Along the same line of reasoning as the last book, I read The Golden Chariot. This book is about a woman in a women's prison who learns the stories of the other prisoners and decides if they should join her on her ride in a Golden Chariot to heaven. This provides framing for telling the stories of several women dealing with various aspects of life in Egypt.
The idea behind this and the last book is to get a bit of a feel for the culture, although I worry that it might be like watching The Wire before a trip to the US. Although really what has happened is not that I've gotten a feel for the culture, but that I've started to erase what I thought I knew about it.
This may by kind of obvious, but here it goes. First of all, I think that most of my knowledge of the Arab world and of Islam is some ultra-simplified stereotypes. Such as, I get the feeling a lot of Americans, including myself, are proud of knowing Islam is split into Sunni and Shi'ite. Wow - good job. That's like knowing Christianity has Catholics and non-Catholics. Way to really dig in and learn about the countries we are occupying. Next thing you know, I will have learned the name of a few cities in Afghanistan! For Iraq I already know Baghdad and Fallujah - go me!
Another example is marriage - I'm not sure exactly what my previous conception of marriage in the Arab world was, but what I'm figuring out is it is really complicated. I'm not saying it is good or bad, largely because I don't understand it well enough. But even if Islam has some simple rules, there are many variations on how to apply those rules and varying degrees of following them. I think my previous thoughts were equivalent to looking at a small subset of abstinence only groups and calling that American/Judeo-Christian marriage.
Ok time for me to get off the soap box. I'll just end that rant (which was mostly aimed at myself) by wondering when I'll catch on that all other cultures and religions are large, complicated topics rather than needing to figure that out one by one.
Anyway, the book was ok - not as interesting as the previous one. But it does describe some fairly messed up situations (I'm sure by anyone's standards - not just me judging other cultures) so that keeps things interesting.
And, yes, I'm still dealing with that in my head all the characters are white issue.
Sunday, October 12, 2008
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1 comment:
Don't forget Erbil! Now you know three:)
Marriage in Iraqi Kurdistan is very stone age- most people tie the knot in their early 20's, whether they want to or not, there is a lot of cousins marrying cousins, and men having 2 wives, and a lot of married couples feel they have lost their freedom in tying the knot (men feel trapped because they can only be with one woman now, and women feel trapped because they can no longer go to school or have their own independent lives), but it is something unavoidable, a given in this culture because their purpose in life here is to get married and have lots of babies. There is no such thing as dating in Iraqi Kurdistan- either you are single, or you are engaged to be married, or married.
Of course, the marriages here between a local Kurd and a foreigner are different altogether (after all, what foreign woman would agree to stop going to school, stop working, and so on, after marriage?). In terms of relationships between men and women, Iraqi Kurdistan is a very closed society.
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