As I puffed away on my arghileh in a cafe in Sidi Bou Said, a friend leaned over to me. "A woman," he began and I had no idea what was coming. "A woman who smokes shisha...she is not a real woman. She is like a man." I have no idea what that means.
Prude and Slut
Undoubtedly, going to an insular liberal arts school tilts one's view of reality. For example, until I graduated, I thought Arcade Fire and the New Pornographers were the biggest bands in America. Well, I suppose they're Canadian, but that's besides the point. Leaving a liberal feminist bastion like college and arriving in the Middle East and North Africa was a rude awakening that involved concealing beliefs, accepting prejudices, and rolling my eyes a lot. Unexectedly, this was the case with Westerners in addition to Arabs. Over lunch with some European classmates, the conversation drifted to the latest expatriate gossip - who slept with whom, etc.
One woman said, "I would much rather be known as a prude than a slut."
"Oh, me too," another confirmed.
A few more affirmations were uttered until, as is often the case, I couldn't keep my damn mouth shut. "Wait, are we really having this conversation? Why are you choosing these labels and asking for judgment?" I got a hearty sneer, and one replied, "I'm a feminist." Which almost makes it more frustrating.
A Talented Male Poet named Ani
On a road trip, I combined my interests in subversion, hogging the iPod, and Ani DiFranco. Hilarity ensued. After playing "Self Evident," a rather intense Ani tune (oh wait, they're all intense), another passenger heard the line "3000 poems disguised as people."
"That is very beautiful." He translated it into Arabic for another person in the car. "The man who wrote it is very talented." I had to break it to him that Ani DiFranco is a woman, and she wrote it.
If only someone were studying Arab women poets.
The Burqa and the Bikini
This short play by Sabrina England, the self-described deaf muslim punk playright, should be read in its entirety. I came across it last fall. It's a pithy, funny dialogue between a burqa and a bikini that forces well-meaning liberal readers to reexamine what their well-meaning paternalism really means (cough, France, Quebec, and Belgium, cough). My own belief is that a piece of fabric can't oppress anything. People do all the oppressing.
That's all for now.
BURQAYou call this oppression, I call this my liberation.
A muhajaba (a hijabed woman) teen paddles out on a surfboard in Sinai, Egypt.
Enjoy some Ani.
Enjoy some Ani.
[In class this past week, we read an article by Tahar Haddad, a 20th century Tunisian feminist, on polygamy and its place or lack thereof, in Islam. Polygamy is banned in Tunisia, but coincidentally, one of my fellow students has three wives. Two stay home while the third comes to Tunis, then they rotate.]
see this is why i never smoked shisha...i am a real woman.
ReplyDelete-I feel famous!
ReplyDelete-Bring those kittens to Spain.
-I never thought I was a real woman anyway.
-I would like to talk to some self-judged slutty feminists... they would probably be very interesting.