders according to the Armistice Agreement dated April 3, 1949.

We also had the pleasure of listening to Lt. Phillips, Sgt. Gilmer and Sgt. Merrit speak about the Iraq War. While I was listening to them speak I kept thinking about the difference between the Gulf War and the Iraq War. The differences between the two are so far apart. Before the Gulf War started everyone seemed to be for the war and pushing Hussein back out of Kuwait, but there is so much controversy for the Iraq War. The soldiers gave a view of things in Iraq that I have not heard from any news report here in America. They stated things have improved a little bit in Iraq which is quite surprising compared to what we hear on the news. These were my favorite speakers so far and I really wish we would have had more time to talk with them on Wed.

These are a couple web sites that I found interesting about the Gulf War.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gulf_War

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/gulf/

Fatima Mernissi

Here are some related links to Dreams of Trespass that I found interesting.

http://lexicorient.com/e.o/harem.htm

http://hrw.org/backgrounder/mena/morocco0506/5.htm

This link has some really good pictures of Morocco and the inside of a harem.

http://moroccofortheprofessors.blogspot.com/2007/02/bread-baked-in-sand.html

This link gives a little background on the author Fatima Mernissi.

http://islamlib.com/en/page.php?page=article&id=461

Dreams of Trespass

"Dreams of Trespass" was written by Fatima Mernissi. Fatima is a feminist writer and sociologist from Morocco. She writes about growing up in a family harem in Fez, Morocco in the 1940's. They live in a traditional harem set in Fez with her parents, siblings, uncle and aunt, cousins and her paternal grandmother. The opinions vary greatly amidst the harem occupants. Her grandmother is very much a traditionalist and strictly adheres to harem rules. Her mother rebels against the rules quite often and hates the restrictions and lack of privacy.

Fatima http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fatima_Mernissi talks about 2 different types of harems in Morocco. One is the traditional in which she lives with her family. The other type is a more open and modern type harem in which the women do have a little more freedom by living on a farm. This farm harem is where Fatima's mother was raised and lived before she was married.

Harem life is very restricting and all decisions are made by the men living in the household. The women are kept locked behind gates to "protect" them as the men tell them. They are not even allowed to go shopping for cloth and must depend on the male the call the "gatekeeper" to buy the things they need. The gatekeeper has the key to the gate that keeps the women locked inside the harem. Even the meals are segregated with the men eating at the head table. The women are seated at the second table with the kids sitting at the third table. The last table is reserved for those who come in late for any meal regardless of their stature.

At the end of the story she is talking to one of the servants about men and women. The servant explains that men don't understand women and women don't understand men and that there is a cosmic frontier in which the powerful walk on one side and the powerless walk on the other side. Fatima asks the servant how she would know what side she is walking on. The servant replys; "If you can't get out, you are on the powerless side." I think this pretty much sums up life in a harem.

Nawal El Saadawi

Nawal El Saadawi is a famous Egptian feminist and author. Her stories are mainly about womens issues in the Arab world and she has angered the Egyptian government. Her first novel was confiscated by the government. She was born in the small village of Kafr Tahla in 1931 and has eight brothers and sisters. Her parents both died young She began writing about 25 years ago and her books are translated in twelve different languages. She researched women and neurosis at Ain Shams University from 1973 to 1976 and published the book Women and Neurosis in Egypt based on her studies. She also wrote Women at Point Zero, which is based on a true story of a woman who was convicted of killing her husband. In 1980 she was arrested under the Sadat regime for alledges "crimes against the state." In 1982 she was released from prison and published her book Memoirs from the Women's Prison in which she continued her attacks against the Egyptian government. Here is a video of Nawal El Saadawi giving a lecture in Montreal. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cwpaeOdb3Hk

Woman at Point Zero

I read "Woman at Point Zero" by Nawal El Saadawi. This is a very disturbing book and tells about the life of a woman named Firdauswho is condemned to hang for killing a man. Throughout the book Firdaus tells her life story from early teens to the time she is hung. First she tells of having to go out to the fields every morning and how she is molested there by a boy who also has to work in the fields for his family. Then one day after she comes home from the fields a her mother has a woman come over and do a female mutilation on her. She talks of crying herself to sleep at night and not being able to feel anything down there after that. She also talks of abuse and neglect from her father who will not go without his evening meal even though his family does not have anything to eat.

After her parents both die her uncle takes her to live with him. I'm not sure if he was molesting her or not. The book hints at it but doesn't really give any clear indications. He eventually sends her to a boarding school and he marries a woman while Firdaus is at school. She is eventually married off to an old man who beats her and she finally leaves him and becomes a prostitute. She seems to like this lifestyle as she can make her own decisions of who will have her and how much they have to pay. After many years she is harrassed by a pimp, but she stands up to him in the beginning. She eventually finds out she can't get away from him since women are condemned for her line of work and the authorities look the other way for the men involved. He eventually pushes Firdaus past her limit and she stabs him. She talks about how easy it was to stab him which is quite frightening.

After what she has suffered it's understandable why Firdaus hates men, but the things that have happened to her over her lifetime are very disturbing., but it's also frightening how she violently attacked the man she killed. The author is famous for writing about issue that Arab women face in their daily lives.