Male Domination, Female Revolt (Women and Gender: the Middle East and the Islamic World)

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Male Domination, Female Revolt

Women and Gender The Middle East and the Islamic World

Editors

Margot Badran Valentine Moghadam

VOLUME 8

Male Domination, Female Revolt Race, Class, and Gender in Kuwaiti Women’s Fiction

By

Ishaq Tijani

LEIDEN • BOSTON 2009

This book is printed on acid-free paper. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Tijani, Ishaq. Male domination, female revolt : race, class, and gender in Kuwaiti women’s fiction / by Ishaq Tijani. p. cm. — (Women and gender, the Middle East and the Islamic world ; v. 8) Revision of the author’s thesis (doctoral)—University of Edinburgh, 2005. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-90-04-16779-7 (hardback : alk. paper) 1. Arabic fiction—Kuwait—History and criticism. 2. Arabic fiction—Women authors—History and criticism. 3. Arabic fiction—20th century—History and criticism. 4. Women in literature. 5. Race in literature. 6. Social classes in literature. 7. Sex role in literature. 8. Patriarchy in literature. I. Title. II. Series. PJ8002.4.T55 2009 892.7’36099287095367—dc22 2009018914

ISSN 1570-7628 ISBN 978 90 04 16779 7 Copyright 2009 by Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands. Koninklijke Brill NV incorporates the imprints Brill, Hotei Publishing, IDC Publishers, Martinus Nijhoff Publishers and VSP. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, translated, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior written permission from the publisher. Authorization to photocopy items for internal or personal use is granted by Koninklijke Brill NV provided that the appropriate fees are paid directly to The Copyright Clearance Center, 222 Rosewood Drive, Suite 910, Danvers, MA 01923, USA. Fees are subject to change. printed in the netherlands

For Alhaji Tijani Arikewu Olatunbosun and Mrs Sidikat Ayinke Tijani Olatunbosun

CONTENTS Acknowledgements ............................................................................ Notes on Translation and Transliteration .....................................

xi xiii

Introduction ........................................................................................

1

Chapter One

Modern Arabic Fiction in Kuwait: Emergence and Development ............................ Introduction ................................................................................... Kuwait in History .......................................................................... Literary Tradition in Kuwait: the Beginnings (mid-1840s–late 1920s) ............................................................ Emergence of Kuwaiti Fiction: the Formative Stage (late 1920s–mid-1950s) ............................................................ The Mature Stage: late 1950s to the contemporary period .... Conclusion ...................................................................................... The Kuwaiti Female Literary Tradition: an Overview .......................................................... Introduction ................................................................................... The Rise of the Feminist Movement in Kuwait ....................... Kuwaiti Women and Literary Writing ...................................... Kuwaiti Women’s Fiction: the Journey so far .......................... Images of Women in some Kuwaiti Short Stories .................. Conclusion ......................................................................................

9 9 9 11 13 18 22

Chapter Two

Male Domination, Female Fury in Kuwaiti Women’s Short Stories ........................ Introduction ................................................................................... “Al-Intiqām al-rahīb” ................................................................... Preamble ..................................................................................... Alienation, Repression, and Female Defiance ...................... Female Patriotism ..................................................................... Male Violence, Female Revenge ............................................. “Min milaff imraʾa” ....................................................................... Preamble ..................................................................................... Forced Marriage ........................................................................

23 23 23 26 28 30 35

Chapter Three

37 37 38 38 38 44 46 50 50 52

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Women and Childlessness ...................................................... Sex and Murder ......................................................................... Conclusion ......................................................................................

53 55 61

Chapter Four Subverting Patriarchy: Women’s Defiance and Solidarity in Laylā al-ʿUthmān’s Wasmiyya takhruj min al-baḥ r ........................... Introduction ................................................................................... Wasmiyya: A ‘Feminine’ or ‘Feminist’ Text? ........................... Defiance and Violation of Patriarchal Social Order ............... Minor acts of defiance .............................................................. Dating ......................................................................................... The major act of defiance ........................................................ Evasion of Societal Chastisement ............................................... Women’s Solidarity ....................................................................... Conclusion ......................................................................................

63 63 63 66 66 68 72 74 79 80

Chapter Five

Race, Class, War, and Gender in Ṭ ayyiba al-Ibrāhīm’s Mudhakkirāt khādim ..................... Introduction ................................................................................... Race, Class, and Gender in Pre-War Kuwait ........................... Can women and immigrant workers in Kuwait speak? ..... Gender and marital fidelity ..................................................... Gender and Kuwaiti family law ............................................. Race, Class, and Gender during the Iraq-Kuwait War ........... Women’s struggle for ‘dual liberation’ .................................. Kuwaiti women as double victims of war and the ideology of faḍīḥ a ................................................................. House raid .................................................................................. Is leaving one’s homeland during conflict an unpatriotic act? ..................................................................... War and Female Subjectivity ...................................................... Disruption of social hierarchy during the war .................... Interracial Marriage ...................................................................... Servant marries mistress .......................................................... War of words and war of rockets .......................................... “Can the subaltern be heard?”: race, class, and gender in post-war Kuwait ............................................................... Conclusion ......................................................................................

83 83 85 86 89 91 95 95 96 97 99 103 105 108 109 111 114 116

contents

ix

Chapter Six

Culture and Gender: Sexuality, Femininity, and Identity in Fawziyya S. al-Sālim’s Muzūn .... Introduction ................................................................................... Culture and Sexuality ................................................................... East meets West ........................................................................ Culture, society, and individual freedom ............................. Zayāna: Subverting and Evading Patriarchy ............................ Evasion of physical and social destruction ........................... ‘Evasion’ of the institution of the family .............................. Femininity and Gender Socialisation ......................................... De-interpellating the interpellated ......................................... Women as victims of conflicting socialisations ................... Female (Self-)Identity: Muzūn as a Quest Story ...................... Conclusion ......................................................................................

119 119 121 124 128 131 133 136 137 138 142 145 147

Conclusion ..........................................................................................

149

Bibliography ........................................................................................ Index ....................................................................................................

153 159

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This book is a revised version of my PhD thesis submitted to the University of Edinburgh, United Kingdom, in 2005. The research was made possible by the funding I received for three years (2001–2004) from two sources: The Overseas Research Students’ Awards Scheme (ORS) and the University of Edinburgh College of Humanities and Social Sciences Scholarship (Premier Award). I am grateful to my academic advisers, in succeeding order, Professor Yasir Suleiman (who introduced me to Kuwaiti literature, and is now at the University of Cambridge), Dr Yaseen Noorani (now at the University of Arizona, USA), and Dr Elisabeth Kendall. I am particularly indebted to Dr Kendall for her thorough supervision of the entire work. I also thank Dr Paul Starkey and Dr Andrew Newman (who both examined my thesis); and I acknowledge the support given me by Professor Carol Hillenbrand (our ‘mother’ at Edinburgh University). My thanks also go to my teachers at every level of my education, especially in the field of Arabic and Islamic studies. I am particularly grateful to Dr M. Oloyede Abdul-Rahmon, Dr Lateef Wole Abbas, the late Dr Daud Adekilekun Tijani, and all my friends and colleagues at the University of Ibadan, Nigeria. The assistance and support from various Kuwaiti organisations and institutions towards the success of this research are very much appreciated. Kuwait University Faculty of Arts served as guarantor for my entry and stay in the State of Kuwait and provided me with free food and accommodation for the period of my stay (December 2002–March 2003). The management of Kuwait Airways facilitated the carrying of over 50kg of books for me free of charge from Kuwait to London. Shaykh Muhammad Ibrāhīm al-Shaybānī, the proprietor and director of Markaz al-Makhṭūṭāt wa-l-turāth wa-l-wathāʾiq in Kuwait, permitted me to use his library and archive, and to make photocopies free of charge. I am grateful to all staff members of this centre. I also thank all Kuwaiti male and female writers for their support and cooperation, and for donating their works to me for free. The hands of friendship and hospitality extended to me by the Nigerian community in Kuwait are wholeheartedly appreciated. I thank my Kuwaiti friends Mr Fayṣal al-ʿAlī of al-Siyāsa newspaper and Miss

xii

acknowledgements

Fathiyya Ḥ usayn al-Hadād, a linguist and freelance journalist. I acknowledge the financial support of my friend Mr David-Abdullah Ezady who came to my aid when I was direly in need towards the end of my study at Edinburgh University. Some of my friends assisted in proofreading different aspects of the work at different stages; I am particularly grateful to my colleague Dr Polly Palmer and her daughter Shireen PalmerBaghestani, for proofreading the final manuscript. To my colleagues in the Department of Arabic and Translation Studies and the Department of English who supported me, I say thank you. My sincere appreciation goes to the anonymous Brill readers and the series editors for their comments and suggestions on the manuscript. I acknowledge the support and effort of the acquisitions editors as well. Finally, I am greatly indebted to my family. I thank my sister, Nurat, for helping us look after the kids. My wife, Kafayat, and children: Ahmad, Muhammad, Mahmudah, and Hamidah, all bore with me the burden and stress of preparing the manuscript for this book.

NOTES ON TRANSLATION AND TRANSLITERATION Unless otherwise specified, the translations of book titles, articles, and quotations from Arabic texts cited in this volume are mine. The transliteration system used herein is that of the modified Encyclopaedia of Islam as adopted by the International Journal of Middle Eastern Studies (IJMES). Unlike the IJMES style, however, diacritical marks are used herein for names of persons and places and for titles of books, magazines, novels, etc. All transliteration, therefore, reflects the literary Arabic form and pronunciation, e.g. Ṭ ayyiba rather than Taibah, Laylā rather than Laila, and al-ʿUthmān rather than al-Othman. This literary standard is also maintained with regard to the Arabic letter qāf which, in the Kuwaiti dialect, is pronounced as ghāyn, e.g. al-Mirqāb rather than al-Mirghāb, and al-Qurayn rather than al-Ghurayn. However, Arabic words and names with Standard English spelling have not been changed. Thus, unless they appear as part of Arabic titles (of books, magazines, articles, etc.), names of countries like Kuwait, Oman and Cairo, and of persons like Abdullah, Muhammad and Ali have not been changed. Exceptions to this are some of these names that are prefixed with “al” as in al-ʿAbdullāh and al-ʿAlī, which are common Kuwaiti/Arab surnames. Finally, titles of books, articles, novels, and short stories in Arabic are transliterated with only the first letter and, where applicable, names of countries capitalised; for English works, including translations from Arabic titles, all main title words are capitalised.

INTRODUCTION “Why Kuwait? Why Kuwaiti women’s fiction?” What underlies these sometimes ‘bewildering’ questions which people often ask me constitutes one of the aims of this study: to ‘centre on the periphery’. While the works of Arab women writers from North Africa (notably Egypt, Algeria, and Morocco) and the Levant (notably Syria, Lebanon, and Palestine) have become popular in the West, the feminist ‘literature of resistance’ by women from the Arabian Gulf region has received little attention, especially in Western academia. This volume, therefore, intends to contribute to the popularisation of Kuwaiti (and by extension Arabian Gulf) literature in general and the Kuwaiti female literary tradition in particular. It is important to note from the outset that I have emphasised (repeatedly used) the word ‘Arabian’—specifically referring to the people, culture, and traditions of the area known as the Arabian Peninsula (or Arabian Gulf)—rather than the generic word ‘Arab’. The main reason for this emphasis is to avoid generalisations regarding the issues of women and gender in the Arab world at large.1 Obviously, women enjoy much greater freedom and rights in most regions of the contemporary Arab world than in the Arabian Gulf region. Thus, the social and political systems that have subsisted until the contemporary period in the Arabian Peninsula, whereby women continue to be suppressed and marginalised—to a varying degree of course—have led to the general assumption that Arabian women are passive and conformist, and that they lack voice. This is the kind of (mis)representation that often predominates in the media and much of the sociological and anthropological literature on the Middle East. But some fictional texts depict the contrary. Examples of those texts by Kuwaiti women are herein selected for study. Published within the range of nearly half a century, the selected fictional narratives include

1 Scholarly works on the fictional representation of women and gender in the Arab world in general abound. Among the earliest by female literary critics are Mona Mikhail’s Images of Arab Women: Fact and Fiction (Washington, D. C.: Three Continents Press, 1978) and Evelyne Accad’s Veil of Shame: The Role of Women in the Contemporary Fiction of North Africa and the Arab World (Montreal: Edns. Naaman, 1978).

2

introduction

two short stories: “al-Intiqām al-rahīb” [The Horrible Revenge] (1953) by Hayfāʾ Hāshim, and “Min milaff imraʾa” [From a Woman’s File] (1979) by Laylā al-ʿUthmān; and three novels: Wasmiyya takhruj min al-baḥ r [Wasmiyya Emerges from the Sea] (1986) also by al-ʿUthmān, Mudhakkirāt khādim [A Servant’s Diary] (1995) by Ṭ ayyiba al-Ibrāhīm, and Muzūn [Muzūn] (2000) by Fawziyya Shuwaysh al-Sālim. I argue that the above-listed texts portray their respective heroines, representing the pre-oil generations of Kuwaiti women—born before or in the first half of the twentieth century—as resistant and/or revolutionary figures, contrary to the common notion of their stereotypical passivity and submissiveness. This category of Kuwaiti women constituted the ‘real’ victims of Arabian patriarchal culture when it was most pervasive. They witnessed the conflicted period of Kuwait’s, as well as the wider region’s transition from a highly restrictive, rustic society to a less-restrictive, cosmopolitan one. Most of the heroines of the selected texts lack even a basic level of formal education and have limited exposure to modern Western civilisation. Yet they all engage, in their respective ways, in a struggle against male social dominance. Definition of Terms Before giving a brief note on the theoretical framework within which the analyses in this book are inscribed, I shall define terms critical to this work: ‘gender’, ‘race’, ‘class’, ‘feminist’, and ‘revolutionary’. ‘Gender’ is used here to refer to the socially and culturally constructed notion of biological sexual difference between male and female.2 ‘Race’ and ‘class’ are complicated and interwoven terms in the context of contemporary Kuwait. Determined largely by ‘nationality’, the inhabitants of present-day Kuwait are classified into two ‘races’: (1) Kuwaiti nationals (2) and non-Kuwaiti nationals. Kuwaiti nationals, comprising people of different ethnic or racial ancestries (mainly Arab, Persian and Turkish are regarded as a racial entity. The second racial category, non-Kuwaiti nationals—excluding the ‘Bidūns’ (‘Stateless’), i.e. people who claim Kuwaiti ancestry but are not granted citizenship rights and benefits—consists of (non-Kuwaiti) Arabs from countries like Egypt,

2 For definitions of most of the feminist concepts and terms used in this book, see Maggie Humm (ed.), Feminisms: A reader (London: Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1992), “Glossary”, pp. 404–409.

introduction

3

Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Sudan and so on, and non-Arabs from different parts of the world. ‘Class’ is used herein to refer to people of similar social and/or economic level. In pre-oil Kuwait, there were two main social classes: the lower/middle and the upper classes. The upper class consisted of members of the ruling family and wholesale pearl merchant families. The lower/middle class included people who worked as petty traders, pearl-divers, ship labourers and so on.3 However, starting from the 1950s, the class structure in post-oil Kuwait has been complicated by racial factors. The Kuwaitis constitute one class, and immigrant workers, another. The upper class in contemporary Kuwait includes the ruling family, wealthy Kuwaiti merchant families and, perhaps, Kuwaiti politicians as well as wealthy immigrant entrepreneurs. The middle class includes Kuwaiti and non-Kuwaiti civil and public servants; and the lower class consists of low-waged immigrant workers (mainly from South Asia) and, of course, the Bidūns. ‘Feminist/m’ is generally used to refer to an organized movement to attain women’s rights, or fight against gender inequality and women’s oppression in society. In addition to this broad definition, the word ‘feminist’ is used in this volume (especially in the chapters dedicated to textual analysis) to mean a social consciousness in line with Michele le Doeuff’s definition: “A feminist is a woman who does not allow anyone to think in her place.”4 In the light of this definition, I use ‘feminist’ to refer to any female fictional character who thinks, behaves, and acts subjectively—on her own conviction—and in a way that contradicts societal norms, or one who defies patriarchal social order and resists her oppression and subjugation in whatever way. A text that depicts women in this manner is herein considered a ‘feminist’ text. The Oxford Advanced Learners’ Dictionary defines ‘revolution’ as “a complete or dramatic change of method, conditions, etc.,” and its adjectival form, ‘revolutionary’, as “involving a complete or dramatic change.” (Political) ‘revolution’ often involves taking ‘violent’, collective action against authority. ‘Violence’ is thus a characteristic feature which ‘revolution’ shares with ‘revolt’; perhaps both are generic. ‘Revolt’ means ‘showing violent resistance to authority’ or ‘expressing protest 3

On the class structure in Kuwait during the pre-oil era, see Haya al-Mughni, Women in Kuwait: the Politics of Gender (London: Saqi Books, 1993), pp. 19–33. 4 Quoted in Sandra Kemp and Judith Squires (eds.), Feminisms (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997), “Epistemologies”, p. 143.

4

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about something.’ Thus, any act of violent or subtle revolt—deviance, defiance, protest, resistance, and so on—taken by a female fictional character against the Kuwaiti hierarchical social order is herein considered ‘revolutionary’. The women who populate the selected short stories and novels represent female dissatisfaction with patriarchal society. Each of the heroines is portrayed as someone who desires or seeks a change in the male-dominated Kuwaiti social system. As shown in these texts, Kuwaiti women’s revolts against, or revolutionary acts in defiance of, male authority are often carried out at a domestic level. They are always embarked upon by individuals (heroines, who are either young girls or middle aged women), and sometimes by two individuals (heroines and other female characters, mostly their mothers) by way of female solidarity. I have used the word ‘heroine’ much more frequently in this book than ‘protagonist’. This is because the former is gender specific, while the latter is not. The former, invariably, is used in the same sense as ‘female protagonist’ or ‘female central figure’. The analysis focuses on the speeches, actions, thoughts, and gestures of the heroines in particular, which portray them as resistant, and thus, ‘revolutionary’ figures. In addition, some notes are included on how the respective authors’ styles and language might also be considered ‘revolutionary’. This is pertinent in view of the fact that Kuwaiti society still maintains a high level of restrictiveness on public morality, especially on issues of femininity and sexuality. Theoretical Framework As in most human societies, ‘patriarchy’—a system of male-dominated social, cultural, economic and political authority5—constitutes the main source of women’s oppression in Kuwait. Since class (which is sometimes determined by race) and gender are represented in the selected texts as coterminous factors in the perpetration of women’s oppression in pre- and post-oil Kuwait, this study draws mainly on Marxist-feminist theory. What is Marxist-feminism? What are the theoretical bases of this type of critical practice?

5

See, for example, Humm, op. cit., p. 408.

introduction

5

Marxist-feminism is a combination of two broad theories or concepts, ‘Marxism’ and ‘feminism’. The first addresses the issue of class, and the second, of gender relations. Having noted that “[t]he concept of Marxist-feminism is highly problematised” and that “[t]here is no simple answer to question[s] like, ‘What is Marxist-feminism?’ or ‘What elements is a Marxist-feminist reading required to contain?,’ ”6 the four women authors of Feminist Readings/Feminists Reading still provide us with a simple working definition. They define Marxist-feminism as “a practice or theory which considers both gender and class to be essential components of an analysis.”7 The aims of this form of literary criticism, as stated by Maggie Humm, are “to describe the material basis of women’s subjugation, and the relationship between the modes of production and women’s status; and to apply theories of women and class to the role of the family.”8 An acclaimed, groundbreaking work on this form of criticism is an article entitled “Women’s writing: Jane Eyre, Shirley, Villette, Aurora Leigh”. Published in 1978 in Ideology and Consciousness,9 this article was jointly written by a group of women critics who called themselves ‘The Marxist-Feminist Literature Collective’. As demonstrated in the article, Marxist-feminist critical practice, not least as evident in its name, is far from monolithic. It began as a synthesis of Marxism, feminism, and psychoanalysis. The authors utilise theoretical propositions of some French theorists—Louis Althusser’s and Pierre Macherey’s revolutionary forms of Marxism, and Julia Kristeva’s appropriation of Jacques Lacan’s psychoanalysis—in analysing four British women’s texts.10 Other forms of Marxist-feminist reading would, on the other hand, combine Marxism and feminism with ‘post-structuralism’ and ‘post-colonialism’

6 Sara Mills et al., Feminist Readings/Feminists Reading (London: Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1989), p. 188. 7 Ibid., ‘Glossary’, p. 244. 8 Humm, op. cit., p. 407. 9 ‘The Marxist-Feminist Literature Collective’ (MFLC), ‘Women’s writing: Jane Eyre, Shirley, Villette, Aurora Leigh’, Ideology and Consciousness, vol. 1, no. 3, (Spring 1978), pp. 27–48. 10 Lynne Pearce and Sara Mills, “Marxist-Feminism” in Sara Mills et al., op. cit., pp. 187–226.

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(as practised by Gayatri Spivak),11 or Marxist-feminism with ‘cultural materialism’ (as demonstrated by Cora Kaplan).12 One of the theories which Marxist-feminist literary critics often utilise, and which almost every chapter on textual analysis in this book has drawn on, is Louis Althusser’s concepts of Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses (ISAs). Althusser defines ideology as “a representation of the imaginary relationship of individuals to their real conditions of existence.”13 He states that “all ideology hails or interpellates concrete individuals as concrete subjects [. . .]”,14 and that “interpellation or hailing, [. . .] can be imagined along the lines of the most commonplace everyday police (or other) hailing: ‘Hey, you there!’ ”15 Interpellation is thus used by this French Marxist theorist to refer to how ideology ‘acts’ or ‘functions’ in society by governing the individual ‘imaginarily’ through some (traditional) institutions which he calls the Ideological State Apparatuses (ISAs). These institutions include the family, the educational, legal and political systems, culture (including literature, the arts, sports, etc.), religion, and the media.16 Embedded with Althusser’s notions of ideology and interpellation is the term imaginary which, according to him, “constitutes the failure of individuals to recognise that the ideological forces [or apparatuses] by which they are interpellated are neither real nor inevitable.”17 The most frequently used, herein, of Althusser’s terms is interpellation. It is used at different points to describe the operation of the Kuwaiti patriarchal tradition and ideological institutions, with women as subjects. Where necessary, I have tried to note whether the respective heroines of the selected texts ‘recognise’ or ‘misrecognise’ the imaginariness of ‘the ideological forces by which they are interpellated’. And if they do recognise them, how did that recognition come about? What action(s) does each of them take to break free from such impeding ideological forces? 11 See Gayatri C. Spivak, In Other Words: Essays in Cultural Politics (London: Routledge, 1988). 12 See Cora Kaplan, Sea Changes: Essays on Culture and Feminism (London: Verso, 1986). 13 Louis Althusser, ‘Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses’ (ISAs) in Lenin and Philosophy and Other Essays, (trans.) Ben Brewster (London: New Left Books, 1971), pp. 152, 153. 14 Ibid., p. 162. 15 Ibid., p. 163. 16 Ibid., pp. 135 ff. 17 Louis Althusser, op. cit., cited in Sara Mills et al., op. cit., p. 193.

introduction

7

The principal focus of analysis in this volume, as is common in Marxist-feminist critical practices, is ‘the family’. Beginning from chapter two, I examine the fictional representation of the operation of the Kuwaiti family and its attendant ideological agencies. Incorporating traditional beliefs, codes, values, and practices, those agencies include ‘gender difference’, ‘women’s seclusion’, ‘arranged and forced marriage’, and ‘motherhood’. Considering the fact that the majority of the selected texts have received little or no critical attention through the medium of English, the attempt here is not to ‘deconstruct’ them by looking for the contradictions inherent in them as a purely Marxist-feminist/post-structuralist reading would do. Rather, this book intends to demonstrate the feminist implications of each of the texts in a coherently comprehensible manner. This book is based on the premise that the literature of a people also constitutes a source of knowledge about their social and cultural history. Hence, the following discussion has a largely literary outlook based on the information and views expressed in the selected (and other Kuwaiti fictional) texts. Attempts are also made herein to incorporate information from non-fictional ‘narrative’ (in its broader sense) texts drawn from historical and sociological/anthropological findings and media reports. There are various meanings or ways of interpreting texts depending on the ideological/political stance of a reader/critic. Hence, this book does not claim that there are ‘inherent’ or singular meanings within the texts considered. Where available, different perspectives, critiques and interpretations by other scholars are considered. I have attempted here to (re-)read the texts so that they ‘work for socialism’ (Terry Eagleton)18 as well as ‘for feminism’ (Sara Mills et al.);19 that is, in other words, to promote the continuing struggle for human and women’s rights in twenty-first-century Kuwait. This book is technically divided in two parts. Part one—chapters one and two—is introductory by nature. Chapter one outlines the historical development of modern Arabic fiction in Kuwait, tracing its origins to the late 1920s. Chapter two focuses on the rise of Kuwaiti feminism and 18

Terry Eagleton, quoted by Raman Selden in A Reader’s Guide to Contemporary Literary Theory (Brighton: Harvester, 1985), p. 45, and cited in Sara Mills et al., op. cit., p. 224. 19 See Sara Mills et al., op. cit., p. 224.

8

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the emergence of the Kuwaiti female literary subculture in the middle of the twentieth century. Part two (chapters three through six) is dedicated to a literary analysis of the selected texts. Through the lens of Hayfāʾ Hāshim’s “al-Intiqām al-rahīb” and Laylā al-ʿUthmān’s “Min milaff imraʾa”, chapter three examines the representation of female destructive revolt against male authority. While arguing against the view that al-ʿUthmān’s novel, Wasmiyya takhruj min al-baḥ r, is a perfect ‘reproduction’ of the dominant masculine literary discourse, chapter four demonstrates women’s individual defiance and solidarity in subverting patriarchal hegemony. Focussing on Ṭ ayyiba al-Ibrāhīm’s Mudhakkirāt khādim, chapter five discusses a woman’s struggle against gender and immigrant workingclass oppression, exploitation, and segregation in war-torn Kuwait of the early 1990s. Chapter six considers Fawziyya S. al-Sālim’s novel, Muzūn, as a text that is ‘postmodernist’ in form and highly engaging and ‘interrogative’ in content. The chapter examines the novel’s representation of the role of a woman in the emergence of a kind of ‘sexual revolution’ in Arabian society as a whole. The focal point of this book, by and large, is the continuing—though dwindling—effects of patriarchal tradition on race, class, and gender relations in Kuwait/Arabia. All the chapters in part two in particular identify the sex-related concept of sharaf or faḍīḥ a (social honour or dishonour) as a common denominator among the selected texts. Faḍīḥ a signifies the devastating loss of a family’s social standing through the involvement of, especially, its female members in an un-solemnised, whimsical, or forceful (through rape), sexual encounter. Each of the texts seeks to reflect and deconstruct this concept, which has societal implications for discriminatory and oppressive treatment of women. The selected texts (as well as some others that are not specially considered in this book) form a minority among Kuwaiti women’s fiction. Thus, they are herein labeled as ‘Kuwaiti feminist revolutionary’ texts, considering the agency each of them has constructed for its heroine’s defiance, evasion, or subversion of patriarchal authority. Finally, this book asserts that some pre-oil Kuwaiti women have demonstrated resistance to male domination, and that they have actively worked for and contributed to social change.

CHAPTER ONE

MODERN ARABIC FICTION IN KUWAIT: EMERGENCE AND DEVELOPMENT Introduction This chapter presents a historical survey of the rise and development of modern Arabic fiction in Kuwait. Beginning with a brief note on the history of Kuwait and its present social and political structure, this chapter proceeds to outline the emergence and growth of literary activity in the country. As is usually the case, Kuwaiti literature comprises poetry,1 drama,2 and fictional and non-fictional narratives. Our focus here is on the development of the Kuwaiti short story and novel in the twentieth century. Kuwait in History3 The history of Kuwait is often divided into two periods: the pre- and the post-oil periods. The former was the period from the time of the foundation of Kuwait up to the middle of the 20th century; the latter began with the oil boom in the 1950s and 1960s. The Iraqi occupation 1 On the historical development of Kuwaiti poetry see, for example, ʿAwāṭif al-Ṣabbāḥ, al-Shiʿr al-Kuwaytī al-ḥ adīth [Modern Kuwaiti Poetry], (Kuwait: Kuwait University Press, 1972); N. Ṣ. al-Rūmī, al-Ḥ araka al-shiʿriyya fī al-khalīj al-ʿarabī bayn al-taqlīd wa-l-taṭawwur [Arabian Gulf Poetry between Tradition and Modernity], (Kuwait: Sharikat al-matḅ aʿa al-ʿaṣriyya wa-maktabātuhā, 1980); M. M. al-Ṣūrī, al-Funūn aladabiyya fī al-Kuwayt [The Arabic Literary Genres in Kuwait] (Kuwait: al-Markaz al-ʿarabī li-l-iʿlām, 1989, 1st edition), pp. 25–56; Khalīfa al-Wiqwān, “Muqaddima fī tārīkh al-shiʿr al-Kuwaytī” [An Introduction to the History of Kuwaiti Poetry], Majallat dirāsāt al-khalīj wa-l-jazīra al-ʿarabiyya [Journal of the Gulf and Arabian Peninsula Studies], (Kuwait University), no. 2 (April 1975), pp. 67–82. 2 On the origins and growth of Kuwaiti drama, see al-Ṣūrī, op. cit., pp. 119–138. 3 On the socio-cultural and political history of Kuwait, see, for example, Jacqueline Ishmael, Kuwait: Social Change in Historical Perspective (Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 1982); M. F. Al-ʿAjmi, A Novelist from Kuwait: A Thematic Study of Ismāʿīl Fahd Ismāʿīl’s Novels (Kuwait: Kuwait University Press, 1996), Chapter 1: “Kuwait: Historical Background”, pp. 1–30; Haya al-Mughni, Women in Kuwait: the Politics of Gender (London: Saqi Books, 1993), Chapter 1: “Class and Politics in Kuwait: Some Historical Background”, pp. 19–39.

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of the country—from August 1990 to February 1991—introduced a third period: ‘post-war’, which can still be regarded as part of the broader post-oil era. A new post-war wave of research on the origin of Kuwait has asserted that it was “an independent political entity” by 1613,4 contrary to the common belief that the modern Arabian Gulf State was once under the control of Banī Khālid of the al-Hassa province of southern Iraq.5 Banī ʿUtub—the group of Arab tribes that migrated from Central Arabia and settled in the small, northeast coastal area of the Arabian Peninsula now known as Kuwait—consisted of the al-Ṣabāḥ, al-Khalīfa and al-Jalāhima tribes.6 Kuwait became a popular port throughout the second half of the eighteenth century, attracting intercontinental trading activities by foreign powers like Persia in the East, and Portugal, Great Britain, and The Netherlands in the West.7 Until the middle of the twentieth century when oil exploration began, the main occupations of Kuwaitis were boat and ship-building, pearl diving, fishing, and some trade.8 By the late 1930s and the mid-1940s, oil was becoming the country’s major source of revenue. During the reign of Shaykh Abdullah al-Sālim al-Ṣabāḥ (1950–1965), Kuwait town began to change from “a sun-baked adobe town [. . .] to a modern metropolis of the most contemporary design and [. . .] architecture.”9 Through Kuwaiti government welfare programmes, the effects of the oil boom on the social and economic lives of the Kuwaiti people reached an astonishing level in the mid1960s. With an unprecedented influx of immigrants into the country, “Kuwaiti nationals constituted [and continue to constitute] a minority in their homeland.”10 Kuwait became a British protectorate in 1899. It gained independence in 1961. Its system of government is both monarchical and partially democratic, as parliamentary elections began to take place in the country

4

Y. Y. al-Ghunaim, Kuwait Faces Avidity, trans. E. I. Ayoub, (Kuwait: Center for Research and Studies on Kuwait, 2000), pp. 13 ff. 5 See, for example, al-Mughni, op. cit., pp. 21–22. 6 al-Ghunaim, op. cit., p. 20. 7 Ibid., p. 13 ff. 8 For more on the occupations of Kuwaitis in the pre-oil era, see Al-ʿAjmi, op. cit., pp. 18–24; and al-Mughni, op. cit., pp. 22–25. 9 al-ʿAjmi, op. cit., p. 26. 10 See Ibid. One estimate, published in 1999, states that Kuwaiti nationals constitute 35.1%, and non-Kuwaiti nationals, 64.9% of the total population. See the Kuwaiti Information Office (USA) website: http://www.kuwait-info.org/country_profile.html. (This site was accessed on 25 April, 2005).

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from the 1930s. Islam and Arabic are the official religion and language, respectively. One of the latest statistical reports shows that women constitute almost half of the population of Kuwaiti citizens; over 67% of university graduates are women; and women constitute one third of the labour force. With a high (77.50%) level of literacy, Kuwaiti women have held and continue to hold a lot of high-ranking positions in government and private organisations and institutions.11 Nevertheless, they continue to be marginalized, politically; they were enfranchised— granted the right to vote and be voted for—by the parliament only recently in 2005.12 They voted for the first time in April 2006. Literary Tradition in Kuwait: the Beginnings (mid-1840s–late 1920s) It is the general belief among Kuwaiti literary historians13 that the history of the emergence of literary activity in the country dates back to 1843, when the great scholar and poet, Shaykh ʿAbd al-Jalīl al-Ṭ abāṭabāʾī (1776–1853), of Persian origin,14 came to settle in Kuwait. According to Khālid Saūd al-Zayd (b. 1937), it was al-Ṭ abāṭabāʾī who laid the foundation of intellectual thought and literary activity in the country. Some of his Kuwaiti students, who included Abdullah al-Faraj, Khālid A. al-ʿAdsānī, and ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz al-Rushayd, are usually referred to today as the pioneers of Kuwaiti intellectualism.15

11 See the Kuwaiti Information Office, “Women in Kuwait” in http://www.kuwaitinfo.org/women.html. (This site was accessed on 25 April, 2005). 12 For more on the Kuwaiti parliamentary bill of May 2005 which granted the longoverdue Kuwaiti women suffrage, see for example, “Feminism in Kuwait: A report on the struggle for women’s political participation” by Rochelle Jones (July 2005), posted on Women’s Human Rights Net (WHRnet): http://www.whrnet.org/docs/perspectivefeminism_kuwait0507.html (Information retrieved on 21 April, 2008). 13 One of the most frequently cited early Kuwaiti literary historians is Shaykh ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz al-Rushayd who was the author of Tārikh al-Kuwayt [The History of Kuwait], first published in 1926 and reprinted in 1971 (Beirut: Maṭbaʿat al-Ḥ ayāt). On the development of Kuwaiti literature and the lives and works of Kuwaiti literary figures from 1843 to the 1980s, see Kh. S. al-Zayd, Udabāʾ al-Kuwayt fī al-qarnayn [Kuwaiti Scholars of the 19th and 20th Centuries], (Kuwait: Sharikat al-Rubayʿān li-l-nashr wa-l-tawzīʿ) vol. 1, 1967; vol. 2, 1981; and vol. 3, 1982. A reproduction of the introduction to this book, in which the author traces the origins and development of Kuwaiti literature, is contained in the introduction to vol. 2, pp. 8–15. 14 For a biographical note on Shaykh ʿAbd al-Jalīl al-Ṭ abāṭabāʾī, see al-Zayd, op. cit., vol. 1, pp. 41–54. 15 al-Zayd, op. cit, vol. 2, p. 10.

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Kuwaiti literature began to evolve at the beginning of the 20th century. One major factor responsible for its evolution was the introduction of western-style education. The first primary school of this nature, named al-Mubārakiyya School, was opened in 1911.16 A majority of the earliest Kuwaiti literary figures were the products of this school. A second factor responsible for the emergence and growth of Kuwaiti literature was the establishment of al-Jamʿiyya al-khayriyya [The Charitable Organization] by a group of rich, upper-class Kuwaiti men. Founded in 1913, the main aim of this organization was to promote scholarship and intellectualism among Kuwaitis. It played an immeasurable role in that respect. For instance, members of this organisation contributed to the funding of the Kuwaiti national library—established in 1923—in the early years of its existence. The government-founded library helped to broaden the horizons of most Kuwaiti intellectuals of the 1920s; it enhanced their enthusiasm for the reading and writing of literary works.17 The zeal for intellectual awakening also gave birth to the establishment of some dīwāniyyas (halls/meeting places). The dīwāniyya, which has continued to exist and proliferate up to the present day,18 usually meets in the evening after the day’s work. At the time of its introduction into the Kuwaiti social system, the dīwāniyya was meant, primarily, to serve as an avenue for people (mainly men) to meet and interact and to exchange ideas on scholarship in general. Some of the earliest dīwāniyyas were, however, much more specialized, focusing mainly on literature. For example, while al-Mullah Ṣāliḥ’s Dīwāniyya (founded circa 1937) specialized in debating classical Arabic literature, Khālid al-Musallam’s Dīwāniyya (founded circa 1937) made modern Arabic literature its focus of debate. Thus, modern Arabic literature began to gain popularity among the Kuwaiti people. This was because some of them had been following various publications on modern trends in

16

Ibid., p. 11. On the role of al-Jamʿiyya al-khayriyya and the National Library, see H. M. A. al-Sanousi, “The Kuwaiti Short Story: an Analytical Study of its Political and Social Aspects” (unpublished Ph.D. thesis, University of Glasgow, 1995), pp. 12–13. 18 Regrettably today—beginning from April 2008—some of the existing (buildings/ structures used as) dīwāniyyas accused of inciting political instability in the country are now being demolished by the government. 17

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all genres of Arabic literature, as they were developing in other Arab countries such as Egypt, Syria, Lebanon, and Iraq.19 Another factor that facilitated the growth of literature among Kuwaitis in the first half of the twentieth century was the establishment of literary clubs. In 1924, Khālid S. al-ʿAdsānī, mentioned above, established al-Nādī al-adabī [The Literature Club], which “became an important forum for communicating and exchanging views” on literature in particular and scholarship in general. The establishment of the club “announced the real birth of a literary movement” in Kuwait.20 While the period between the mid-1840s and the late 1920s is regarded as the beginning of literary activities in the country,21 the one that followed is considered ‘the formative stage’ of Kuwaiti fiction in particular. Emergence of Kuwaiti Fiction: The Formative Stage (late 1920s–mid-1950s) The formative era of Kuwaiti fiction, which may be said to have begun in the late 1920s and ended in the mid-1950s, witnessed the emergence and development of journalism in Kuwait. It is undeniable that journalism has always played a significant role in the evolution and promotion of literary works. Just as journalism had made a tremendous contribution towards the growth of fiction at the acclaimed centres of modern Arab intellectualism (notably, Egypt),22 so also it contributed to the development of fictional narratives at the peripheries, like Kuwait,

19 al-Sanousi notes that the National Library subscribed to Egyptian periodicals like al-Balāgh [The Communiqué], al-Ahrām [The Pyramids], al-Muqaṭtạ m [The Cairiene Hills] and al-Qabas [Firebrand], and that the availability of copies of these periodicals in Kuwait made it possible for people to follow events in other Arab countries. See Ibid., pp. 14–15. 20 Ibid. 21 al-Zayd regards the pre-1843 period in Kuwait as an age of ‘stagnation’ and ‘backwardness’ in terms of literary activity, and the period between the mid-1840s and the late 1920s as the second stage of Kuwaiti literary history. See al-Zayd, op. cit., vol. 1, pp. 10–15. 22 For further information on the role played by journalism at the intellectual centres of the Arab world, see, for example, Abdel-Aziz Abdel-Meguid, The Modern Arabic Short Story: its Emergence, Development and Form (Cairo: al-Maaref Press, N. D.) pp. 64 ff.; J. A. Haywood, Modern Arabic Literature 1800–1970 (London: Lund Humphries, 1971), pp. 24 ff.; Hamdi Sakkut, The Egyptian Novel and Its Main Trends 1913–1952 (Cairo: The American University in Cairo Press, 1971), pp. 5 ff. For more information on the role of journalism in Kuwait, see al-Sanousi, op. cit., p. 15.

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Bahrain and Saudi Arabia.23 The short story was the first ‘modern’ genre to emerge in Kuwait; here follow some of the factors that were responsible for its birth. In 1928, the first Kuwaiti magazine, al-Kuwayt [Kuwait], was founded by ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz al-Rushayd, mentioned above. Perhaps because Kuwait did not have the skills or the presses to produce it in the country, al-Kuwayt was printed in Egypt. During its short life (1928–1931), the magazine served as an avenue whereby interested Kuwaiti men of thought and letters at that time were able to get their writings published.24 Al-Kuwayt published, among other things, literary pieces which ranged from poetry and prose fiction and non-fiction to articles on literary history and criticism. Of special concern to us here was the unprecedented role of this magazine in publishing and publicizing fiction. Its first issue in 1929 published what is hailed to be the first short story not only by a Kuwaiti, but also by a khalījī (some one from the Arabian Gulf region). It was a story by Khālid al-Faraj, entitled “Munīra” [Munīra].25 After 1929, it took many years before the impact of story writing could be felt again in the country. The main reason for this hiatus was that al-Kuwayt ceased to appear after three years.26 One other reason was that the acclaimed pioneer Khālid al-Faraj abandoned story writing in favour of poetry, a much more popular and traditional form of Arabic literature. The case was the same with many other Kuwaitis who had earlier shown interest and had attempted writing stories.27 After the demise of al-Kuwayt, fiction writing was resuscitated in 1946 with the

23 See Ibrāhīm A. Ghulūm, al-Qiṣsạ al-qaṣīra fī al-khalīj al-ʿarabī: al-Kuwayt wa-lBaḥ rayn [The Arabic Short Story in the Arabian Gulf: Kuwait and Bahrain], 2nd edition (Beirut: al-Muʾassasa al-ʿarabiyya li-l-dirāsāt wa-l-nashr), pp. 95–127; and Bakrī S. Amīn, al-Ḥ araka al-adabiyya fī al-Mamlaka al-Arabiyya al-Saʿūdiyya [The Arabic Literary Tradition in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia], 4th edition (Beirut: Dār al-ʿilm li-l-malāyīn, 1985), pp. 103–137. 24 al-Sanousi, op. cit., p. 15. 25 The story appeared in al-Kuwayt, vol. 2, nos. 6 and 7 (December 1929). It is included in Kh. S. al-Zayd’s compilation, Qiṣaṣ yatīma fī al-majallāt al-Kuwaytiyya: 1929–1955 (Kuwait: Sharikat al-Rubayʿān li-l-nashr wa-l-tawzīʿ, 1982, 1st edition), pp. 33–41. As for this story being widely considered the first by a khalījī, see, for example, Ghulūm, op. cit., p. 101. 26 al-Sanousi, op. cit., p. 17. 27 This point is noted by al-Zayd in his introduction to Qiṣaṣ yatīma fī al-majallāt al-Kuwaytiyya: 1929–1955, above. He explains that he has labelled the stories in this volume yatīma, because each of them was “the only story” written by their authors,

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appearance of another magazine known as al-Baʿtha [The Mission].28 Together with some other magazines that appeared after it (see table below), al-Baʿtha attracted wider authorship and readership. During the formative period some literary clubs were also formed, adding impetus to the growth of Kuwaiti fiction. Nādī al-muʿallimīn (The Teachers’ Club) was founded in 1952, and Nādī al-thaqāfa al-qawmī (The National Club of Culture) in 1954. These two clubs established, respectively, al-Rāʾid [The Pioneer] and al-Īmān [Faith] magazines. The following table shows the names of the Kuwaiti magazines that appeared between 1928 and 1956, together with the names of their founders, places of publication and the periods of their existence. Table 1. Kuwaiti magazines 1928–1956 Name

Founder/publisher

Place of Dates: Publication From–To

al-Kuwayt [Kuwait]

ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz al-Rushayd Egypt

1928–1931

al-Baʿtha [The Mission]

Kuwaiti students in Egypt

Egypt

Dec. 1946– 1954(?)

Kāẓima [Kaẓima]

?

Kuwait

1948–1949 (before completing a full year)

al-Baʿth [The Resurrection]

?

Kuwait

1950 (lasted 3 months)

al-Rāʾid [The Pioneer]

Nādī al-muʿallimīn [The Teachers’ Club]

Kuwait

1952–Jan. 1954

al-Imān [Faith]

Nādī al-thaqāfa al-qawmī Kuwait [The National Club of Culture]

1953

al-Irshād [Guidance]

Jamʿiyyat al-irshād [Islamic Guidance Society]

1953

Kuwait

who thereafter abandoned story writing (see p. 1). The point is also stressed by M. M. al-Ṣūrī in al-Sūrī, op. cit., p. 58. 28 al-Sanousi, op. cit., p. 17.

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As shown in this table, most of these magazines were founded by elite clubs or societies; this points to the effectiveness of group activity in the development of the Kuwaiti literary movement. Despite their short lives, these magazines had landmark effects on, and made enormous contributions to, the development of the Kuwaiti literary tradition. Some of them organised story-writing competitions, which helped to spark the potential of the mid-twentieth century generation of Kuwaitis. This is particularly true of women, as evidenced in the circumstances that led to the writing of “al-Intiqām al-rahīb” by Hayfāʾ Hāshim. Discussed in detail in chapter three of this book, this story was the product of a competition organised by the above-named al-Rāʾid magazine in May 1953.29 The role of the educational contacts between Kuwait and the outside (Arab) world in the development of Kuwaiti literature cannot be overstressed. Contact occurred in two ways: (i) the in-coming, teaching mission, known as al-Baʿtha al-taʿlīmiyya; (ii) the study-abroad, education mission, known as al-Baʿtha al-ʿilmiyya.30 Al-Baʿtha al-taʿlīmiyya was the mission embarked upon by Arab teachers from Palestine beginning in 1936. The influx of the Palestinian teachers was very helpful; Kuwait benefited in two ways: (i) through the improvement and advancement of the Kuwaiti education sector; (ii) through the immigrant Palestinians’ participation and involvement in the development of Kuwaiti journalism as well as in literary activities.31 The second type of educational contact, the study-abroad mission, was a situation whereby Kuwaiti students began to go and study in Egypt, Syria, and Lebanon on scholarships. Al-Jamʿiyya al-khayriyya, mentioned above, was also responsible for this scholarship scheme.32 The mission to Egypt in particular, which first took place in 1937, was as significant to the advancement of Kuwaiti literature as the studyabroad education mission of Egypt itself in the nineteenth century. During the reign of Muhammad Ali Pasha (1805–1848), young Egyptian intellectuals were sent to France for further study; this constituted one

29 See Hayfāʾ Hāshim, “al-Intiqām al-rahīb” in al-Zayd, Qiṣaṣ yatīma . . ., pp. 195–201. 30 al-Zayd, Udabāʾ al-Kuwayt, vol. 2, pp. 8 ff. 31 al-Ṣūrī, op. cit., pp. 58–59. 32 al-Zayd, Udabāʾ al-Kuwayt, vol. 2, pp. 8 ff.

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of the main factors responsible for Arabic literary revivalism in Egypt and the Arab world at large.33 The education mission to Egypt led to the emergence of a new, progressive generation of Kuwaiti intellectuals. It also led to the establishment of al-Baʿtha, one of the above-listed magazines, which was jointly founded and run by Kuwaiti students in Egypt. Beginning with its first issue in December 1946, al-Baʿtha was concerned with the affairs of Kuwaiti students and with promoting Kuwaiti culture and society, both at home and abroad. This magazine ceased to appear in 1954; however, as has been noted by al-Sanousi, its issues were specifically important to Kuwaiti literary history “because [they] remain a vital source in which to trace the works of those writers from the late [19]40s to the early [19]50s.”34 The general characteristic feature of Kuwaiti fiction of the formative stage was experimentation—writers experimenting with the writing of the short story, in its modern Western sense. As was the case with modern Arabic fiction in, for instance, Egypt, Syria, Lebanon, and Iraq in the late nineteenth and the early twentieth centuries,35 the various early attempts at story writing by Kuwaitis came in the form of writing either original stories, or stories translated or adapted from foreign languages and cultures into Arabic. The stories published in this formative or experimental period were scattered in different magazines; they were not compiled into a single volume until 1982. The compilation by Khālid S. al-Zayd, which contains some ninety fictional and nonfictional narratives written by Kuwaitis and non-Kuwaiti Arabs up to 1955, is entitled Qiṣaṣ yatīma fī al-majallāt al-Kuwaytiyya 1929–1955 [Orphaned Stories in Kuwaiti Magazines: 1929–1955].36 The stories of the formative stage share certain similarities in terms of form and content, themes and style. Some of them are convention-

33

The continuity in the education mission to Egypt led to the establishment of Bayt al-Kuwayt [The Kuwait House] in Cairo in 1945; it was meant to serve as a hostel for Kuwaiti students in Egypt. See Ibid. For more information about the Egyptian education mission to France, see, for example, Matti Moosa, The Origins of Modern Arabic Fiction, (London: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 1997, 2nd edition), pp. 5 ff. See also Sakkut, op. cit., pp. 1 ff.; Haywood, op. cit., pp. 29 ff. 34 al-Sanousi, op. cit., p. 16. 35 For more on the origins and development of modern Arabic fiction in Egypt, Syria, Lebanon, and Iraq see Matti Moosa, op. cit., pp. 5 ff.; Sakkut, op. cit., pp. 1 ff.; Haywood, op. cit., pp. 29 ff. 36 For the publisher and year of publication of al-Zayd’s Qiṣaṣ yatīma . . ., see note no. 21 above.

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ally didactic, directly preaching and treating issues of religious and social moralities. Some of them reflect social realism through the exploration of themes like love and marital problems, the suffering of Kuwaiti women, women’s (denial of formal) education, and the conflict between the traditional system and the emergent new system of life and civilization (resulting from the effects of oil exploration). Some of the prominent figures among Kuwaiti fictionists of the formative stage were Fahd al-Duwayrī (b. 1921), Fāḍil Khalaf (b. 1927), and Farḥān Rāshid al-Farḥān (b. 1928).37 The Mature Stage: late 1950s to the contemporary period With the establishment in the second half of the twentieth century of daily newspapers and more periodicals, and the foundation of some much more professional literary societies and governmental organisations, Kuwaiti fiction began to mature. In 1958, two more magazines, al-Mujtamaʿ [The Community] and al-ʿArabī [Pan-Arab], were founded. Like their predecessors these two magazines played a remarkable role in promoting Kuwaiti literature in general and the short story in particular.38 The emergent Kuwaiti print media became stronger in the 1960s and 1970s through the establishment of daily newspapers: al-Raʾy al-ʿāmm [The Public Opinion] (1961), al-Waṭan [The Nation] (1961), al-Siyāsa [Politics] (1965), al-Qabas [Firebrand] (1972) and al-Anbāʾ [The News] (1976). The primary aim and objective of virtually every one of these dailies was to serve political purposes. But, besides that, the papers not only promoted literature, but also contributed towards widening

37 I have tried to indicate the dates of birth and, where applicable, death of writers mentioned in the whole of this book. I regret to say that, if unknown, such dates are not indicated. All of the three men named here are now dead, but I am unable to ascertain the year each of them died. For their lives and works see, for example, alSanousi, op. cit., pp. 55 ff. Fahd al-Duwayrī, in particular, was one of the most prolific Kuwaiti short-story writers; he lived from the formative stage to the contemporary period. He was dubbed Shaykh al-qaṣsạ̄ ṣīn al-Kuwaytiyyīn [The Leader of the Kuwaiti Fictionists] by al-Zayd in his biographical book, Shaykh al-qaṣsạ̄ ṣīn al-Kuwaytiyyīn, Fahd al-Duwayrī: ḥ ayātuhu wa-āthāruhu [The Leader of the Kuwaiti Fictionists, Fahd al-Duwayrī: his Life and Legacies], (Kuwait: Dār al-ʿurūba li-l-nashr, N. D.). 38 al-Ṣūrī, op. cit., p. 4.

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both the readership and the scope of literary writing in the country.39 Connected to the role of the print media was that of the printing and publishing companies. One of the most famous privately-owned Kuwaiti publishing companies, which has been facilitating the publication and distribution of fictional works in Kuwait, is al-Rubayʿān. Specifically signalling the maturation of Kuwaiti literature was the establishment of Rābiṭat al-udabāʾ fī al-Kuwayt [The Kuwaiti Writers’ Association] in 1964.40 Whereas most of the literary clubs of the formative period have ceased to exist, the Kuwaiti Writers’ Association continues to function and attract membership up to the present day. It is unlike those socio-cultural and literary clubs that had existed before it for which creative writing was either of secondary importance, or their members were amateur writers. As explained further below, its emergence is proof that creative writing has become a profession in Kuwait. The association has worked to ‘nurture’ the ever-flourishing literary movement in the country. In it, Kuwaiti authors have found a single umbrella of rules and regulations under which they can operate, both as individuals and as a group. However, as a government-backed, though independent body, the association occasionally tries to ‘censor’ the writings of its members.41 It has a monthly literary journal, called al-Bayān [The Clarity/Bulletin], with its first issue appearing in 1967.42 Al-Bayān—which continues to appear to date—serves as an avenue for the publication of various forms of creative and critical works, written in Arabic and relating to Kuwaiti, Arab, and world literature. The Kuwaiti government has continued to play a significant role in promoting scholarship in general and the cultural and literary arts in particular. It was during the mature stage that various Kuwaiti government ministries and bureaus began to give different kinds of support and encouragement to the arts, literature, and culture. For instance, the Kuwaiti government established al-Majmaʿ al-waṭanī li-l-thaqāfa

39 For more information about the emergence of the press in Kuwait, see K. K. Murad, “The Kuwaiti Press: a Study of its Development, Structure and Characteristics”, M. A. dissertation, University of Keele, UK, 1988. 40 For more information about this association see the Kuwaiti Writers’ Association website: http://www.kuwaitwriters.net/ (This site was last accessed on 25 April, 2005). 41 al-Sanousi, op. cit., p. 17. 42 al-Bayān continues to appear up to the present day.

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wa-l-funūn wa-l-ādāb [The National Council for Culture, Arts, and Letters] (1974), and Muʾassasat al-Kuwayt li-l-taqaddum al-ʿilmī [Kuwait Foundation for the Advancement of Sciences] (1976).43 Under the auspices of the Kuwaiti Ministry of Arts and Culture, these two foundations, among others, have continued to organise annual literary and cultural events and festivals. Some of their programmes include the organisation of the International Book Fair, usually held between December and January, and Mahrajān al-Qurayn [al-Qurayn Festival]—al-Qurayn being one of the old names of Kuwait—usually held in February to mark the anniversary of Kuwait’s National Day (25 February). Part of the programmes of these two annual events are story writing and poetry competitions aimed at encouraging especially the younger generation of writers. Prizes are awarded to authors of the best entries, a phenomenon that has served as an incentive for talented individuals.44 Apart from the influence of the above-discussed factors, Kuwaiti storywriters of the mature stage have derived their inspiration and enthusiasm from the events in society. Three additional factors that have aided the writing and publication of fiction during this stage include 1) the oil-engendered economic fortunes which have transformed Kuwait and the general outlook of its people; 2) the exposure of Kuwaitis to Western (notably, English and Russian) literature and culture, which came about especially through education and the translation of foreign works into Arabic; and 3) the growing national consciousness and interest in political and ideological debates.45 The stories of the mature stage, in terms of content, do not reflect a great difference from those of the preceding stage. Women’s issues, the conflict of civilisations, love and marital problems, and so on continue to feature in the stories. Also, the Arab-Israeli conflict became a popular literary theme during this era.46 One of the most significant hallmarks of Kuwaiti fiction of the contemporary period is the evolution and proliferation of war narratives in the 1990s. Needless to say, the Iraq-Kuwait war has prompted many Kuwaitis, male and female alike, 43 Some governmental organizations and institutions were founded in Kuwait to promote specific forms of arts and culture like drama, folklore, and painting. 44 See al-Ṣūrī, op. cit., p. 128. I personally attended some of the literary events organised during the period of the Kuwaiti International Book Fair in December 2002/ January 2003, and those of the Mahrajān al-Qurayn in February 2003. 45 al-Sanousi, op. cit., p. 182. 46 Ibid.

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to take up the pen. Consequently, Kuwaiti fiction can be divided into two broader categories: peacetime and war narratives.47 As well as better perfecting the style of Kuwaiti fiction, its form has also widened in the mature stage to include the novel. Kuwaiti writers’ zeal to write longer fiction began in the late 1940s and early 1950s with the publication of Ālām ṣadīq [A Friend’s Suffering] (1948) and ʿĀshiq al-ṣūra [The Picture’s Lover] (1950). Written by Farḥān Rāshid al-Farḥān and ʿAlī Zakariyyā al-Anṣārī, respectively, these two stories were much longer than their contemporaries and can be regarded as novellas.48 But what is generally reckoned by contemporary Kuwaiti literary historians as the first Kuwaiti novel is Abdullah Khalaf’s Mudarrisa min al-mirqāb [A Female Teacher from al-Mirqāb], published in 1962; whether or not this is a successful novel by every standard as al-Sanousi has claimed49 remains debatable. Some weekly literary circles are functional in contemporary Kuwait. The Kuwaiti Writers’ Association, mentioned above, holds seminars every Wednesday and public lectures on an occasional basis. Kuwaiti as well as non-Kuwaiti intellectuals are invited to give presentations on literary topics, creative or critical. Another popular literary circle in Kuwait today is Multaqā al-thulāthāʾ (The Tuesday Rendezvous); Ismāʿīl Fahd Ismāʿīl, a notable Kuwaiti novelist, short-story writer, and literary critic, is the founder and convenor. An informal weekly gathering, Multaqā al-thulāthāʾ is held in Ismāʿīl’s office at the heart of Kuwait City; the coordination of its programmes is often done by Laylā al-ʿUthmān, the acclaimed, leading Kuwaiti female writer and a close, long-term friend of Ismāʿīl. Creative writers, literary historians, critics, journalists, and scholars of Arabic language and literature from various countries of the Arab world are invited to give presentations.50 Today, there are many Kuwaiti short-story writers and novelists. Some of the prominent Kuwaiti male writers are: Sulaymān al-Shaṭt ̣ī (1942–), Sulaymān al-Khulayfī (1946–), Walīd al-Rujayb (1954–), Muhammad M. al-ʿAjmī (1956–), Ḥ amad al-Ḥ amad (1954–), Ṭ ālib al-Rifāʿī (1958–), and, of course, the above-named Ismāʿīl F. Ismāʿīl (1940–), who is the 47 See Barbara Michalak-Pikulska, The Contemporary Kuwaiti Short Story in Peacetime and War, 1929–1995 (Krakow: The Enigma Press, 1997). 48 al-Ṣūrī, op. cit., pp. 59–60. 49 al-Sanousi, op. cit., p. 86. 50 Ismāʿīl Fahd Ismāʿīl (1940– ) continues to play a leading role in the Kuwaiti novel. He has published several collections of short stories and over twenty novels. For detailed information on his life and works, see al-ʿAjmi, op. cit.

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acclaimed ʿgreatest’ and most prolific Kuwaiti novelist in history.51 The names of contemporary Kuwaiti women fictionists include the abovenamed Laylā al-ʿUthmān (1945–), Thurayyā al-Baqṣamī (1952–), Munā al-Shāfiʿī (1946–), and Ṭ ayyiba al-Ibrāhīm (1952–).52 Conclusion Kuwaiti fiction has grown and developed steadily from its inception. At both the formative and the mature stages, fiction writing in Kuwait has been facilitated by several factors, education being the most important. Beginning from the 1950s, the oil-engendered economic buoyancy of both the State and the people of Kuwait greatly enhanced the production and consumption of literary works. As of today, Kuwaiti men and women writers have published scores of collections of short stories and dozens of novels.53 The wide gap between the number of Kuwaiti short stories and short-story writers, and that of novels and novelists might be due to the well-known fact that the short story is quicker to read, easier, and often assumed to be less demanding to write than the novel. The next chapter discusses the emergence and growth of the female literary subculture in Kuwait.

51 For the lives and works of some of these writers, see Laylā M. Ṣāliḥ , Udabāʾ wa-adībāt al-Kuwayt [Kuwaiti Men and Women Writers], (Kuwait: The Kuwaiti Writers’ Association Press, 1996). This book is also available online: http://www.althakerah. net/sub.php (This site was accessed on 25 April, 2005; at the homepage click on dhākirat al-shiʿr, then, al-Kuwayt, and then, Tarājim al-udabāʾ al-Kuwaytiyyīn [The Biographies of Kuwaiti Writers]. See also al-Sanousi, op. cit., pp. 100 ff. 52 Through my attendance at some of the programmes of the Kuwaiti Writers’ Association and Multaqā al-thulāthāʾ between December 2002 and March 2003, I met with and interviewed some of the writers. 53 This is evident in the list of works published by Kuwaiti writers included in Laylā Ṣāliḥ’s Udabāʾ wa-adībāt al-Kuwayt.

CHAPTER TWO

THE KUWAITI FEMALE LITERARY TRADITION: AN OVERVIEW Introduction This chapter begins with an historical survey of the rise of the feminist movement in Kuwait. Then it outlines the origins and development of the Kuwaiti female literary tradition, with special emphasis on fiction. This is followed by a brief discussion of the status of women in preand post-oil Kuwaiti society, as represented in selected short stories by both Kuwaiti men and women writers. The Rise of the Feminist Movement in Kuwait Women in Kuwait, like their counterparts in other parts of the Arab world,1 had to face a great struggle against the male-oriented, traditional Arab social order. A consideration of Kuwaiti social history reveals some of the factors that were responsible for the evolution and efflorescence of the Kuwaiti feminist movement in the second half of the twentieth century. Those factors included education and job opportunities for Kuwaiti women, class affiliation, the press, and the formation of women’s societies. Education was the most important factor that engendered the rise of Kuwaiti feminism. The first girls’ school in Kuwait was opened in 1938.2 It was initially restricted to primary education, but upgraded to secondary/diploma level just over a decade later. The first higher institution of learning in the country, Kuwait University, was founded

1 On the origins and development of Arab feminist writing beginning from the late 19th century, see Margot Badran and miriam cooke (eds.), Opening the Gates: A Century of Arab Feminist Writing (London: Virago Press Limited, 1990); reference is made herein to the second edition (Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 2004) “Introduction”. 2 See ‘First Kuwaiti Women’s Day Planning Committee’, al-Marʾa al-Kuwaytiyya fi al-māḍī wa-l-ḥ āḍir [The Kuwaiti Woman: Past and Present] (Kuwait: Arab Women’s Development Society, 1970, 1st edition) pp. 19–23.

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in 1966, but women were not allowed to enrol at this university until around 1969. Apart from Kuwait University, from which some of the 1960s/1970s generation graduated, Kuwaiti women from the rich, upper-class families also studied at universities abroad, especially in Egypt and Britain.3 In its bid to avoid over-domination by foreign workers in its labour force consequent upon the oil boom in the country, the Kuwaiti government announced an official policy of equal education and job opportunities for male and female citizens, with effect from 1967/68.4 Hence, the newly-educated Kuwaiti women began at first to take up jobs as schoolteachers and nurses, and, later on, as ‘subordinate’ office workers in some specified government ministries such as education and health. As they began to obtain university degrees, some of the women joined academia working as lecturers at institutions of higher learning.5 The women in the labour force began to become economically independent of men. In effect, some of them were able to pursue their feminist goals as individuals and in groups. There are similar features in the history of the rise of feminism in the countries of the Arab world. Thus, besides the general role of education in stirring feminist consciousness, women’s class affiliation was also an important factor in the evolution of Arab feminist movements in the twentieth century. Badran and cooke have noted, for example, that the middle and upper class women were the champions of Egyptian feminism, and that their activism started becoming “visible” when they founded “The Egyptian Feminist Union” in 1923.6 Just as in Egypt, the class-affiliation factor was connected to the role of women’s societies in the rise and development of Kuwaiti feminism. 3 See Ibid., pp. 48–53. On the role of education as a major factor in the rise and development of the feminist movement in Kuwait, see Haya al-Mughni, Women in Kuwait: The Politics of Gender (London: Saqi Books, 1993) pp. 44 ff. 4 See Ibid., p. 59. 5 Ibid., p. 57. 6 For the role of middle and upper-class women in Egyptian feminism, see Badran and cooke, op. cit., pp. xxvi. These writers divide the history of feminist movements in the Arab world in general into three periods or phases. Arab feminist activism was “invisible” during the first period which began roughly from the 1860s to the early 1920’s. It started becoming “visible” through “public organized movements” during the second period from 1920s to 1960s. And “the third period from the 1970s to the present witnessed a resurgence of feminist expression in Egypt, Lebanon, Syria and Iraq and other North African countries.” Kuwait and other countries of the Gulf “began to witness the emergence of their first wave of feminism” only during the third period. For more on this see, Ibid., p. xxix.

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Newly-educated Kuwaiti women of the 1960s/1970s generation were divided by the traditional class system: the upper class women from rich merchant families, and the middle class women from less privileged families.7 Some individuals from each of these classes put forth much effort in their agitation for women’s liberation from social injustice and inequality in Kuwaiti society. Their activism started becoming “visible” from the early 1960s with the formation of two women’s societies: the ‘Women’s Cultural and Social Society’ (WCSS), and the ‘Arab Women’s Development Society’ (AWDS). Both were founded in 1963. Whereas the former was founded by women of the upper class, the founders of the latter belonged to the middle class.8 These two earliest Kuwaiti women’s organisations contributed to the promotion of literature among Kuwaiti women. For instance, the ‘Arab Women’s Development Society’ (AWDS) organized in 1970 the ‘First Kuwaiti Women’s Day’, which was marked by a “lavish” celebration.9 One of the major events at the occasion was the award of the ‘Kuwaiti Women’s Medal’. The fact that one of the five awardees of this medal at its inauguration was a woman creative writer, a poetess named Mūdī al-ʿUbaydī, might have served as an incentive for Kuwaiti women writers. With regard to the press as a facilitating agent in the birth and rise of Kuwaiti feminism, two factors were involved. First, the Kuwaiti print media encouraged the writing of feature articles by any woman or man who supported the growing agitation for women’s liberation in the mid-twentieth century. Women’s articles were particularly welcomed. To boost their morale, one of the existing male-dominated magazines at the time, al-Baʿtha, mentioned in the preceding chapter, created Rukn al-marʾa [Women’s Corner] in its monthly issues, beginning in February 1950.10 The second way by which the press contributed to the propagation of the women’s liberation movement in the country was that women were later allowed to work in media-houses—print and electronic—as

7

al-Mughni, op. cit., pp. 49 ff. On the emergence and roles played by these two societies toward the emancipation of Kuwaiti women, see ‘First Kuwaiti Women’s Day Planning Committee’, op. cit., pp. 54–77; 84–94. See also al-Mughni, op. cit., pp. 63 ff., which also includes information about other women’s societies in Kuwait in the 1970s and 1980s. 9 Ibid., pp. 75–76. 10 For the role of the print media in general in the promotion of the women’s liberation movement in Kuwait, see Ibid., pp. 50 ff. 8

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freelance or paid-workers, and most importantly, as sub-editors. The advantage of Kuwaiti women working as sub-editors facilitated, among other things, the establishment of separate magazines owned and controlled by women themselves. Usratī [My Family], one of the earliest women’s magazines in the country, was established sometime between 1963 and 1964 by Ghanīma al-Marzūq, who remains its publisher and editor until today. This magazine now has an online version named Bawabat al-marʾa [Women’s Gateway].11 Another women’s magazine—and arguably one of the most critical and openly feminist weeklies in the country—was founded in 1970 by Hidāya S. al-Sālim (1936–2001). It is called al-Majālis [The Sessions].12 Until her death—she was assassinated in 2001 for her criticism of some cultural/tribal practices that are still pervasive in some sections of contemporary Kuwaiti society13—al-Sālim was the editor of this magazine, which continues to appear up to the present. Kuwaiti Women and Literary Writing A groundbreaking resource book on Kuwaiti women’s literature is Laylā M. Ṣāliḥ’s Adab al-marʾa fī al-Kuwayt [Women’s Literature in Kuwait] (1978).14 The significance of this bio-bibliographical book to the discussion of the development of Kuwaiti women’s literary tradition has been stressed by Muhammad M. al-Ṣūrī.15 Regrettably, Adab al-marʾa fī

11 On the establishment of this magazine and its roles in the rise of Kuwaiti feminism, see ‘First Kuwaiti Women’s Day Planning Committee’, op. cit., p. 32. Based on her continuing feminist and human rights activisms, Ms Ghanīma al-Marzūq has just been awarded the Distinguished Arab Woman Award by the Paris-based Centre of Arab Women’s Participation Studies; for more about this, see the website of the online version of Usratī: http://www.womengateway.com/arwg/InformationCenter/ (information retrieved on 22 April, 2008). 12 On the life and works of Hidāya al-Sālim up to 1996, see Laylā M. Ṣāliḥ, Udabāʾ wa-adībāt al-Kuwayt (Kuwait: The Kuwaiti Writers’ Association Press, 1996), pp. 78–82. This book is available online: http://www.althakerah.net/sub.php (at the homepage click on dhākirat al-shiʿr, then, al-Kuwayt, and then, Tarājum al-udabāʾ al-Kuwaytiyyīn [The Biographies of Kuwaiti Writers]). 13 On the controversy over the reason behind the assassination of Hidāya al-Sālim see, for example, al-Qabas of 3 February, 2002. 14 Laylā M. Ṣāliḥ, Adab al-marʾa fī al-Kuwayt, (Kuwait: Dār dhāt al-salāsil, 1978). 15 M. M. al-Ṣūrī, al-Fūnūn al-adabiyya fī al-Kuwayt [The Arabic Literary Genres in Kuwait] (Kuwait: al-Markaz al-ʿarabī li-l-iʿlām, 1989, 1st edition), pp. 21–24.

the kuwaiti female literary tradition

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al-Kuwayt is no longer on the market; according to the author,16 it has been “replaced” by her much more comprehensive and non-genderspecific book, Udabāʾ wa-adībāt al-Kuwayt [Kuwaiti Men and Women Writers] (1996),17 hereafter referred to as Udabāʾ wa-adībāt. Hence, rather than the former, references are here made to the latter. As evident in Udabāʾ wa-adībāt, Kuwaiti women have distinguished themselves as academics, critics, poetesses, short-story writers, novelists, biographers, and folklorists.18 It is only in the area of dramatic literature that women’s voices have not been heard very much in Kuwait. Fawziyya S. al-Sālim, mentioned in the preceding chapter, appears to be one of the very few Kuwaiti women to have published plays. Even this newlyestablished woman writer is becoming more popular as a novelist than as a poetess and a dramatist, as she was better known earlier. While there are few women playwrights, the number of Kuwaiti female theatre artistes has risen since the middle of the twentieth century.19 In the sphere of literary criticism, Kuwaiti women have demonstrated that they are as talented as their male counterparts, thanks to their opportunities for higher education. Apart from critical articles published in newspapers, magazines, literary and academic journals, they have written major scholarly works on literary history and criticism. For instance, one of the earliest historical and critical studies on Kuwaiti poetry was written by ʿAwāt ̣if al-Ṣabāḥ and published in 1972.20 A similar work of broader scope, covering the development of modern Arabic poetry in the countries of the Arabian Peninsula in general, was written by Nūriyya Ṣ al-Rūmī and published in 1980.21 Kuwaiti women have used their pens to promote feminism as well as nationalism in times of peace and war. During the months of and after 16 Ms. Laylā Ṣāliḥ, interview conducted at her house in Kuwait on 18 December, 2002. 17 For the publisher and year of publication of Udabāʾ wa-adībāt, see note no. 12 above. 18 This is evident in the annotated lists of their works as contained in Ibid. 19 ‘First Kuwaiti Women’s Day Planning Committee’, op. cit., p. 34. 20 See al-Ṣūrī, op. cit., p. 26. The work was originally a M. A. dissertation submitted to Kuwait University in 1971. ʿAwāṭif died in 1971 shortly after the completion of the book, which was published posthumously under the title: al-Shiʿr al-Kuwaytī al-ḥ adīth [Modern Kuwaiti Poetry] (Kuwait, Kuwait University Press, 1972). 21 Nūriyya Ṣ. al-Rūmī is a professor of Arabic literature at Kuwait University. The book is entitled al-Ḥ araka al-shiʿriyya fī al-khalīj al-ʿarabī bayn al-taqlīd wa al-taṭawwur [The Arabic Poetical Tradition in the Arabian Gulf between Tradition and Modernity] (Kuwait: al-Maktaba al-ʿasriyya, 1980, 1st edition). For a review of this book see al-Ṣūrī, op. cit., pp. 26–27.

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the Iraqi occupation of Kuwait in the early 1990s, women wrote and continue to write articles, books, and literary pieces condemning and documenting the events and effects of the conflict. Examples of their nonfictional writings on the war are articles like the above-mentioned Hidāya al-Sālim’s “Naḥn al-ṣāmidūn” [We Were Brave]22 and “Aʿyāduka yā waṭanī” [Happy Celebrations, My Nation]23 which were both published in the early 1990s in al-Majālis. Kuwaiti women’s war fictional narratives abound; an example of them is Ṭ ayyiba al-Ibrāhīm’s Mudhakkirāt khādim [A Servant’s Diary] (1995), examined in chapter five. Poetry appears to be the most popular literary genre among Kuwaiti women. They have used poetry as well as other genres to register their grievances against patriarchy, to demand women’s rights, and in support of the call for Kuwaiti as well as Arab nationalism/unity. Some of the famous women’s names in Kuwaiti poetry include Princess Suʿād al-Ṣabāḥ (1946–), Janna al-Qarīnī (1956–), Kāfiya Ramaḍān (1948–), Ghanīma al-Ḥ arb (1949–), Fātị ma al-ʿAbdullah (1961–) and Nūra al-Mulīfī (1966–).24 The men and women writers included in Laylā Ṣāliḥ ’s Udabāʾ wa-adībāt are not only registered members of the Kuwaiti Writers’ Association (mentioned in chapter one), they were also those who had established themselves as writers by the mid-1990s. One in three (19 out of 57) writers listed in the book is a woman; this points to the existence of a female literary subculture in Kuwait by the end of the twentieth century. Since 1996, when Udabāʾ wa-adībīt was published, a lot of young women writers have emerged, resulting in a preponderance of women’s literary works in contemporary Kuwait. Kuwaiti Women’s Fiction: the Journey so far As evident in Khālid S. al-Zayd’s voluminous compilation, Qiṣaṣ yatīma fī al-majallāt al-Kuwaytiyya 1929–1955 [‘Orphaned’ Stories in Kuwaiti Magazines: 1929–1955],25 also mentioned in the preceding chapter,

22

Hidāyā al-Sālim, “Naḥn al-ṣāmidūn” in al-Majālis (16 May, 1992). Hidāyā al-Sālim, “Aʿyāduka yā waṭanī” in al-Majālis (27 February, 1993). For more on the feminist and nationalist writings of Kuwaiti women up to the mid-1990s see Ṣāliḥ, Udabāʾ wa-adībāt. 24 See Ibid., for some biographical notes on these women. 25 Kh. S. al-Zayd, Qiṣaṣ yatīma fī al-majallāt al-Kuwaytiyya: 1929–1955 (Kuwait: Sharikat al-Rubayʿān li-l-nashr wa-l-tawzīʿ, 1982, 1st edition). 23

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Kuwaiti women began to publish short narratives from 1948. However, what appears to be the first fictional narrative published by a Kuwaiti woman was “Riḥlat Farīd wa-Laylā” [Farīd and Laylā’s Journey], a story by Ḍ iyāʾ al-Badr. This story, which appeared in al-Baʿtha in 1952, was followed, a year later, by two other fictional narratives: Hayfāʾ Hāshim’s “al-Intiqām al-rahīb” [The Horrible Revenge]—specially considered in the next chapter—in al-Rāʾid (May, 1953), and Badriyya Musāʿid’s “Amīna” [Amīna] in al-Baʿtha (June, 1953). After June 1953 when “Amīna” appeared, some Kuwaiti women continued to challenge men’s domination in fiction writing.26 However, it appears there is no single compilation for those (Kuwaiti women’s) stories, if any, published in various magazines in the late 1950s through the 1960s. This is a period of a decade and a half not covered by al-Zayd’s compilation, mentioned above. (It is beyond the scope of this book to investigate Kuwaiti women’s writings of this period, which would be an interesting area for further research). The apparent resurgence in Kuwaiti women’s literary publication came in the 1970s. Fāṭima Yūsuf al-ʿAlī’s novella, Wujūh fī al-ziḥ ām [Faces in the Crowd] was published in 1971.27 It was followed, in 1972, by the publication of Hidāyā al-Sālim’s short story, “Kharīf bilā mat ̣ar” [An Autumn without Rain].28 The 1980s through 1990s witnessed the flowering of Kuwaiti women’s fiction. Contemporary Kuwaiti women, who have become famous as fictionists and have published, at least, two collections of short stories and/or novels, include Laylā al-ʿUthmān (1945–), Munā al-Shafiʿī (1946–), Fawziyya Shuwaysh al-Sālim (1949–), Thurayyā al-Baqṣamī (1952–), Ṭ ayyiba al-Ibrāhīm (1952–), the above-mentioned Fāṭima Yūsuf al-ʿAlī (1953–), Laylā M. Ṣāliḥ, ʿAliya Shuʿayb (1964–), Khawla al-Qazwīnī, Fawziyya alSuwaylim, Wafāʾ al-Ḥ amdān, and Laṭīfa Baṭī.29 These women constitute

26

H. M. A. al-Sanousi, “The Kuwaiti Short Story: An Analytical Study of its Political and Social Aspects” (unpublished Ph.D. thesis, University of Glasgow, 1995), p. 193. 27 Fatị ma Y. al-ʿAlī, Wujūh fī al-ziḥ ām (Kuwait: The Kuwaiti Government Press, 1971). 28 Hidāya al-Sālim’s “Kharīf bilā matạ r” was first published in Kuwait in 1972, and serialized about three decades later in al-Majālis: 8 January, 2000; 15 January, 2000; and 22 January, 2000. 29 For the lives and works of some of these, and other Kuwaiti women writers, see Ṣāliḥ, Udabāʾ wa-adībāt. See also the Kuwaiti Writers’ Association website: http: //www.kuwaitwriters.net/writers.htm; and Joseph T. Zeidan, Maṣāḍir al-adab al-nisāʾī fī al-ʿālam al-ʿarabī al-ḥ adīth 1800–1996 [Bibliography of Women’s Literature in the Modern Arab World] (Beirut: al-Muʾassasa al-ʿarabiyya li-l-dirāsāt wa-l-nashr, 1999).

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the older generation of women writers in contemporary Kuwait. The promising number of the emerging younger generation shows that there is a brilliant future for fiction in this tiny Arabian Gulf State. So far and altogether, Kuwaiti women have published scores of short story collections and over twenty novels. Out of the eleven women listed above, only four—Laylā al-ʿUthmān, Ṭ ayyiba al-Ibrāhīm, Khawla al-Qazwīnī, and recently, Fawziyya S. al-Sālim—are published novelists. Generally, their novels belong to the common sub-genres of social and historical realisms; few are psychological and philosophical narratives; and some (specifically most of al-Ibrāhīm’s) belong to the science fiction genre. Images of Women in some Kuwaiti Short Stories Before concluding this chapter, I want to note some points here about the fictional representation of the status of women in pre- and post-oil Kuwaiti society. This is aimed at providing the reader a background to the discussions in the second part of this book—chapters three through six—, all of which try to deconstruct the common images and perceptions of Kuwaiti/Arabian women’s passivity. “From the earliest stages in the development of the Arabic short story, a good deal of attention has focused on the status of women in society”,30 writes Roger Allen, one of the many scholars and critics who have provided us with various insightful appraisals of the status of women in modern Arabic fiction. Allen notes further that “The traditional perspective of that predominantly male society has been that the primary aspiration of its female members is marriage [. . .]”.31 Particularly true of Kuwait are his observations that “From the very beginnings of the short-story tradition [. . .], writers have cast a most critical eye on the institution of marriage—its precedents, rituals and consequences” and that “The depiction of the sequence from young girl, to adolescent woman, to wife, to mother, has continued to provide the

30

Roger Allen, “The Arabic Short Story and the Status of Women” in Roger Allen et al. (eds.), Love and Sexuality in Modern Arabic Literature (London: Saqi Books, 1995), p. 78. 31 Ibid.

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short story writer with a plethora of opportunities for the exploration of the conventions that govern the lives of women in the Arab world.”32 The title of the very first Kuwaiti short story, “Munīra” (1929), mentioned in the preceding chapter and discussed further below, attests to the fact that women are always a focus of attention in Kuwaiti fiction. Kuwaiti short stories that have names of women as their titles abound. Besides, Kuwaiti writers—men and women alike—have always adopted the use of symbolic/descriptive words or phrases in their titles, which are often attached to or associated with women and their status/situation. One can find examples of this practice in the titles of some of the earliest Kuwaiti men’s stories like Fāḍil Khalaf ’s “Ḥ anān al-umm” [Mother’s Affection], “Sirr al-mutạ llaqa” [Secret of the Divorcée] and “Min warāʾ al-ḥijāb” [From behind the Veil]; Farḥān Rāshid al-Farḥān’s “Aḥlām fatāt” [Dreams of a Girl]; and Fahd al-Duwayrī’s “Imraʾa bāʾisa” [A Miserable Woman]; and in women’s stories like Khawla al-Qazwīnī’s “Mut ̣allaqa min wāqiʿ al-ḥayā” [A Divorcée in the Reality of Life], and Laylā al-ʿUthmān’s “Imraʾa fī ināʾ” [A Woman in an Urn].33 A much more insightful representation of the images of women in society will be found in the contents of most Kuwaiti short stories and novels. Writers have tried to depict the sequence of the social development of a typical Kuwaiti woman from ‘young girl, to adolescent woman, to wife, to mother’ through different thematic approaches. “Munīra”, a story by the acclaimed precursor of the Kuwaiti/Arabian Gulf short story Khālid al-Faraj, is a good example of a fictional representation of the stereotypical female. As I shall try to show in the next chapter through a comparative analysis of this story and another with similar thematic concern by Laylā al-ʿUthmān, “Munīra” is utterly androcentric, male-oriented. The story is about its eponymous heroine, a Kuwaiti woman who is married (as customary) to her cousin without her consent. Portrayed as a conformist and compliant female, Munīra’s problem does not stem from her objectification in the process of the marriage. As a wife, this young woman has to face one of the greatest challenges of marital life: she has no child. Knowing how shameful it is to be a childless wife in the pervasively patriarchal, pre-oil Kuwaiti society, she continues to

32

Ibid. For more on how the titles of these stories reflect the status of Kuwaiti women at certain periods of time, see al-Sanousi, op. cit., pp. 29 ff. 33

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moan and groan in her private life for six years until she unilaterally decides to seek a solution by spiritual means. Having fallen into the traps of some soothsayers and spiritualists, Munīra commits suicide by drowning.34 In his brief comment on “Munīra”, Mursel F. al-ʿAjmi asserts that the heroine’s “tragic end is made possible by her belief in superstitions and is brought on by the quack doctor, Umm Ṣāliḥ.”35 This reading fails to recognise the primary cause (the root) of the heroine’s problem; instead, it argues on the basis of the secondary cause. A feminist reading of the story would, on the other hand, consider the effects: the heroine’s misfortune—her deception and suicidal death—as engendered by patriarchal culture. The latent cause of the woman’s problem is ingrained in Kuwaiti societal values and norms, which consider childlessness as a despicable female characteristic. Patriarchal society might be the one to ‘blame’ for Munīra’s inordinate desire to have a child by any means, and for her self-destruction, which she believes is the only way of escape from the loss of her social standing and respect in society. The creation of a male author, Munīra lacks the agency to think and act contrary to societal conventions. According to al-ʿAjmi, the text of “Munīra” “reflects the call of the new generation [of Kuwaiti intellectuals of the 1920s and 1930s] for social reform”; it is meant to criticise superstitious beliefs and practices that were prevalent in pre-oil Kuwaiti society.36 But the question is, why is a woman, Munīra, represented as an embodiment, and at the same time, the victim of such superstitious beliefs and practices? Why is her husband, ʿAbd al-Qādir, portrayed as an epitome of pristine faith and trust in Allah? Why not the other way round? The answers to these questions would reveal that “Munīra” is not simply a pioneering Kuwaiti fictional text, but also the one that laid the foundation of the androcentric narrative discourse in Kuwait. With the exception of “al-Intiqām al-rahīb”, the earliest fictional narratives by Kuwaiti women (published in the early 1950s) followed the same trend of depicting female stereotypes. The above-mentioned

34

See also al-Sanousi, op. cit., pp. 24–25, for a summary of the plot of “Munīra”. M. F. al-ʿAjmi, A Novelist from Kuwait: A Thematic Study of Ismāʿīl Fahd Ismāʿīl’s Novels (Kuwait: Kuwait University Press, 1996), pp. 33–34. 36 Ibid. 35

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33

Badriya Musāʿid’s “Amīna”37 is an example. Also named after its heroine, this story tells us about a fifteen-year-old girl who has been adopted by a loving and caring woman. On discovering that she is not the biological daughter of the woman, and that her parents are criminals whose whereabouts are unknown, Amīna becomes extremely unhappy. She finds solace only in the hope that she will soon be married to a rich young man who has proposed to her.38 Also set against the background of the pervasiveness of patriarchal culture in pre-oil Kuwaiti society, this story—though female authored—represents Amīna as a woman who thinks and behaves in accordance with male-dictated societal conventions. Like “Munīra”, “Amīna” depicts marriage as the one and only aspiration of the traditional Arab woman. Whereas the likes of “Amīna” among Kuwaiti women’s short stories are either imitative of the dominant narrative discourse, or apparently apolitical from the perspective of feminism, Hidāyā al-Sālim’s “Kharīf bilā maṭar” (1972)—mentioned above and discussed a little further in chapter five, ʿĀliya Shuʿayb’s “Imraʾa tatakawwan” [A Woman in the Making] (1991),39 and Laylā Ṣāliḥ ’s “Laylat al-iqtirāʿ” [The Election Night] (1986)40 represent the development, from the 1970s onward, of another trend in the Kuwaiti female literary tradition. These stories exemplify one of the different phases (explained below) of Arab feminist writing in general. The significance of al-Sālim’s “Kharīf bilā maṭar” as a feminist consciousness-raising text has been discussed by the present writer elsewhere;41 the actions of its heroine can be considered revolutionary in some way. One the other hand, the other two stories—Shuʿayb’s

37 Badriyya Musāʿid, “Amīna” in al-Zayd, op. cit., pp. 202–204. This story first appeared in al-Baʿtha (No. 6, June 1953). 38 See also al-Sanousi, op. cit., p. 195, for a summary of the plot of “Amīna”. 39 ʿAliya Shuʿayb, “Imraʾa tatakawwan” in Imraʾa tatazawwaj al-baḥ r [A Woman Marries the Sea], a collection of short stories, (Kuwait: Maṭābiʿ al-waṭan, 1989), pp. 3–4. 40 Laylā M. Ṣāliḥ’s “Laylat al-iqtirāʿ” first appeared in the Kuwaiti newspaper al-Waṭan (18 February, 1985). It was included in the author’s collection of short stories, Jirāḥ fī al-ʿuyūn [Wounds in the Eyes] (Kuwait: Maṭbaʿat al-yaqẓ a, 1986). For a reproduction of the story, see Najma Idrīs, al-Ajniḥ a wa-l-shams: dirāẓ a taḥ līliyya fī al-qiṣsạ alKuwaytiyya [The Wings and the Sun: An Analytical Studies of the Kuwaiti Short Story] (Kuwait: The Kuwaiti Writers’ Association Press, 1998, 1st edition), pp. 419–423. 41 Olatunbosun Ishaq Tijani, “Raising feminist consciousness through literature: The Kuwaiti woman writer, Hidaya S. al-Salim, in ‘Kharif bila matar’”, paper presented at the 2008 Virginia Humanities Conference Voices and Visions: Humanities in the Third World, held at Radford University, Virginia, USA, April 4–5 2008.

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“Imraʾa tatakawwan” and Ṣāliḥ’s “Laylat al-iqtirāʿ”—do not qualify as ‘feminist revolutionary’ texts, from the viewpoint of this book. They represent, though, a preliminary phase of feminist consciousness which, according to Margot Badran and miriam cooke, is ‘awareness’: “an awareness by women that as women they are systematically placed in a disadvantaged position.”42 In “Imraʾa tatakawwan”, ʿĀliya Shuʿayb expresses the awareness by women of gender inequality in Kuwait. Set, implicitly, in a pre-oil Kuwaiti environment, this story presents the status of an individual Kuwaiti girl ‘within the traditional family structure.’ Captured through the stream-of-consciousness technique, we meet the unnamed young heroine as she reflects on the discriminatory treatment she usually receives from her parents as against their preferential attitude toward Abdullah, her brother. After several interrogations, the girl comes to infer from her hesitant mother’s responses that she is being so treated because of the gender difference between her and Abdullah. At the end of the story, we find her reflecting on how the male-empowered conventional pattern of gender socialisation often results in women’s lack of self-confidence, self-realization, and self-fulfillment.43 ‘Awareness’ is also the rubric of Laylā Ṣāliḥ’s “Laylat al-iqtirāʿ”. Captured largely through the technique of interior monologue, this story depicts Kuwaiti women’s political awareness and national consciousness in the second half of the twentieth century. Filtered through the point of view of an omniscient narrator, the author reflects the thoughts of the unnamed heroine as she anxiously awaits the announcement of the result of a Kuwaiti parliamentary election in which her husband has just contested. In her soliloquy, she keeps lamenting the continual political segregation of women in Kuwait. She expresses dissatisfaction with the nonchalant attitude of the Kuwaiti government, the people, and the press towards the recognition of women’s rights to vote and to become members of parliament. The significance of “Laylat al-iqtirāʿ” as a feminist text lies in its reflection of Kuwaiti women’s preparedness to seek a change in their ‘second-class’ status. This is implied at the end of the story, when the husband loses in the election in spite of his aptitude and competence. The man decides to go into self-exile away from the “uncivilized, third

42 43

Badran and cooke, op. cit., p. xviii. I acknowledge Najma Idrīs’ analysis of this story in Idrīs, op. cit., pp. 98–99.

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world” country (Kuwait). The wife, on the contrary, refuses to follow him to his place of exile. This is because, as explicitly stated in the text, she is looking forward to a time when the progressive elements in society would work for a change in the Kuwaiti socio-cultural and political systems.44 The kind of social change and political recognition for women which Ṣāliḥ had, through this story, advocated in the 1980s is now happening in Kuwait. As mentioned in the preceding chapter, Kuwaiti women’s suffrage has now been granted. There is hope that they will soon begin to hold elective posts in the country. Conclusion The Kuwaiti female literary tradition—the genre of fiction in particular—has a history of a little more than half a century. Whether the respective heroines of their texts are portrayed as stereotypically passive and conformist, or prototypically active and non-compliant, the underlying factor or driving force behind Kuwaiti women’s writing is the zeal to promote themselves and gain a voice in society. This is how, for example, a writer and ‘critic’ like Laylā al-ʿUthmān sees her writings.45 Even the writings of the so-called ‘reactionary’ writer, the above-mentioned Khawla al-Qazwīnī—whose narratives symbolize a moderate, right-wing, point of view as regards gender roles in post-oil Kuwaiti society—represent the expression of a woman’s voice through literature. When put within the context of most of the above discussed Kuwaiti fictional narratives, the texts specially considered in this book may be described not only as feminist, but also as revolutionary. Most of the women’s texts that could be considered feminist are wanting in portraying female active agency. They do not demonstrate women’s capability in resisting patriarchal domination and oppression. What therefore distinguishes the five selected texts from a large number of Kuwaiti women’s texts is that, unlike the latter, the former represent women’s resistance to male dominance through the rejection

Ṣāliḥ, Jirāḥ fī al-̣ʿuyūn; Idrīs, op. cit., pp. 419–423. See, for instance, Laylā al-ʿUthmān’s review of her two novels, al-Marʾa wa-l-qiṭtạ [The Woman and the Cat] (1985) and Wasmiyya takhruj min al-baḥ r [Wasmiyya Emerges from the Sea] (1986) entitled “al-Khurūj min baḥr al-kitāba” [Exiting the Sea of Fictional Writing] in al-Qabas, no. 8968 (9 June, 1998), pp. 30–31. 44 45

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of their objectification in society. They belong to the second and third phases of Arab feminist writing which, according to Badran and cooke, are “rejection” and “activism”, respectively.46 From Hayfāʾ Hāshim’s “al-Intiqām al-rahīb” (1953) to Fawziyya S. al-Sālim’s Muzūn [Muzūn] (2000), the texts examined in the following chapters represent some Kuwaiti women’s overt or covert, violent or subtle, defiance and/or subversion of patriarchal authority.

46

Badran and cooke, op. cit., pp. xiiv ff.

CHAPTER THREE

MALE DOMINATION, FEMALE FURY IN KUWAITI WOMEN’S SHORT STORIES Introduction The texts selected for analysis in this book are studied in chronological order of their publication. Through this approach the reader will be able to observe the dynamism of Kuwaiti women’s fiction, as it develops and becomes more technically and ideologically sophisticated. Hence, our examination of the representation of Kuwaiti women’s struggle against male domination begins with two short stories: Hayfāʾ Hāshim’s “al-Intiqām al-rahīb” (1953) and Laylā al-ʿUthmān’s “Min milaff imraʾa” (1979). Despite the gap of over two decades between the dates of their publication, these two stories constitute some of the early Kuwaiti women’s fictional texts. Unlike their contemporaries (to be discussed briefly as this chapter progresses), the above-named two stories are exceptional, and one could identify several thematic and formal features they share. They both explore the theme of ‘gender and violence’ as a way of reflecting the objectification and oppression of women in pre-oil Kuwaiti society. Also, each of these stories ends tragically, though in a different and contrasting manner; their tragic plots are ‘simple’, in the Aristotelian sense, containing no peripeteia, or ‘reversal of intention’.1 The most significant feature which these two narratives have in common is, however, that in contrast with the dominant male literary discourse, they represent the radical and revolutionary pre-oil Kuwaiti female. Their respective heroines demonstrate women’s fury and rebellion against male oppression. Whereas “al-Intiqām al-rahīb” depicts male-initiated violence and female counterviolence, “Min milaff

1

Aristotle classifies tragedy into complex or simple, depending on whether or not the plot contains “reversal of intention” or “recognition/discovery”. For more on this, see S. H. Butcher, Aristotle’s Theory of Poetry and Fine Arts with a Critical Text and Translation of The Poetics (London: Macmillan, 1902, 3rd edition), p. 39.

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imraʾa” portrays female-initiated fatalistic violence. The two stories are separately introduced and analysed below. “Al-Intiqām al-rahīb” 2 Preamble “Al-Intiqām al-rahīb” (hereafter referred to as “al-Intiqām”) was an award-winning entry in a story-writing competition organised by the now-defunct Kuwaiti magazine al-Rāʾid in March 1953. Besides the fact that the author Hayfāʾ Hāshim was, presumably, an intermediate-school pupil, nothing else is known, at least by the present writer, about her life. Like “Amīna” by Ḍ iyāʾ al-Badr, a fellow Kuwaiti woman pioneer writer of the early 1950s mentioned in the preceding chapter, the story under discussion might be Hāshim’s only published fictional work. As shown in chapter two, “al-Intiqām” was neither the first fictional narrative by a Kuwaiti woman, nor was it the first Kuwaiti story with elements of feminist overtones. However, it is arguably a proto-revolutionary text, being a groundbreaking fictional attempt to represent Kuwaiti women’s angry revolt against patriarchal authority. In virtually all the stories published between 1929 and 1955 by Kuwaiti writers in general, which have been “inclusively” compiled by Kh. S. al-Zayd in Qiṣaṣ yatīma fī al-majallāt al-Kuwaytiyya3 (discussed at several points in the preceding chapters), “al-Intiqām” is the only one that can be said to be a reversal of the dominant androcentric literary tradition of portraying female stereotypes. Similarly, unlike most of those early narratives, the problem of the heroine of “al-Intiqām” is not that of a forced marriage, or childlessness but, rather, her relegation to the domestic sphere. Alienation, Repression, and Female Defiance “Al-Intiqām” is the story of Luʾluʾa, a teenage girl who is forcefully withdrawn from school by her brothers ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz and Ṣāliḥ before

2 “Al-Intiqām al-rahīb” first appeared in al-Rāʾid, Year 2, no. 2 (May 1953). It was reproduced in Kh. S. al-Zayd, Qiṣaṣ yatīma fi al-majallāt al-Kuwaytiyya: 1929–1955 (Kuwait: Sharikat al-Rubayʿān li-l-nashr wa-l-tawzīʿ, 1982, 1st edition), pp. 195–201; reference is here made to this edition. 3 Ibid.

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the completion of her second year primary education. Though far from the narrative focus of the story, the text’s reference to Luʾluʾa’s childhood and girlhood experience is significant: it provides the reader with the reasons why the hitherto-passive girl has turned defiant. Besides depicting the process of the heroine’s defiance, the first few paragraphs in the text encapsulate some of the forms of women’s objectification and devaluation in mid-twentieth-century Kuwait. A common practice in Kuwaiti society then was that as soon as a girl reached or was about to reach puberty, she would be forcefully reduced to the domestic sphere by her male relatives.4 Following the heroine’s thoughts and actions throughout the story, the third person omniscient narrator tells us that the secluded Luʾluʾa one day sneaks out of her parental home. Despite being veiled, she is nervous. She is afraid of being noticed or identified by people; this indicates the extent of women’s internalisation of the effects of patriarchal culture. As she walks through al-Sayf Street, where her home is located and the only street she is familiar with in the whole of the new Kuwait City, reminiscences of her childhood freedom come to her mind (196). Captured in a panoramic manner, Luʾluʾa recalls with disgust how she was forcefully withdrawn from school. Her brothers had claimed that, at her age then (perhaps between eight and ten), she was old enough to stop schooling; that what she had learnt was more than enough for her to become a ‘woman’ (196). Exemplifying the patriarchal rule of force in keeping women under control is the fact that, on the day she was going to be ‘told’ that her childhood days were over, Luʾluʾa was told not verbally but by being physically violated. Connected with the problem of her relegation to seclusion and domesticity is Luʾluʾa’s feeling of alienation from her hometown. As we shall see further under the section on “Female Patriotism”, it is this feeling of alienation that incites the heroine to tour the new city on the day of her defiance and rebellion. The heroine’s defiance could have been evoked by an instinctive desire for freedom and ‘personhood’. However, the minimal education which she has is apparently the only concrete thing that has had

4 For more on the lives and experiences of women in pre-oil Kuwait, see Haya al-Mughni, Women in Kuwait: The Politics of Gender (London: Saqi Books, 1993), pp. 41 ff.

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effects on her thinking and character; the fact that her former school, al-Sharqiyya Primary School, is her first point of call as she is on her way to the city supports this. The narrator relates that “[Luʾluʾa] found herself at the premises of the school. Her legs had inadvertently taken her to her great childhood institution” (Ibid.). That “she look[s] round the school in grief and distress”, feels an extreme “nostalgia”, and “shed[s] tears” (Ibid.) signify her realisation of education as a means of at least enlightenment. Even though she is not bold enough to join the “happy”, “unrestricted pupils” she sees in the classrooms of her former school, the heroine remains defiant in identifying with her homeland. She continues her journey into the city, thus further challenging the Kuwaiti patriarchal social convention. Luʾluʾa’s alienation from society is first reflected in the fact that, after leaving the school premises, she is faced with the problem of how to get to her destination. This provokes her expression of the view that she has been ‘imprisoned’ by her siblings. She identifies her brothers as patriarchal representatives, acting as “stubborn warders” who “guard the prison” (home) where she had been confined four years ago. “[Her brothers] would never allow her to go out except once a year, and [even then, she would go out] in the company of her mother in order to visit her grandmother, who was living a very short distance away from their house” (Ibid.), the narrator comments. Luʾluʾa realises the fact that her marginalization and alienation from society will continue unless she defies familial orders. Getting out on her own volition, and without the company of any of her relatives, constitutes the heroine’s temporary escape from ‘confinement’. Signifying her consciousness of this escape as an act of resistance to patriarchal domination, she reflects that having endured her brothers’ oppression and persecutions for years, here she is “rebelling and revolting” (197). Captured through the interior monologue technique, this and similar expressions by the heroine serve to indicate the evocation of her subjectivity and active agency in defiance of the Kuwaiti patriarchal social order. The class system as a factor in the perpetuation of women’s social oppression in Kuwait has been stressed by Haya al-Mughni in her book Women in Kuwait: The Politics of Gender.5 Al-Mughni notes that strictly adhering to the practice of women’s seclusion was among

5

Ibid., p. 42.

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the “mechanisms of social control” employed by the pre-oil-Kuwaiti merchant class families. Whereas “[w]omen from more modest households were not entirely secluded” for economic reasons, the practice of “strict seclusion was a way of controlling women” from the upper-class families in the pre-oil era.6 Though refusing to recognise the fact that the practice of seclusion is believed to have some level of Islamic scriptural backing,7 al-Mughni’s assessment, that the always-on-the-move, pre-oil merchant-class Kuwaiti men blindly adhered to it in order to ensure that their women were “safely protected [. . .] during the men’s prolonged absence”,8 seems plausible. Luʾluʾa’s social status—as a middle/upper class girl—therefore seriously contributes to her alienation and marginalisation, as it was the practice in pre-oil Kuwait. Had she been from a lower class family, the heroine would not have been the victim of complete seclusion. This is what the taxi scene in the story serves to illustrate. Faced with the problem of how to reach her destination, Luʾluʾa decides to take a taxi to Kuwait city-centre. The narrator informs us that, in the taxi, the heroine meets a group of “dirty and smelly” Bedouin girls, who are going to the city on their normal trading activity (197). The encounter between the heroine and her female companions in the male-steered taxi is presented as a mere coincidence, making it appear less significant to the plot. But the taxi scene symbolises the importance of class as a factor in the alienation of a considerable number of women in pre-oil Kuwait. In presenting this taxi scene, the author proves ‘ironic’: by refusing to reveal the significance of the symbolic encounter between the heroine and the female hawkers through her own frequent authorial commentary, through a form of dialogue among the characters inside the taxi, or even through the inner consciousness of the heroine. The taxi scene could be seen, therefore, as an instance of the ‘unspoken’ subtext of the story. Here we meet two categories of Kuwaiti women of the pre-oil era: the desert, or lower-class women, and the city, or middle/upper-class women. Here represented by Luʾluʾa’s female companions in the taxi, the lower class, pre-oil Kuwaiti women were much

6

Ibid. Qurʾān chapter 33, verse 33, which reads: “And stay quietly in your houses, and make not a dazzling display, like that of the former times of ignorance . . .” is often cited by the upholders of the belief that Muslim women should be secluded. 8 al-Mughni, op. cit., p. 42. 7

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less constrained; they worked outside their homes, mostly as peddlers or as domestic servants/assistants to women of higher social status. By contrast, it is the privileged, middle/upper-class women—represented by the heroine—who were victims of complete societal restrictions. Whereas the free, working girls were believed to be unchaste and therefore disreputable in society, the secluded ones were held with respect and dignity. The latter were believed (or expected) to be compliantly chaste. Although she detests the suffocating odours emanating from the bodies of the Bedouin girls, Luʾluʾa envies them. She, implicitly, admires the level of freedom they enjoy, which allows them to fully integrate into society. The alienation of some mid-twentieth-century Kuwaiti women is, moreover, manifested in Luʾluʾa’s estrangement and amazement when she reaches Safat Square, located at the heart of Kuwait City. The transgressing heroine is at odds with the dramatic transformation of Kuwait Town from its old, muddy outlook, to a modern, urbanised city. Her amazement with this comforting transformation is, however, overshadowed by her feelings of being cheated and marginalised, the reality of which begins to crystallise before her eyes, as she roams about in the Safat area. A significant feature of “al-Intiqām” is its vivid depiction of how women’s oppression in patriarchal society is often sustained through repressive means, both physical and ideological. This is what the scene of the solitary Luʾluʾa’s tour of Kuwait city-centre serves to illustrate. The narrator tells us that the heroine aimlessly wanders about in Safat until she gets to a building on which is written “Public Safety”. Seeing some fully-armed, weird-looking men standing in front of this building and looking suspiciously at her, it crosses the heroine’s mind that she has actually transgressed. There and then, she remembers home: “her brothers would have been back home from their work, they would have turned the house upside down” (197). The juxtaposition between the heroine sighting the armed men in front of the Public Safety building, and her remembrance of her brothers at home, is very striking. It is an example of the interplay of the (general) Marxist theory of the (Repressive) State Apparatus (SA), and the Althusserian theory of the Ideological State Apparatuses (ISAs). Explaining the distinction between these two categories of state apparatuses, Louis Althusser notes that the individual is governed “massively and predominantly” by ‘violence’ or ‘repression’ through the repressive

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State Apparatuses like the Government, the Armed and Police Forces, the Courts, etc. On the other hand, the Ideological State Apparatuses, like religion, school, the family, the media, etc., function “massively and predominantly by ideology,” but also “secondarily, by repression.”9 Althusser holds that the Ideological State Apparatuses function through a process of what he calls interpellation, or “hailing”,10 as explained in the ‘Introduction’ of this book. Whereas the heroine’s intimidation (interpellation) by the armed policemen on guard at the Public Safety premises is an indication of some of the ways the (Repressive) State Apparatus works, her nervous remembrance of her father figures at home symbolises the ‘ideological state apparatus’ of the family. As we are made to realise later in the narrative, it is the fear of being arrested by the policemen that is much more threatening to Luʾluʾa than the familial interpellation; she has, in the first place, already overcome the latter by escaping from seclusion. She becomes restless, at that point in her defiance, neither because of the fear of her brothers nor because of the inevitable consequences of her transgression. She becomes frightened here because of the way the law enforcement agents—the armed policemen—are looking at her with utter suspicion. She believes she must have been declared “wanted”. Hence, she “calls onto a young boy, who is passing-by. She asks him”: Oh boy, does this road lead to al-Sayf Street?

The boy laughed, jestingly, and said: Al-Sayf Street?! You’re very far away from it. You are at al-Mirqāb at the moment (198).

This brief conversation between the heroine and the passer-by Kuwaiti boy illustrates the huge effects on women of the discriminatory, conventional pattern of gender socialisation. The dialogue here is indicative of the fact that no matter the type of class a boy belonged to in pre-oil Kuwait, he would be free to move

9

Louis Althusser, “Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses (ISAs)” in Lenin and Philosophy and Other Essays, trans. by Ben Brewster (London: New Left Books, 1971), pp. 135 ff. 10 On ‘interpellation’, see Ibid., pp. 162–163.

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about as he wished; he would not be alienated from society. On the other hand, it was only the lower class or desert women who enjoyed such freedom. Both the earlier-discussed taxi scene and this brief dialogic scene thus point to the fact that Luʾluʾa is alienated from society because of both her (social) class and gender. Examples of the alienation of some Arabian women from society as a result of the practice of strict seclusion can be found in two short stories: “I Saw Her and That’s Enough” and “In a Contemporary House”, both published in 1981, by the Saudi woman writer Khayriyya Saqqaf.11 Like “al-Intiqām”, the two stories “tell of the anxiety of young [specifically Saudi] girls at not being considered fully human and of their resentment towards their fathers [or father surrogates].”12 Female Patriotism Because of its hierarchical social structure, the old Kuwait town “represented everything that Kuwaiti women wanted to forget—it symbolized their seclusion and reminded them of their oppression.”13 This point seems to explain why, among others, patriotism is an underlying factor behind Luʾluʾa’s defiant decision to explore her homeland. Through the inner consciousness of the heroine as she wanders about in the Safat area with mixed feelings, the author implicitly accuses the midtwentieth-century Kuwaiti patriarchal authority of lack of patriotism for denying some section of society—women like Luʾluʾa—the opportunity of following and contributing to national growth and development. The author’s judgement in this part of the text appears to be a disapproval of an attempt to qualify the conservative, patriarchal elements in Kuwait as patriotic. If the men were patriotic, they would not prevent their female compatriots from participation in the public life of the country. The most striking aspect of the story that illustrates more clearly Kuwaiti women’s sense of patriotism is when Luʾluʾa is back in al-Sayf Street (where her house is located), with the assistance of the passer-by

11 Khayriyya Saqqaf, “I Saw Her and That’s Enough” and “In a Contemporary House” from the collection An tubhir naḥwa al-abad [Taking Off into the Distance] (1981); translated by May Ibrahim and miriam cooke, in Margot Badran and miriam cooke (eds.), Opening the Gates: An Anthology of Arab Feminist Writing, second edition (Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 2004), pp. 83–91. 12 Badran and cooke, op. cit., p. 83. 13 al-Mughni, op. cit., p. 41.

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boy, mentioned in the preceding section. The narrator informs us that as she gets close to the house, the defiant heroine bends down to collect a handful of sand. “She put the sand in her handkerchief ”, and gently held it tight, as if she wanted [the sand] to share her sensations, emotions and feelings. She wanted to preserve it in remembrance of her adventure—in remembrance of the light that removed darkness in her mind; in remembrance of the return of faith into her ailing heart: faith in her motherland, in its people and in her own self (197).

While this authorial commentary is helpful in giving the reader less trouble with the possible reasons why the heroine wants to preserve the sand, there is room for further interpretation of what her action here symbolises. Her intention to preserve the sand is understandable in view of the fact that whatever someone lacks possession of, or does not have regular access to, is often much valued. But her act here seems to carry a much deeper significance. It could be interpreted, for instance, as implying a claim by Kuwaiti women to the land on equal terms with their male counterparts. It exemplifies the female belief that Kuwait belongs not only to the ‘dominant group’—Kuwaiti men represented by Luʾluʾa’s brothers, but that the ‘muted group’—Kuwaiti women symbolised by the heroine and her mother—deserve equal rights.14 Both of Luʾluʾa’s patriotic gestures—her defiant visit to the city, and her preservation of Kuwaiti soil collected from outside her claustrophobic home—symbolise a feminist critique of “inequality”, a term that has been defined as “a state where men are dominant due to their participation in public life and their relegation of women to the domestic sphere [. . .].”15 The significance of the heroine’s preservation of the sand can, moreover, be interpreted in relation to the significance of the tour she has just returned from. For instance, the ‘reliable’ omniscient narrator—she is reliable because her speeches/reports and comments are in accordance

14 On feminist classification of the two sexes into “dominant” and “muted” groups see Shirley Ardener (ed.), Defining Females: The Nature of Women in Society (London, Croom Helm, 1978); this has been appropriated by Elaine Showalter in her “Feminist Criticism in the Wilderness”, Critical Inquiry, (Winter 1981). See also Sue Spaull’s chapter on “Gynocriticism” in Sara Mills, op. cit., pp. 83–121. 15 This is Michelle Rosaldo’s definition of “inequality” as extracted in Maggie Humm (ed.), Feminisms: A Reader (London: Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1992), “Glossary”, p. 407.

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with the norms of the text/author16—repeatedly refers to Luʾluʾa’s defiant visit to Kuwait City as a form of “adventure” (Ibid.). It is with regard to the significance of that adventurous visit that the author most obviously interweaves ‘feminism’—female rejection of their oppression and repression—and patriotism. Luʾluʾa’s adventure into the city is arguably a demonstration of her feminist consciousness in the first place. With the heroine’s successful escape from home, the author tries to prove that relegating women to compulsory seclusion is a patriarchal strategy of keeping them in perpetual “darkness”: that the women should remain ignorant, unexposed, and, in effect, passive and docile. This is what Luʾluʾa’ has rejected through her escape from seclusion. Pointing to the desirability or necessity of this transgressive action, the heroine, satisfied and self-fulfilled, says within herself as she returns home: “It is only now that I have been acquainted with my homeland, that I have given my mind the water it loves to drink, and I have fed my deteriorating soul with the taste of dignity and honour it deserves” (198). This is evidently an expression of both patriotism and feminist consciousness. Thus, both the heroine’s preserved sand, and the adventure for which it is meant to be a reminder signify the growing national consciousness among the (semi)educated Kuwaiti women of the mid-twentieth century. Male Violence, Female Revenge Women’s subjection to male physical violence is another major theme in “al-Intiqām”. Captured through Luʾluʾa’s internal musings on her way back home from the city, the text enunciates some of the occasions when the heroine has been victim of male (domestic) violence. An illustration of that violence and its tremendous psychological effects preoccupies the second part of the narrative, as we shall soon see. Several of the heroine’s disconcerting statements about her past experiences of her brothers’ violence are indicative of her development of some masochistic tendencies. An example is when she remarks: “[My] body no longer feels any pains” (198). For her, life is as worthless as death. “Welcome, death!” (Ibid.), she says to herself, as she begins to prepare her mind for the inevitable punishment that her brothers 16 On the ‘reliability’ or ‘non-reliability’ of a narrator, see Wayne C. Booth, The Rhetoric of Fiction (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1961), p. 159.

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would inflict upon her for her act of insubordination. Another element of masochism is explicit in the heroine’s expressions, as she contrasts the ‘worthlessness’ of her life with her happiness and feeling of selffulfilment. “Having achieved my long-standing desire and imagination, I’m less concerned about the outcome of my action”, Luʾluʾa notes with obstinacy. “I’ll stand bold in front of my brothers; let them do whatever they wish with me” (Ibid.), she concludes. Beginning with the scene of Luʾluʾa’s return home until the end of the story, the significance of the second part of the story lies in its representation of how male brutality is often the cause of female fury—the latter happening, mostly, by way of “vengeance”. Set inside the heroine’s home, this second part is packed with events and actions from both the male oppressors (ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz and Ṣāliḥ) and their powerless female victims (the heroine and their mother). Marking the beginning of the unravelling of the plot, the narrator reports that, on reaching home, Luʾluʾa “knock[s], firmly” on the completely locked entrance door, and “await[s] her fate” (199). The author’s use of various similes to compare the heroine’s psychical being, as she awaits the opening of the door, with that of an “accused criminal”, of “someone trapped in an imminent natural disaster” and so on, serves to foreground the masculine cruelty that is about to happen. The narrator tells us that when the door opens, Luʾluʾa is confronted with what she has envisaged. Marking the beginning of the most dramatically treated aspect of the story—where the author partially effaces herself to allow the characters to speak directly—we are told that, without any interrogation, the heroine’s eldest brother, ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz, beats her unsympathetically into a coma. “Don’t kill her, leave her alone for God sake, kill me before you kill her. Enough of this torture; be kind to your old mother” (199), the mother shouts, pleading with her son. In addition to reflecting a universally common form of domestic violence against women, the pathos of the mother’s heartbreaking appeal here implies a condemnation of masculine aggression. Both the heroine and her mother are portrayed as helpless and powerless in this scene of male violence. Luʾluʾa cannot fight back as a demonstration of her own strength. Just as she remains silent at the time she is being battered, so also does her mother’s plea prove ineffectual. But, as evident in the girl’s initial defiant act of secretly leaving home, and in her mother’s disapproval of ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz’s aggression, these women’s helplessness and powerlessness are not tantamount to their complicity. Particularly interesting is the fact that Luʾluʾa’s

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mother’s reaction above shows that even the older generation of women in mid-twentieth-century Kuwait were dissatisfied with the Kuwaiti hierarchical social order. Reflecting how grievous and embittered Luʾluʾa’s mother is about her son’s violence against his sister, the narrator relates: The mother was choked on her tears; looking askance at her, ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz said: You want me to be lenient with this hopeless, impudent girl, who is about to bring shame and destruction unto us? Didn’t I forbid her from going out of the house; then, why should she defy my orders?! (199).

This disrespectful response by the heroine’s father-surrogate is as much an expression of male authority and supremacy as it is an embodiment of the Arab notion of faḍīḥ a, or social dishonour. Here, ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz expresses the preconceived notion that a defiant girl like Luʾluʾa is close to losing her chastity, which will bring shame and disrepute to the family. His act of brutality against his sister thus exemplifies Kate Millet’s argument that “control [over women] in patriarchal society would be imperfect, even inoperable, unless it had the rule of force to rely upon, both in emergencies and as ever-present instrument of intimidation.”17 Punishment and/or death threats, according to al-Mughni, are among the mechanisms of social control often imposed by Kuwaiti men on their women.18 Apart from corroborating this point, the dialogue below— involving both of Luʾluʾa’s brothers—indicates that the suppression of Kuwaiti women through physical violence is systemic. In the dialogue, Ṣāliḥ proves as patriarchal as ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz. Having been searching for the previously missing Luʾluʾa, Ṣāliḥ returns home to find the girl lying faint on the ground, in a pool of her own blood. Lending credence to the girl’s earlier suspicion, Ṣāliḥ addresses his brother: – Where did you find her? I’ve contacted the Public Safety office about the matter. The police have been seriously searching for her now. Where has this idiot been? – I don’t know. She has received the punishment she deserves. I wish she died, so that she’d save us her evil (199).

17 Kate Millet, Sexual Politics, first published in 1971, (London: Verso Press Limited, 1977), p. 43. 18 al-Mughni, op. cit., p. 43.

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For these brothers, their family’s social honour is much more valued than the personal freedom, life, and well being of their sister. For them, a defiant girl like Luʾluʾa does not only deserve to die, she also deserves ‘definition’, or name-calling: they call her ‘impudent’, ‘shameless’, an ‘idiot’, a ‘source of evil’, and so on. Captured through the interior monologue technique and following the conventional chronological order of the unfolding of events, the closing scene represents female furious “revenge” on male oppressors. Here the reader meets Luʾluʾa as she recovers from a prolonged state of unconsciousness engendered by her brother’s battering. With anger and distress, she tries to recollect the events of the previous day. Terribly frail, and notwithstanding the seasonal “fiercely cold and windy weather”, she manages to get to the courtyard of their compound. At that moment: One single thought dominated her mind: she wanted to avenge her brutal oppression, even if that would be at the expense of her life. Revenge was the only escape from her state of hopelessness, powerlessness and humiliation (200).

The narrator is precise in informing us about the times of the major events in this closing scene. For example, she tells us that Luʾluʾa regains her consciousness at 12 midnight, and that exactly one hour later, at 1:00 am, tragedy strikes in the household. Luʾluʾa sets the family’s residential compound ablaze, and dies in the fire (Ibid.). The fact that the text avoids making the heroine’s death come from the atrocious hands of her brothers undermines any attempt to qualify the story as a non-critical reflection of male aggression. One might have expected that Luʾluʾa dies as a result of the severe battering. That might have seemed intelligible: it is not strange in Kuwaiti society that an apparently ‘ungovernable’ girl is beaten to death by the male defenders of the extremely valued family honour. The author’s construction of the heroine’s death thus seems to carry an additional feminist undertone: the vengeful manner of Luʾluʾa’s suicidal death signifies female self-assertion and self-empowerment; it constitutes the final act of her rejection of male oppression and domination. In spite of the lack of dramatisation of the tragic process—when the heroine is about to set the compound on fire—with a view to producing some emotional effects like ‘pity’, ‘fear’ or ‘shock’ on the reader, the narrative of the heroine’s vengeance is remarkable. “The people of the house are safe”, the narrator tells us. “But . . . they left empty-handed, they

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no longer have a single possession”, she remarks (Ibid.), in what serves to encapsulate the overall judgement of the text: that women possess destructive potential with which they can resist their oppression. The self-eradicating end of the heroine can be viewed in line with some feminist perspectives, one of which would consider an oppressed woman’s “recourse to illness and suicide as her only realisable means of protest and revolt.”19 Luʾluʾa’s recourse to suicide can also be explained “as an inevitable factor in a power struggle between the master and the dispossessed.”20 A helpless girl like the heroine, “having realised that she will never be allowed to have her own way [. . .], will be quite prepared to give her own life in the cause of revenge.”21 She is portrayed in the story as someone who “has power over nothing but her own body” and for whom “suicide is the only exercise of power left to” her.22 The difference between Hayfāʾ Hāshim’s story and Laylā al-Uthmān’s lies in the form of female agency and power each of them depicts. While the one depicts ‘suicide’ as a form of women’s protest against patriarchal hegemony, the other portrays ‘murder’ as an exhibition of women’s disruption of patriarchal social order, as discussed below. “Min milaff imraʾa” 23 Preamble “Min milaff imraʾa”—hereafter referred to as “Min milaff”—appears in al-Raḥ īl,24 the second collection of short stories by Laylā al-ʿUthmān, which was first published in Kuwait in 1979. The author is one of the leading Kuwaiti writers of the contemporary period, and evidently the 19 Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar, The Madwoman in the Attic (New Haven, Yale University Press, 1979) cited in Lynne Pearce, “Sexual Politics” in Sara Mills et al., op. cit., p. 44. 20 This is in line with Kate Millet’s sexual political interpretation; see Sara Mills et al., op. cit., p. 44. 21 Ibid. 22 Ibid. 23 An earlier version of this section was presented under the title “‘Yes, my Lord, I’d killed him’: Murder as Female Transcendence in Contemporary Arab Women’s Fiction, ‘Min milaff imraʾa’ by Laylā al-ʿUthman” at the “Transcendence versus Traditions” Conference organized by the Department of Philosophy, the University of Dundee, Dundee, United Kingdom, 29 May 2004. 24 Laylā al-ʿUthmān, “Min milaff imraʾa” in al-Raḥ īl [The Departure] (Kuwait, 1979, 1st edition); reference is here made to the 2nd edition (Kuwait: Maṭābiʿ al-waṭan, 1984), pp. 31–35.

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best-known woman writer from Kuwait, if not the Arabian Gulf region in general. A novelist and short-story writer, al-ʿUthmān was born in Kuwait in 1945. Unlike most of her fellow Kuwaiti women writers, she is not well ‘educated’ in the formal sense, as she was unable to complete her secondary education due to some family problems and, perhaps, financial constraints. Nevertheless, she developed an interest in reading. Her literary prowess must have been sparked by the fact that she comes from a literary home, her father being a poet. Similarly, she was married to a Palestinian writer with whom she has children; they separated after the man left Kuwait finally to settle in one of the Palestinian territories. According to the Kuwaiti woman literary critic-biographer and fictionist Laylā M. Ṣāliḥ,25 mentioned at various points in the preceding chapters, al-ʿUthmān started writing while at secondary school and began publishing stories in local newspapers in 1965. Some of her writings—now around ten short-story collections and three novels in total—are considered transgressive, and so have been banned in Kuwait. Some of them (perhaps in order to avoid censorship by Kuwaiti authorities) were published abroad mainly in Egypt, Lebanon, and Syria. Very few of them—including the one chosen for consideration here—are available in English translation, a fact that evidently accounts for the reason why little research has been done on them in the West.26 The five-page story “Min milaff ” is one of the very few works of murder literature not only by the author, but also by Kuwaiti writers at large. It tells the story of an unnamed teenage girl who is forced to marry a seventy year old man. After a period of three years into the marriage (which is fruitless as she has no child from the man), the heroine fetches an axe and kills her husband with it while he is asleep. Being a murder text, not least by a Kuwaiti female writer, this story is revolutionary: it is a story of social criticism that represents murder as an expression of women’s rage against patriarchal domination. The main argument of the text is that Kuwaiti girls, objectified through the

25 Laylā M. Ṣāliḥ, “Laylā al-ʿUthmān” in Udabāʾ wa-adībāt al-Kuwayt (Kuwait: The Kuwaiti Writers’ Association Press, 1996), pp. 187–192. 26 Al-ʿUthmān’s most famous works include Imraʾa fī ināʾ [A Woman in an Urn] (1977), al-Raḥ īl (1979, which features the story under consideration here) and Fī al-layl taʾtī al-ʿuyūn [The Evil Spirits Come at Night] (1980), all of which are her earliest three collections of short stories from which some individual stories have been translated into English and some European languages. Her novels include Wasmiyya takhruj min al-baḥ r (1986; discussed in the following chapter) and al-Marʾa wa-l-qiṭtạ (1985).

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traditional practice of forced marriage, are victims of human rights abuse. Secondly, the text argues that, in some cases, such girls are often susceptible to various forms of psycho-social and sexual depression. Forced Marriage Featured in the first part of the story, the objectification of a considerable number of Kuwaiti girls through the conservative practice of forced marriage is a major, but not the dominant, theme in “Min milaff”. The author’s choice of a first person, confessional narrative mode is remarkably appropriate; the story opens with an implied court scene whereby the accused-heroine begins to recount the circumstances that have led to her homicidal act: “A strange feeling always occurred to me every night, as I looked at this frail man lying wearily by my side” (31). This opening sentence in the text is so premonitory that the reader begins to sense a likely tragic ending. In her attempt to present the causes of the heroine’s rebellion (male domination) as much graver than their effects (the murder crime) the author makes women’s objectification through marriage the narrative focus of the story, rather than the murder act itself. Captured through the flashback technique and filtered through the consciousness of the accused-heroine—who is also the narrator—we are told that the heroine was forced to marry her now deceased husband. “[I was married off] against my will, and in spite of being aged fourteen” (Ibid.). Though implying her lack of consent to the marriage, this statement does not seem to denote her voicing of any objection to the familial order. In addition to her inability to openly express her objection to the marriage, the heroine has also remained completely silent about the problem of her sexual depression. These two instances of her ‘speechlessness’ are an indication of women’s internalisation of patriarchal culture. Her initial passivity and submissiveness to familial orders is quite understandable in view of the fact that a majority of young adults, especially girls, are vulnerable to the social and cultural injustice embedded in the Kuwaiti conventional marriage system. Customarily, choosing one’s husband (or wife) is often a male-dictated family affair.27 As the events of the panoramically treated first part of the story unfold, the process of the heroine’s victimisation through the marriage

27

See al-Mughni, op. cit., p. 44.

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system becomes clear. For instance, lamenting her bad fortune as wife of the husband, we find the heroine asking herself: What’s keeping this man alive? [. . .] Is it in order to keep reminding me of the ‘crime’ of my father, who collected the [bridal] price? How much was the price? A thousand dīnār, a hundred sheep, twenty fertile female camels; where are all those now? What has been my share of them now apart from this [husband’s] frail body? (32).

In addition to revealing the heroine’s premeditative contemplation that presupposes the murder act, this quotation reflects the status of women as “objects” or “commodities” of exchange between men. Speaking through the heroine in the above extract, al-ʿUthmān declares the practice of forced marriage a “parental crime”. She predicates that parents (fathers) who force their daughters into marital relationships are criminals for usurping the girls’ rights by dictating and collecting bridal prices on their behalf and, implicitly, by exploiting them. Part of the significance of the first part of the story, therefore, lies in its reflection of how economic factors have been a major player in the perpetration of women’s oppression in patriarchal society. Women and Childlessness Considered a major social problem in Kuwait as well as in most Third World societies, childlessness is given an important thematic status in “Min milaff ”. Al-ʿUthmān’s approach in treating this theme situates the story as a feminist text, in which the author is far from merely reproducing the dominant, masculinist literary tradition. The heroine asserts before the court that her childlessness is not unconnected with the lack of ‘biological compatibility’ between her and the husband. The man’s age-caused weak libido cannot match that of the youthful, presumably fertile, wife. Contrasting the marital life of her parents with that of herself and the husband, the accused-heroine gives the impression that it is because her parents are of the same age group, and so compatible with each other, that their relationship has been fruitful. The result of a too-wide age gap between her and her husband is, therefore, the denial of her sexual satisfaction and an inability to conceive a child (32–33). Since we do not meet the also-unnamed husband directly, it is through the perspective of the accused-heroine that we know that the

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man is very old, ugly and, above all, sexually inactive. Describing how she has suffered from sexual depression throughout the period of her marriage, the heroine recounts that by night, the husband would fall into deep and prolonged sleep, not minding his wife’s sexual desires. The man is so “obnoxious” that the wife often wonders if her parents could afford “to look at [his] face every night”, and be able to “sleep peacefully while [his] loud whistling and snoring disturb the calmness of the night” (31). The heroine’s pathetic obsession is that of desperation for motherhood. “One single thought always crossed and preoccupied my mind, inadvertently”, the heroine narrates, “it was always painful: I’ve no child from this old man, and where would the child come from?” (32), she laments. It is in connection with this distressing feeling and thought that she recalls an occasion sometime before her marriage when her father uprooted a date tree because it was “fruitless,” “old,” and so, “hopeless” (34). This recollection not only intensifies the heroine’s rage against the husband, it also fuels her despair of becoming a mother. In patriarchal culture, women’s childlessness is often (mis)understood as their barrenness. In representing the theme of women and childlessness in this story, al-ʿUthmān appears very conventional: she portrays childlessness as a despised characteristic of the female sex. This is manifest in part of the character of the heroine, who perceives procreation not only as the essence of human life, but also as a symbol of a happy marriage. Underpinning the sociological significance of biological reproduction is the fact that the text is replete with similes and metaphors, through which the heroine compares herself with various animate and inanimate beings. She describes herself, for instance, as “a lamp with its wick burning wastefully day after day in th[e] old man’s hut” (Ibid.). She is so depressed that she believes that a fertile and procreative animal’s, or plant’s life is better off and worthier than hers (Ibid.). The heroine’s stereotypical belief and way of thinking are an instance of the story’s non-critical stance on the essentiality of human biological reproduction. The author refuses to make the heroine (directly or indirectly) deplore the androcentric notion of women as sex and biological objects. This might appear undermining to the overall judgement of the text. It might imply that had there been a chance for her to have a child from her victim (husband), the heroine would have remained submissive and complacent; she would not have surrendered to the recurring devilish thought of eliminating the man.

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One can argue, however, that al-ʿUthmān appears ironic in her representation of the notion of essential motherhood. She seems to have reversed the patriarchal formulation of gender roles by turning man, rather than woman, to sex object, useful only for childbearing. Her uncritical (or ironic) parody of the male-favoured theme of women’s desperation for motherhood is, nonetheless, aimed at disrupting and deconstructing Kuwaiti patriarchal social and cultural values. Even though the objectified-and-then-sexually-deprived heroine thinks conventionally with regard to her childless status, she thinks deviantly with regard to a solution. Signalling the process of the evocation of her subjectivity and agency in the murder act, she begins to reflect on the necessity of changing by herself what society would normally have regarded as her (bad) luck. Seeing her continual existence in the husband’s “suffocating” house as signifying her confinement in the attic of distress, repression and despair (33), the heroine simply resolves: “I want to live” (Ibid.). While this statement indicates her desire for sex and her desperation for freedom from marital bondage, it also underlies her culturally influenced perception of the worthlessness of a non-procreative life. It is in pursuit of her resolution—that she wants to live a ‘supposed’ worthy life— that the heroine has murdered her husband. Thus, the author utilises a patriarchal ideological weapon through which women in particular are dehumanised—the despicability of women’s childlessness—against patriarchy itself. Al-ʿUthmān’s construction of the events of the murder act and the mode of the heroine’s confession to it seems to be a mockery of patriarchal social order, as we shall see in the following. Sex and Murder As has been argued by some feminist critics, men have used their pens to ‘kill’ women in their texts, just as some men conceive of using their sexual organs as weapons through which they symbolically ‘slaughter’ women during penetrative intercourse, especially if it involves defloration.28 Al-ʿUthmān appears to have reversed this through both the form and content of the text under study. Making the narrative voice entirely

28

See Gilbert and Gubar, op. cit., pp. 14 ff. See also Sue Spaull and Elaine Millard, “The Anxiety of Authorship” in Sara Mills et al., op. cit., pp. 122–153 and Kate Millet’s analysis of the “images of women” in some male-authored Victorian novels in Millet, op. cit., p. 292.

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that of the heroine, and denying, particularly, the victim-husband any voice in the story, the author ‘kills’ the man in “Min milaff ” at the narrative level. This supposition is further substantiated by the frequent use of the first person pronoun, “I”—as in, most notably, the most decisive, confessional statement, “Yes, my Lord, I killed him” (34 and 35)—through which the initially silenced and objectified heroine assumes a subject position. At the content level is the author’s representational killing of a man in the story, which is constituted in the murder act perpetrated by her heroine. That the text represents sex and murder as related activities at the level of language and discourse can be further corroborated by the use of the indicative words al-tamazzuq and al-mumazzaqa, both of which derive from the Arabic (triliteral) verb m z q (as in mazzaqa), which means ‘to tear, rend, shred, or rip apart (something)’.29 Al-tamazzuq is used by the accused-heroine to explain her usual post-coital feelings; during sexual intercourse with the husband, she always falls short of experiencing orgasmic pleasure: “He would mount me every night. Weak in libido, he would bath me with his body sweat, and then, climb down like an exhausted animal, while I would remain a mouse licking up traces of al-tamazzuq (injury/tear) on its body” (33). Al-mumazzaqa appears in a much more metaphorical context: during the process of her premeditation as her belligerence against the husband looms, the heroine reflects: “Who would punish al-faʾra al-mumazzaqa (an injured mouse)? Who would blame me? Who would grieve for this emaciated man?” (Ibid.). The linguistic signification of al-tamazzuq and al-mumazzaqa underlies their contextual sociological implication. Traditionally in Kuwait, as in some patriarchal societies, the loss of a woman’s virginity indicates the lack of intactness of her body. Thus, having already been deflowered by the old man, the heroine believes she has become a ‘second-hand’ woman, who is much less admired by most youthful men in a society that places much emphasis on female virginity before marriage. The heroine’s feeling of devaluation is, therefore, another reason behind her eliminating the husband. The murder act—cutting off the man’s head with an axe (35)—is similar to the implied act of her deflower-

29 See J. M. Cowan (ed.), The Hans Wehr Dictionary of Modern Written Arabic (New Delhi, India: Modern Language Services, n. d.), p. 906.

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ing by the husband; both acts involve the painful outpouring of blood from the body. Overshadowing other psycho-social effects of the practice of forced marriage on women is the narrative focus, in the last part of the text, on the events of the murder act. In that part of the story, it becomes obvious that another factor has prompted the heroine’s murderous violence: “sex-envy”. Deprived of love and sexual pleasures in her marital life, the heroine begins to envy the presumably satisfactory sexual life of Waḍḥa and Fulayḥān, a married couple living next door. “[D]espite the hard work within her household, my neighbour, Waḍḥa, never worried about [sex]” (33). This statement of jealousy by the heroine underlies the point, made earlier, that her objectification in the process of her marriage is much less important to her than her being the victim of her husband’s sexual frailty. Rather than being happy and contented (as wife of a rich, upper-class man, who is not subjected to burdensome domestic labour), the heroine feels cheated for her denial of a youthful and sexually active husband like Fulayḥān, her poor, lower class neighbour. The manner of achieving her resolution—“I want to live”—is utterly deviant. “Why can’t I free myself from him?” (31) and “Why can’t I kill him” (repeated twice in the story: 32 and 33) are the two expressions in the text that point to the heroine’s conclusive determination to murder her husband. Both of these statements signify the evocation of her active agency in the crime: whereas the first connotes her desire for “freedom and escape”, the second seems to denote female ability to transcend patriarchal social values. The heroine believes that even without having her initial will of marrying a youthful, childhood male friend as an alternative to the family’s arranged husband (34), she can still have her way. She wants subjectively to free herself from not only an unwanted, but also an unfruitful, conjugal relationship in which she has been entrapped. The murder scene, pictorially treated rather than dramatised, fails to arouse the reader’s ‘pity’ and ‘fear’ for the victim. Because the homicidal act is carried out while the husband is, as usual, fast asleep, we are not privileged to see how he might have reacted as his wife was about to take his life. Nonetheless, the murder scene—from the sex-instigated tragic process to the tragic incident—is technically impressive. Here, two conflicting events are made to occur in parallel: sex and murder. The heroine narrates that, on the fateful night, she surreptitiously violates

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her neighbour’s privacy. Hearing the erotic groans and breathing of the couple, her long suppressed sexual urge becomes uncontrollable. At that moment, she remembers the youthful, handsome boy she had loved and wishes that she, too, were having sex with him, as Waḍḥa and Fulayḥān are doing. Though serving as a descriptive pause in the narrative of the tragic incident, the juxtaposition of the heroine’s listening to the arousing sexual groans of her neighbours with her remembrance of the boy represents the text’s feminist alternative to the practice of forced marriage. All of a sudden, I was strangely empowered. I held an axe in my hands; I was shivering like palm-leaves in a windy night. I rushed . . . before my extreme rage would calm down I ‘swooped’ down on the completely bared head; the blow had broken the silence of the night . . . And so, Waḍḥa and Fulayḥān separated (35).

This closing scene in the story can be used to explain what Josephine McDonagh has observed, that “it is only through death, an ending that preempts any form of interference, that the murderer is sure that [her] actions can be represented or displayed without fear of alteration.”30 Though made with respect to male ‘aesthete murderers’ (who derive certain pleasure in their acts), McDonagh’s note here is applicable to the murderer-heroine of “Min milaff ”. That she acts swiftly “before [her] extreme rage [against the husband] would calm down” signifies her effort to avoid any interference in the display of her rage against patriarchal authority. If she delays a second, she might lose her evolving agency in the murder act. This kind of domestic violence contrasts with the common forms of masculine violence against women in Kuwaiti society, as reflected in “al-Intiqām”, for example. It is also contrary to conventional forms of masculine domestic murder in Western literatures.31 “Min milaff” reverses what often occurs in most murder texts whereby it is women or children who fall victim to male violence. Rather, al-ʿUthmān here ‘masculinises’ the so-called weak female, represented by the heroine,

30 Josephine McDonagh, “Do or die: problems of agency and gender in the aesthetic of murder” in Isobel Armstrong (ed.), New Feminist Discourses: Critical Essays on Theories and Texts (London: Routledge, 1992), Chapter 13, p. 234. 31 For an overview of the representation of domestic murder in Western writings, see Ibid.

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while she feminises the so-called strong male, which the victim (heroine’s husband) represents. A comparison between this story and other Kuwaiti fictional narratives treating the theme of women and childlessness in especially pre-oil Kuwaiti society will further illustrate that “Min milaff” is a radical, feminist revolutionary text. That the character of the heroine contravenes that of the compliant, selfless, and passive female is obvious in view of the fact that there are a good number of other possible, non-violent and non-fatal means by which she could resist or protest against patriarchal oppression. For instance, the heroine of “Min milaff ” is unlike the similarly defiant heroine of “al-Mubādara” [The Enterprise],32 another story by al-ʿUthman, who, also a victim of forced marriage, resists her objectification in a subtle way, by secretly betraying the husband her family has imposed on her. Put in a broader context, the heroine of “Min milaff” is, moreover, not as stereotypical as the central female figures of most of the earliest short stories that depict the beginning of the feminist struggle in Kuwait. For instance, the girl in “Min milaff ” is unlike the heroine of the male-authored “Ṭ aʿana fī al-qalb” [A Stab in the Heart].33 The latter is a paragon of female self-abnegation of power: she resigns herself, but vows to continue silently to curse her patriarchal oppressors. Furthermore, the heroine of “Jināyat ab” [A Father’s Crime]34 is not as assertive and aggressive as that of “Min milaff”; in what is represented as the effects of patriarchal culture on oppressed women’s psyches, as well as a form of protest against her objectification through marriage, the heroine of the former runs mad.35 “Min milaff” also could be seen as a revisionist text: it appears to have revised the acclaimed first Kuwait short story, “Munīra”, discussed in the preceding chapters. A male-authored story, “Munīra” explores the theme of women and childlessness just as “Min milaff” does. But the woman

32 Laylā al-ʿUthmān, “al-Mubādara” in Fī al-layl taʾtī al-ʿuyūn (Beirut: Dār al-ādāb, 1980), pp. 63–69. 33 Yūsuf al-Shāyijī, “Ṭ aʿana fī al-qalb” [A Stab in the Heart], first published in al-Baʿtha (June 1949); and reproduced in al-Zayd, op. cit., pp. 89–93. 34 Khālid al-Ghirbālī’s “Jināyat ab” [A Father’s Crime] first appeared in al-Rāʾid (June 1952); it was republished in al-Zayd, op. cit., pp. 161–165. 35 The theme of women and madness has been widely debated by western feminist critics. Because “Jināyat ab” falls outside the scope of this volume, I will delay my comments on women writers’ representation of madness either as a form of protest against or resistance to patriarchal oppression to chapter four.

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in “Munīra” is not only stereotypical. She is also foolish: the problem of her childlessness leads to her deception by soothsayers, which then leads to her self-destruction by drowning. Though explored through a plot structure different from that of “Munīra”, al-ʿUthmān’s construction of the heroine of “Min milaff”’s reaction to the problem of childlessness indicates a feminist alternative to the androcentric model. The significance of “Min milaff” as a female-authored text lies, above all, not in reproducing some of the causes and effects of Kuwaiti traditional practices and values, but in fantasising with the counter-effects of such practices. Suggesting that the story’s murder scene is a product of mere imagination rather than a reflection of social reality is the author’s making the sexual act between Waḍḥā and Fulayḥān parallel the process of the tragic incident and the disengagement of the couple from intercourse, as explicit in the closing scene extracted above. “Min milaff” seems to exemplify Angela Carter’s feminist perspective on the relationship between murder and literary representation. It can be said to have “[encapsulated] a radical transgression of values which suggests the possibilities for women to transcend the oppression that is deeply embedded in patriarchal social and cultural practices.”36 By publishing this kind of story, al-ʿUthmān appears to be, in Carter’s words, “interested in the ways in which representations can transform consciousness at the level of fantasy.”37 Espousing social realism (the reality of women’s oppression through the practice of forced marriage) with a fantasist imagination, al-ʿUthmān demonstrates the possibility of female transcendence and self-assertion in the face of male social dominance.38 The author’s portrayal of an outrageously disruptive and transcendental form of female violence seems to be targeted at transforming the consciousness of oppressed Kuwaiti women. The story implies that the accused-heroine is acquitted 36 This point is made by Josephine McDonagh (in McDonagh, op. cit., p. 228) when assessing Angela Carter’s feminist interpretation of Marquis de Sade’s murder accounts that specifically treat cases of male violence against women. Reference is made to Carter’s Sadeian Woman: An Exercise in Cultural History (London, n. p., 1979). 37 McDonagh, op. cit., p. 229. 38 A philosophical interpretation of the text might want to consider the death of the husband as symbolic of the death of patriarchy. But the court at which the accusedheroine is tried is a male-headed patriarchal institution: the judge is male, al-qāḍī (34, 35), not female, al-qāḍiya. This shows that the Kuwaiti patriarchal authority, part of which is the heroine’s husband and which her disruptive homicidal act might appear to have overthrown, remains in control; and its agents continue to maintain law and order in society.

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based on her convincing transference of guilt to the Kuwaiti patriarchal authority. The heroine claims before the court that she has been compelled to resort to murder as a way of liberating herself from continued oppression. As evident in the foregoing discussion, the heroine’s active agency is preceded by her passivity and compliance with familial orders. It is not until after three years of “unfruitful” marriage that she is able to claim her freedom and personhood. In both her circumstances as daughter and wife, she remains speechless. This is comprehensible in view of the fact that, traditionally, an average young female member within the conservative Kuwaiti family structure lacks locus standi to challenge her objectification in the process of marriage. Because the culture also inhibits the overt expression of a woman’s sexual desires, the heroine could not speak out about her experience of sexual depression. Her claim to subjectivity, freedom, and speech derives from her murderous violence against the husband. By creating such a strong, self-empowered, and rebellious female character, al-ʿUthmān, in “Min milaff”, deconstructs the conventional notion of women’s docility and their immanence, or lack of transcendence of Arabian patriarchal cultural values. Conclusion Both Hayfāʾ Hāshim’s “al-Intiqām” and Laylā al-ʿUthmān’s “Min milaff” represent women’s physical and mental potency in undermining patriarchal hegemony. They both portray the family as the main social institution within which women’s oppression is perpetuated. Reminiscent of the pre-oil or mid-twentieth-century Kuwaiti women they both symbolize, the two initially submissive and ‘speechless’ teenage girls eventually succeed in liberating themselves from patriarchal oppression through their respective devastating acts of rebellion. “Al-Intiqām” and “Min milaff” can be compared with many other fictional narratives that reflect the “rejection” stage of Arab feminist writing. For example, the two Kuwaiti stories share similar emplotment and thematic concerns with “House of Arrest” (1965),39 a short story

39 Andrée Chedid’s “House of Arrest” appears in the collection of short stories L’Etroite Peau (1965). It was translated from the French by miriam cooke; see Badran and cooke, op. cit., pp. 174–179.

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by the Egyptian woman writer Andrée Chedid, and “Personal Papers” (1973)40 by the Iraqi May Muzaffar, both of which portray women’s rejection of and physical violence against patriarchal authority. As Badran and cooke have noted, “These [kinds of] writings link women’s rejection of intolerable conditions or roles with drastic, life-eradicating ends. [. . .] [They] illuminate the depth of women’s pain and despair.”41 The heroines of both “al-Intiqām” and “Min milaff” can thus be identified as prototypical figures with which Kuwaiti women writers, like their counterparts from other parts of the Arab world, have begun to reject the “patriarchally produced female archetypes and replace them with their own prototypes.”42

40 May Muzaffar’s “Personal Papers” appears in the collection al-Bāja [The Swan] (Baghdad, 1973). It was translated from the Arabic by Simone Fattal; see Badran and cooke, op. cit., pp. 180–185. 41 Badran and cooke, op. cit., p. xxxi. 42 Ibid., p. xxx.

CHAPTER FOUR

SUBVERTING PATRIARCHY: WOMEN’S DEFIANCE AND SOLIDARITY IN LAYLĀ ALʿUTHMĀN’S WASMIYYA TAKHRUJ MIN AL-BAḤ R Introduction Wasmiyya takhruj min al-baḥ r [Wasmiyya Emerges from the Sea]1 (hereafter referred to as Wasmiyya) is Laylā al-ʿUthmān’s second novel and one of the earliest by Kuwaiti women in general. Published in 1986, this novel is a social realist text that depicts class and gender relations in pre-oil Kuwaiti society. Simple and lucid in its language, less sophisticated in its emplotment, and conventionally sequential in the unfolding of its events, the novel runs through some one hundred and ten pages. It tells the story of an ill-fated, secret love between a lower-class boy, Abdullah, and an upper-class girl, Wasmiyya. This chapter examines the novel’s depiction of women’s defiance and violation of the Kuwaiti traditional social order, as well as their evasion of the patriarchal oppression embedded in the Arab ideology of faḍīḥ a (social dishonour). I argue against the view that Wasmiyya is a ‘feminine’ text that merely reflects the reality of women’s oppression and subordination in society. Wasmiyya: A ‘Feminine’ or ‘Feminist’ Text? Invoking Elaine Showalter’s categorisation of the phases of the female literary tradition, Sabry Hafez, in his essay “Women’s Narrative in Modern Arabic Literature: A Typology”2 notes that al-ʿUthmān’s Wasmiyya

1 Laylā al-ʿUthmān, Wasmiyya takhruj min al-baḥ r (Kuwait: Sharikat al-Rubayʿān li-l-nashr wa-l-tawzīʿ, 1986, 1st edition). For another study of this novel and some other fictional texts by al-ʿUthmān, see Barbara Michalak-Pikulska, al-Turāth wa-lmuʿāṣira fī ibdāʿ Laylā al-ʿUthmān [Tradition and Modernity in Laylā al-ʿUthmān’s Creative Writing], trans. (from the Polish) Hātif al-Janābī (Damascus: Dār al-madā li-l-thaqāfa wa-l-nashr, 1997). 2 Sabry Hafez, “Women’s Narrative in Modern Arabic Literature: A Typology” in Roger Allen et al., (eds.) Love and Sexuality in Modern Arabic Literature (London: Saqi Books, 1995), pp. 154–174.

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falls within the category of the ‘feminine’ narrative discourse. In her A Literature of Their Own: British Women Novelists from Charlotte Brontë to Doris Lessing,3 which discusses the development of the female literary tradition from 1840 to 1960, Showalter identifies three major phases most literary subcultures usually go through. In the case of women’s writing, she labels those stages, in successive order, as the Feminine, Feminist, and Female.4 The first—the Feminine—“is a prolonged phase of imitation of the prevailing modes of the [male] dominant tradition, and internalization of its standards of art and its views on social roles.” The second, the Feminist, represents “a phase of protest against these standards and values, and advocacy of minority rights and values, including a demand for autonomy.” And the third, the Female, “is a phase of self-discovery, a turning inward freed from some of the dependency of opposition, a search for identity.”5 In line with Showalter’s definition of the ‘feminine’ phase above, Hafez asserts that “in [Wasmiyya] we find a clear example of the internalization of the male perspective and its faithful reproduction by a female writer.”6 His remark that the novel “aims to reflect the reality of a changing Kuwait and the impact of this change on social interactions, roles and gender”7 is quite understandable. However, one could challenge his assessment that this novel, like other fictional texts by contemporary Arabian Gulf women writers, adopts the masculine discourse of “the passive, docile, selfless female.”8 The form, especially the narrative strategy, of the novel is apparently conventionally imitative. But the language of the text, the actions and thoughts of the novel’s female characters, all greatly undermine the veracity of Hafez’s generalist statement that in a “representative” novel like Wasmiyya “the value system encoded in the hierarchical social order which places the female at the bottom is adopted without questioning and is even praised for its concern and protection of the meek, helpless female.”9 As I shall try to explain below, the women in

3 Elaine Showalter, A Literature of Their Own: From Charlotte Brontë to Doris Lessing, (London: Virago Press, 1982, revised edition). 4 See Ibid., p. 13. 5 Ibid. 6 Hafez, op. cit., p. 162. 7 Ibid., p. 161. 8 Ibid. 9 Ibid.

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the novel demonstrate, to a varying degree of course, a certain level of resistance to the pre-oil Kuwaiti social order. A feminist reading of this novel would situate al-ʿUthmān as a Kuwaiti woman writer in whose texts “the hierarchical social order which places the female at the bottom” is criticised and questioned. Hafez’s main criterion for considering Wasmiyya as an epitome of the Arabian ‘feminine’ literary discourse is based on the fact that “[t]he dominant narrative voice in this novel is not that of the heroine, Wasmiyya, [. . .] but that of the hero, Abdullah.”10 For him, “[t]he prevalence of Abdullah’s point of view is” not only “a textual equivalent of the stereotypical male whose women conform to his system of values and ideals regardless of whether he is physically present”; it is also “a manifestation of the all-embracing patriarchal order whose control over the world of narrative is seen as the norm.”11 The strategy of making a male voice dominant in al-ʿUthmān’s narratives is not peculiar to Wasmiyya. The author also adopted it in her first novel, al-Marʾa wa-l-qiṭtạ [The Woman and the Cat], published in 1985.12 In many of al-ʿUthmān’s short stories, published before and after these two novels, the dominant narrative voices are either authorial or those of the heroines. Suggesting a kind of dynamism on the part of the author, this point shows that though she is a writer trying to raise the long suppressed female voice in literature, al-ʿUthmān is not limiting the narrative ‘point of view’ of her texts to that of the female. This has been admitted by the author herself: “What I have been able to achieve in these two novels [al-Marʾa wa-l-qiṭtạ and Wasmiyya] is a detachment from ‘myself’; in them, I dropped the female skin and I took on the character of the male narrator and protagonist of each of [them].”13 It follows, then, that the narrative strategy adopted in Wasmiyya in particular is systemic and intentional; it is not simply imitative of the androcentric narrative discourse. Rather than focusing only on the narrative strategy and the dominant point of view through which the story is told as Hafez has done, a feminist reading of the novel would focus on its content as it vividly

10

Ibid. Ibid. 12 Laylā al-ʿUthmān, al-Marʾa wa-l-qitṭạ (Beirut: al-Muʾassasa al-‘arabiyya li-l-dirāsāt wa-l-nashr, 1985). 13 See Laylā al-ʿUthmān’s review of these novels entitled “al-Khurūj min baḥ r al-kitāba” in al-Qabas, no. 8968 (9 June, 1998), pp. 30–31. 11

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represents the defiant rather than the stereotypically compliant and conformist female. As has been argued by some feminist critics,14 it is immaterial whether a literary work represents women’s resistance against male domination in an explicit or implicit manner. Similarly, it is less significant whether women’s resistance against their oppression is confrontationally expressed, or undertaken silently in a non-aggressive manner. What is significant for the feminist struggle is the representation in women’s literature of the exhibition by women of any form of defiance and resistance to male domination.15 This is what al-ʿUthmān has arguably done in Wasmiyya, the dominant narrative voice being masculine, notwithstanding. Defiance and Violation of Patriarchal Social Order Through the character of the heroine of this novel, al-ʿUthmān demonstrates Kuwaiti women’s capability to defy patriarchal social order at several levels. Beginning with her preliminary in-house acts of insubordination to the much more transgressive ones, Wasmiyya exhibits female resistance to patriarchal authority as a teenager. Although her most decisive act of transgression is male-motivated—she is persuaded by her secret lover, Abdullah, as we shall see—Wasmiyya is largely responsible for the actualisation of her personal wishes and desires at both the preliminary and final levels of her defiance. Minor acts of defiance The heroine’s violation of Kuwaiti social values is first represented in the text in the episode of Abdullah’s first visit to Wasmiyya’s house as a grown-up boy. Constituting the opening scene of this episode is both youths’ dating plan, captured through the consciousness of the distressed Abdullah as the middle-aged narrator. He gloomily recounts the beginning and the end of his ill-fated, clandestine love affair with Wasmiyya.

14

See, for example, Chandra T. Mohanty, Ann Russo and Lourdes Torres (eds.), Third World Women and the Politics of Feminism (Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1991), pp. 34–38. 15 Ibid.

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Abdullah tells us that as indicative of their lower class status, his mother works as a domestic assistant for a number of upper class women, including Wasmiyya’s mother. (This is how the two youths became lovers in childhood, unrestrictedly playing together before they both reached adolescence.) One day his mother returns home exhausted by her daily work and asks him to help deliver some household materials belonging to Wasmiyya’s mother. He joyously carries out his mother’s request. As he had wished, it is the girl who meets him at the door. Amazed and extremely happy to have luckily met each other after years of conventional, forcible separation, both love-ridden youths seize the opportunity to chat. In the absence of both her father (whom the reader never meets in the text) and her brother, Fahd (who often acts as the father-figure within the household), we find the heroine claiming her freedom through different ways. Despite the fact that both youths are now grown-up teenagers, the girl appears to Abdullah “unveiled”, and without conforming to the traditional norms of dealing with male visitors (38). Rather than letting him stay by the door outside the house, Wasmiyya “asked him to come in” (Ibid.). A societally interpellated Kuwaiti boy, Abdullah initially hesitates: “I looked round, to the back. Front. Right. [And] left. Was there anyone in the street? Was there any eye that might obstruct my movement forward, thus preventing me from enjoying the pleasure of going in?!” (Ibid.). For him, it is absolutely “unbelievable” and “amazing” that Wasmiyya could freely and fearlessly invite him into her house. Had her father and brother not been away on business trips abroad, as was commonplace among merchant-class Kuwaiti men of the pre-oil era, Wasmiyya would not have been the one to receive male guests. She would not have been so courageous as to invite a non-relative, adolescent boy like Abdullah into her house. It is with reference to these facts that Abdullah reflects on how Fahd has always exercised restrictive controls on his sister, keeping her under continuous surveillance. Fahd is often suspicious of the two lovers; he has been brutally violent against both Wasmiyya and Abdullah (17, 24–25, 29, 33). Thus, one can infer that the heroine’s inability to interact freely with her childhood lover in adolescence is an indication not just of her compliance but of the repressive enforcement of patriarchal rules by means of violence. All of the heroine’s acts of violation at this level—her appearing to, and remaining unveiled before the grown-up Abdullah, her inviting him into the house and her subsequent engagement with him in an amorous

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chat—are done wilfully, rather than under any influence or pressure from the boy. They suggest that Wasmiyya is instinctively defiant. They are a demonstration of the (silent) exertion of her subjectivity, a way of expressing her wishful desires and personal freedom. That Wasmiyya is far from a stereotype of the passive female is further demonstrated as the events of the scene under discussion here continue to unfold. In the dialogic aspect of the scene, we meet the two lovers expressing their discontent with Kuwaiti societal inhibitions on post-childhood gender interactions. As reminiscent of their childhood romance, both youths begin to re-affirm their long-standing love and affection for each other (40). Abdullah declares that he wishes he could get a date with the girl to be able to “tell [her] all that is in [his] mind” (Ibid.). That Wasmiyya is “wonderfully” interested in dating him, too, serves to underpin the fact that the heroine is potentially transgressive. Dating Dating between secret lovers was extremely difficult in Arabian society as a whole before the second half of the twentieth century. Rather than a kind of ‘boy meets girl’ system that is most common in some other societies of the world, what has remained customary in Kuwaiti and most Arab/ian societies is the practice of arranged and forced marriage. This usually happens between cousins, or by forcing a girl to marry a rich, elderly man.16 The text of Wasmiyya expansively treats the problems associated with secret dating. Reflecting the societal restrictiveness with regard to dating is the fact that both youths could easily agree on the need to have their passionate wish realised. But, according to Wasmiyya, the problems are: “How, where, [what about] the people, and my family?” (Ibid.). Her questions here serve to reflect women’s sensitivity to their repression through several of what Kate Millet calls “patriarchal agents”, i.e. the family, society, etc.17 The heroine appears cognisant of the implications of dating a boy. She is well aware that, as a female, she would be held more liable for the taboo should both of them be caught together in a societally outlawed romantic encounter. 16 See Haya al-Mughni, Women in Kuwait: the Politics of Gender (London: Saqi Books, 1993), pp. 44–45. 17 Kate Millet, Sexual Politics, first published in 1971, (London: Verso Press Limited, 1977), p. 33.

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Al-ʿUthmān uses Wasmiyya’s reaction to Abdullah, as he begins to insist on setting a date, to demonstrate women’s internalisation of the effects of patriarchy. A victim of the conventional discriminatory pattern of gender socialisation, Wasmiyya’s ‘interpellation’ by Kuwaiti society as well as her (especially male) family members is illustrated by her initial hesitation about the possibility of actualising the dating plan. By contrast, as an empowered male member of the same society, Abdullah becomes much more determined and increasingly persuasive on this issue. Highlighting the gravity of such a transgressive plan is Abdullah’s statement that their dating affair is “a project that began like a dream” (41). It is a ‘project of defiance’ but not as far as Abdullah is concerned. This is because the boy is much less a victim of societal restrictions: he is never reduced to seclusion; he does not wear the veil; and he has been socialised to be adventurous and transcendent: after all, he works as a fisherman (3 ff.). On the other hand, their planning a date is a project of defiance for Wasmiyya, considering her gender and social class affiliation. That Abdullah as narrator represents al-ʿUthman in this novel is evidenced by most of his commentaries on some of Wasmiyya’s reported or dramatised actions, gestures, and thoughts, like the one he makes on the implied significance of the girl’s reactions to his suggestion that they go to the seaside one night when: – Your mother . . . and my mother . . . and the people are asleep. After ʿIshā’,18 all eyes are asleep . . . and . . . – And what next? – Your father and Fahd are not around (41).

Getting impatient with Wasmiyya’s relatively long silence in responding, Abdullah pursues his request further: “Wasmiyya, will you come?” (42). “She raised up her face [and looked] at me”, Abdullah narrates. “[A]s if she had instantly decided to transcend [societal] bounds, to give to herself the right she deserved, [at least] for once (42),” he comments. Couched in figurative terms, Abdullah reflects further that Wasmiyya seems to have decided to begin to “dive in a deluge of experimentation she was not accustomed to” (Ibid.)

18

ʿIshāʾ is the name of the late-evening Muslim daily prayer.

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These (Abdullah’s narrative) commentaries serve to overshadow the heroine’s initial hesitation over the issue. They are reflective of the strength of the female “will” for transcending societal limitations. The moment of the girl’s contemplation and of the articulation of her approval of the boy’s proposal is like a moment of the oppressed female’s movement from the state of passivity and submissiveness to that of “al-ṣaḥ w”, or consciousness (46). It is a moment of “al-waʿd al-thābit”, or a firm promise (47). The word “mad”19 is used on several occasions in this novel to refer to any individual who rebels, or intends to rebel, against the Kuwaiti hierarchical social order. Wasmiyya, Abdullah, and his mother (later in the narrative) each uses the word to describe the act of “dating”, later embarked upon by the two lovers, in a way that serves to underlie the implications of it as an honour-threatening, abominable act in Kuwaiti society. For instance, when Wasmiyya eventually expresses her readiness to go on a date with Abdullah, she says: “I will try [. . .] I will be mad like you” (42). These two laconic statements thus confirm all that Abdullah has extrapolated from the girl’s unspoken thoughts and feelings of defiance. Al-ʿUthmān also uses the Abdullah-Wasmiyya love story to show how extremely hard it was for secret lovers to communicate with each other in the pre-oil era. In those days, there were very limited neutral avenues available for secret lovers to meet, let alone date each other. (This has changed nowadays, though, as explained further in the conclusion to this book). As the dialogue between the lovers progresses, the girl promises the boy that she will “place a stone by the side of the

19 There have been a lot of debates among feminist critics over the issue of ‘women and madness’. Women writers and critics have tried to explore this issue from different theoretical points of view, especially psychoanalysis. One basic fact, as emphasised by critics like Phyllis Chesler and Elaine Showalter, is that “There is no inherent link between femaleness and insanity [. . .].” See Showalter, The Female Malady: Women, Madness and English Culture 1830–1980 (London: Virago, 1987); and Chelser, Women and Madness (London: Allen Lane, 1974), in Sara Mills et al., op. cit., p. 217. Al-ʿUthmān’s Wasmiyya cannot be said to be a ‘women and madness’ text; madness is not a theme extensively explored in this novel. What we have is something relating to ‘men and madness’: the hero’s (Abdullah’s) moment of hallucination that leads to his drowning occurs under the illusion that he is seeing Wasmiyya as she ‘emerges’ from the sea. As noted in the body of this chapter, al-ʿUthmān uses the word ‘mad’ simply as an explanation for a wilful act of defiance of patriarchal social order by an individual who is aware of the consequences of such act. An example of ‘women and madness’ fictional narratives by Kuwaiti women is al-Nuwākhidha [The Shipmasters] by Fawziyya S. al-Sālim (Damascus: al-Madā, 1998).

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door of [her] home” within few days following their agreement on a date. Signifying “the day of [Wasmiyya’s] choice” for the planned secret outing (43), the use of a ‘natural’, coded sign (stone, here) points not only to the primitiveness, but also the extent of societal repressiveness in that era. It is in the same scene under discussion here that al-ʿUthmān presents to the reader an instance of the female “double voice”.20 Wasmiyya’s voice in this novel is double: she represents both the apparently conformist as well as the defiant and trangressive female. The girl is first presented as non-conformist, as we have seen above. It is not until she has satisfied herself in her amorous conversations with the visiting Abdullah that she later reverts to a state of apparent compliance with Kuwaiti traditional values. Before going to call her mother and inform her of the presence of Abdullah, Wasmiyya shyly pleads with the boy to go outside and wait by the door because “[she] did not want her mother to know that [he] had already entered, and that [they] . . . had even talked [. . .]” (Ibid.). Corroborating the advertency of her initial act of deviating from the norms, the heroine’s statement here also signifies the fact that even within the claustrophobic domestic spheres, women could subvert the patriarchal social system. The girl seizes the opportunity of the absence of her domineering male relatives, as well as the ‘inaccessibility’ of her mother at the moment of her lover’s arrival in the house, to defiantly assert her selfhood and personal freedom. Wasmiyya is not alone in this act of in-house violation of Kuwaiti traditional values. In the same episode of Abdullah’s first visit to Wasmiyya’s house, the author also portrays Wasmiyya’s mother as an equally silent, non-conformist female character. Like her daughter, the mother acts contrary to societal norms as regards women’s appearance before, and mode of interaction with, a grown-up, non-relative male. The woman honours Abdullah, treating him in a non-discriminatory manner. Whereas Wasmiyya had considered it “non-permissible” and “transgressive” to have allowed Abdullah into their house, her mother— acting as the matriarch—feels free before the boy. Wasmiyya’s mother appears to the seventeen-year-old Abdullah unveiled, such that the boy could observe her physique and the length and colour of her hair. Describing the loveliness of Wasmiyya’s mother,

20

For an explanation of Elaine Showalter’s concept of female ‘double-voiced discourse’ see Sue Spaull’s chapter on “Gynocriticism” in Sara Mills, op. cit., p. 94 ff.

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he observes: “Her body is sturdy. A body that has been living a pleasurable life; it’s not like my mother’s tall [and skinny] body” (45). Occupying almost a full page in the text, the significance of this appreciative, rather than jealous, comparison by Abdullah lies not simply in its reflection of the physical difference between the lower and upper class Kuwaiti women of the pre-oil era. His description of the woman’s physical qualities also serves to underpin the novel’s argument that ‘secluded’ women are not as conformist as widely perceived. Wasmiyya’s mother’s free interactions with the boy thus represent the desire for social change by even the older generations of Kuwaiti women. The major act of defiance Al-ʿUthmān’s adoption of intermittent narrative ‘gaps’, or suspense devices, in the novel seriously intensifies the reader’s curiosity regarding how the tragic event of the heroine’s death happened. Constituting the narrative gaps of the texts are the frequent references by an unnamed third person narrator to the present causes of the middle-aged Abdullah’s anguish (52–54). The third person narrator informs us that the middle-aged Abdullah goes to the seaside alone one night. Lying on his back inside a shed at the beach and in a state of extreme psychological depression, the hero recounts in grief his past, unfortunate, secret love with Wasmiyya. Thus, the narration of the entire story oscillates between the hero’s recollections of how he is being treated badly by his wife in the present—she refuses him sex because of her resentment of his startling obsession with the sea and fishing (105)—and how he lost his lover in the past. It is also through this process of the hero’s double sorrowful recollections that the events of the heroine’s final and most decisive act of resistance unfold. Though relatively short, the second (also dialogically presented) scene of the Abdullah-Wasmiyya dating plan is as significant as the first one: it also vividly depicts the evocation of the heroine’s agency. The girl initially fails to fulfil her promise to give the boy a coded signal concerning the day of her choice for the date. But Abdullah is able to rekindle her defiance potential during his second opportunistic visit to her house. When he insists that she should be specific on the date she would place the stone at the agreed point, the girl, slightly embarrassed, retorts: OK. Why the stone? [I am announcing it to] your hearing now. You mean tonight?

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She nodded her head, smiling. I said: Are you jesting?! [I mean], are you saying this just in order to pacify me? No, [I swear] by God. Tonight would be convenient [. . .] (66).

A point to note here is that it was her promise to place a stone at the specified point that the heroine has failed to fulfill, not the promise for a date itself. On the second occasion of their plan captured in the above dialogue, the girl keeps her dating promise (73). This portrays her as an embodiment of women’s decisiveness and strong will. Beginning with the point of their departure from the front of Wasmiyya’s house to the point of the sudden death of the girl, the ‘dating episode’ is the most significant aspect of the novel, at least from the point of view of this volume. This is because this episode encompasses several decisive actions taken by both the oppressed heroine and hero. Partially dramatised and partially pictorially treated, this episode is similarly remarkable from the perspective of narrative technique. It is here that the heroine’s radical thoughts, feelings, and wishes are freely and most directly expressed by herself in the text, rather than through the dominant, narrative point of view of the hero. In the narrative of this episode, al-ʿUthmān again stresses the implications (for patriarchal society) of any act of female defiance. Speaking through Abdullah, the author emphasises that Wasmiyya’s act of “escaping from her enclave [i.e. home]” (74) in order to satisfy her lustful desire is an act of “transgression” (80). Thus, the author uses the metaphor of a “caged bird” to refer to the circumstances of a great many pre-oil Arabian women. Abdullah informs us that no sooner had they both reached the beach on that night of their “romantic adventure” than they began their childlike romance (78 ff.). Sitting down on the ground, tightly close together, holding each other hand-in-hand, chatting, and playing with the sand, Abdullah asks: “Why have you agreed to come [with me]?” (80). Wasmiyya’s unpleasant reaction to this “embarrassing question” provokes the boy’s further comment on the significance of the girl’s act of ‘elopement’. “I imagined that I have accused her of ‘transgression’ ” (Ibid.), Abdullah comments. Consequent upon his self-corrective, yet interrogative statement: “I mean have you really been longing to see me? And to have a chat with me?” (Ibid.), Wasmiyya “looked relieved”. She “smiled”, “And nodded her head in affirmative” (Ibid., my emphasis).

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These positive gestures by the heroine indicate that she is an active agent in this act of transgression. By being on a date with the boy, Wasmiyya has broken class and societal barriers. She is aware of the dangerous implications of this action. What implications?! Evasion of Societal Chastisement While representing Kuwaiti women as victims, the text of Wasmiyya at the same time portrays them as evaders of patriarchal oppression embedded in the ideology of faḍīḥ a. The novel presents the tragic incident of Wasmiyya’s faḍīḥ a-related death to be accidental, rather than a deliberate, punitive act of aggression taken by a male relative against the so-called meek female. As we shall see below, it is Wasmiyya’s own rash action that leads to her destruction. This is presented at the point of denouement of the Abdullah-Wasmiyya secret love story, where the author seductively demonstrates that the heroine’s fatalistic end is ideologically caused. Abdullah-the-narrator recounts that because they are extremely happy with each other during their late-night romance at the seaside, he and Wasmiyya become “oblivious of the passage of time” (83). The idealistically thinking, romantically obsessed youths forget about the society around them. They are awakened to the reality of their lives when “Suddenly, [. . .] the beam of a light came from afar [. . .]” (Ibid.), indicating the presence of a night guard in the area. It is from this point in the text that the story begins to turn out as a ‘tragedy’, rather than (as the reader may have been expecting) a quest story of love between two adolescents kept apart by the socially/ideologically constructed class-and-gender-dichotomy factor. Wasmiyya is the one who is able to make an urgent decision in order to prevent the occurrence of a “muṣība” (tribulation) (Ibid.) that is about to befall the secret lovers. “I’ll jump21 into the water until they go” (84), she nervously says to him in her desperate bid to avoid the approaching night watchman. Vanishing before Abdullah could warn 21 The Arabic word used here is aghṭisu (derived from ghaṭasa) meaning “to dive”. But I have translated it to be “jump into the water” as the heroine lacks the skill to dive. Please note the typographical error in the spelling of the word aghṭisu in the first edition of the novel used for this study: what was printed in the quotation under discussion here is ughasṭisu, instead of aghṭisu.

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her of the danger involved in this decision, Wasmiyya leaves her lover terribly perplexed. The heroine’s rashness here thus constitutes an evasion of the Arab ideological oppression (in the name of faḍīḥ a). Through the narrative of both the ‘tragic process’ and the ‘tragic incident’ in the novel, al-ʿUthmān inversely presents what is apparently an instance of feminine weakness—Wasmiyya’s cowardice and ineptitude in the face of a looming, dangerous threat to her honour—as, rather, an act of courage. This is expressed through Abdullah’s internal musings, presented later in the narrative, as he returns home in tremendous grief and shock. While praising the girl’s courage for dying for a worthy cause— evasion of patriarchal chastisement—Abdullah ascribes cowardice to himself for his inability to have committed an instantaneous suicide on realising his lover’s death (93). He acknowledges the effectiveness of her fatalistic act when he notes that it is Wasmiyya who saves both of them from being exposed. For him, the deceased girl has acted bravely by effectively avoiding the vigilante acting as an “agent” of Kuwaiti patriarchal society—a society “that detests any moments of [. . .] love between innocent youths” (83–87). Summarily presenting the narrative of Abdullah’s obnoxious encounter with the night guard serves to provide an immediate link between the girl’s evasive action and the boy’s, which happens soon afterwards. Evidently the most moving part of the entire text, the scene of Abdullah’s discovery of Wasmiyya’s death represents the change of his fortune from that of a lucky lower-class boy winning the heart of an upper-class girl, to that of a bereaved and traumatised lover. As soon as the suspicious night guard leaves after having interrogated Abdullah, the latter rushes into the sea to begin his restless search for Wasmiyya. “Oh sea, guide me . . . tell [me]; is [my] lover here, [or] there?” (87), he pleads. Describing his extreme grief when he could not hear the girl respond to his silent call not “even by gasping” (88), Abdullah notes: “Darkness surrounds me, darkness was in my eyes . . . darkness was in my mind” (88). Then he notices her black veil floating in the dangerously turbulent water. He “hurriedly gripped [it] . . . pulled it toward [himself ] . . . thinking that it was Wasmiyya emerging from the sea” (88). As the rest of the events of this tragic aspect of the plot (and the dating episode in particular) unroll, the text begins to arouse the reader’s ‘pity and fear’ which, according to Aristotle, are essential elements of ‘tragedy’

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as a literary genre.22 When the hero eventually finds the heroine, she has already expired. All efforts to revive her fail (88). Traumatised, he remains standing, “half of his body inside the water, and Wasmiyya’s dead body in his hands”. He begins to move up and down “bowing like [a Muslim faithful] in a devotional posture . . . pleading [for divine intervention]” (89) in his predicament. This mono-dramatic action by the hero has an element of religious irony or mockery. Nevertheless, he and his mother are portrayed not just as highly religious but also as people who are able to distinguish between Islamic ethical values and Arabian cultural mores and practices (99). The hero in particular is a pro-feminist, pro-human rights, antipatriarchal-authority figure. For him, it is the societal interpellation enshrined in the concept of faḍīḥ a that is to blame for the loss of the secret-lover heroine. This is understandable in several of Abdullah’s elegiac pronouncements, his grievances addressed to the sea. An example is his hyperbolic statement: “I wetted [Wasmiyya’s body] with my tears; the dog—‘the sea’—had not wetted it as I had done” (89). Similarly, Abdullah/the author uses the words “kalb” and “ibn al-kalb” (literally: dog, and son of dog), both common abusive forms among Arabs, to refer to the personified killer-sea. Thus, the novel allegorically points an accusing finger at the sea, as if it were a human oppressor (89–90). For Abdullah, just as the sea had been the now-dead heroine’s beloved object and her place of escapade to which she “had come, full of happiness as she was exploring [her freedom]”, so too should the sea now “be [Wasmiyya’s] grave which will conceal her secret and protect her” from an oppressive society (90). He does not only refuse to take home the girl’s corpse, he also decides not to leave it lying conspicuously on the beach. Referring to the prevalence of societal inhibitions on gender and inter-class interactions, he reflects that should the secret of their “scandalous” dating come out into the open “the shame would be double, [people would be saying, derisively, that] ‘Wasmiyya went out to meet a [secret lover], and, [worse still, the boy] is the son of a poor female domestic assistant’” (Ibid.). Thus, the hero’s ‘burying’ the heroine in

22 For detailed explanation on Aristotle’s concept of ‘tragedy’, see, for example, Northrop Frye, Anatomy of Criticism: Four Essays (Princeton, N. J.: Princeton University Press, 1957; reprinted 1973), pp. 36–39.

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the sea constitutes his own form of evasion of or self-protection from societal chastisement. In addition to his evasive act, the hero protests against the oppressive Kuwaiti patriarchal social order until the end of his life. Abdullah’s protests against society are embodied his refusal to marry, after the event of Wasmiyya’s death, until late in his thirties, and under persistent pressure from his aging mother. Similarly and in pursuit of the pledge which he had made at the time of his lover’s death—that “rather than forsaking [the killer-sea], [he] will forever be hunting fish and donating it to Wasmiyya’s spirit [. . .]” (91)—Abdullah refuses to engage in any work or profession other than fishing (53 ff.). The scene of Abdullah’s breaking the sad news of Wasmiyya’s death to his mother is similarly significant to the novel’s exploration of the theme of female defiance and evasion of patriarchal authority and oppression. The traumatised Abdullah returns home, completely “wet”, “frighteningly shivering”, and looking utterly distressed. Disturbed by his strange appearance, his mother asks what is amiss. She faints on hearing the unbelievable, shocking news of Wasmiyya’s death (97). But the woman is much more astounded and aggrieved by the fact that her son had earlier been on a date with the deceased girl on that fateful night. According to Abdullah, what puzzles his mother most are the questions: ‘How could a secluded girl like Wasmiyya have ‘escaped’ from her home? How could she have behaved so defiantly in order to satisfy her wilful desires?’ (95). Exemplifying the Marxist-feminist concepts, al-ʿUthmān, in the novel under study, identifies both class and gender ideologies as coterminous in the perpetration of women’s oppression23 in Kuwaiti society. This is reflected in both the defiant Abdullah’s reactions to and his comments about his mother’s act of not believing that he had been on a date with Wasmiyya. The hero interprets his mother’s angry reaction to and extreme astonishment about the issue as an indirect way of expressing the culturally constructed notion of dating as an abomination. Articulating what he believes his mother is wondering about, Abdullah retorts:

23 See ‘The Marxist-Feminist Literature Collective’, “Women’s Writing: Jane Eyre, Shirley, Villette, Aurora Leigh”, Ideology and Consciousness, vol. 1, no. 3, (Spring 1978), pp. 27–28.

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chapter four Yes. Wasmiyya, a girl of noble descent . . . was with this poor [boy] . . . your son . . . the son of an underprivileged woman . . . Yes . . . [Wasmiyya had been with me earlier] this night (96).

For Abdullah’s mother, defiant figures like the heroine and the hero “must have been mad” (Ibid.) to have purposefully contravened the Arabian societal order. The stereotypical patterns of gender socialisation play a significant part in the heroine’s tragic end. Being a less empowered and conventionally socialised female member of society, Wasmiyya does not know how to swim (84). In pre-oil Kuwaiti society it was unusual that grown-up girls and women would swim. They could go to the sea for cleaning purposes like washing clothes and other household things. Therefore, Wasmiyya’s lack of the lifesaving skills of swimming and diving contributes to her drowning. Had she been male, the girl would not have been the one of the two lovers to have to hide somewhere in their desperate bid to avoid a “spying” night guard. If she were a male, she might not have drowned. Like Abdullah, she might have been familiar with and confident in the water. Abdullah and Wasmiyya’s love story exemplifies the fact that both genders, especially as youngsters, are the victim of patriarchal mores. Like Wasmiyya, Abdullah is made to suffer because of societal restrictions on class and gender relations. There are many examples of Kuwaiti and Arab literary writing that depict this form of men’s oppression in society. For instance, “The Protected One” (1967)—a short story by the Palestinian woman writer Samira Azzam—reflects how young people (in Palestinian/Arab society) must follow the traditions regarding the names they must give their children whenever they become fathers.24 Similarly, in Woman and Words in Saudi Arabia: The Politics of Literary Discourse, Saddeka Arebi notes that the issue of men as also victims of societal oppression is a common feature in some of the Saudi woman writer Khayriyya al-Saqqaf ’s short stories. Al-Saqqaf ’s “The Reflection”, for instance, treats the theme of ‘arranged marriage’, “its cyclical nature, and its effect on men and women as they struggle with realities

24 See Margot Badran and miriam cooke (eds.), Opening the Gates: An Anthology of Arab Feminist Writing, second edition (Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 2004), pp. 54–56.

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of change.”25 The next section examines the effectiveness of women’s cleverness and solidarity in subverting patriarchal authority. Women’s Solidarity During the pre-oil era, Kuwaiti women indulged in the use of some magical powers. “They believed in witches and in jinn (demons) and practised zār (spiritual possession).”26 “[T]he practise of zar”, as has been argued by Haya al-Mughni, “involves the manipulation of power relations in favour of the powerless. In other words, ‘spirit possession is a form of bargaining from a position of weakness.’ ”27 In spite of making the status of women and their oppression in pre-oil Kuwaiti society the focus of this novel, al-ʿUthmān depicts a form of female empowerment that is much more rationalistic than the historically realistic, magical (and devilish) ones, mentioned above. The text of Wasmiyya argues that women should work together to protect themselves, and that they should not collude in the perpetuation of their oppression in society. This is reflected through the role played by the older female characters in the novel, who are affected by the tragic death of the heroine. “I must do something. I must [. . .]” (98), Abdullah’s mother soliloquises. She must find a way of covering up the scandal caused by her son. Each time her son asks her what action she is planning to take in order to save the two families from an imminent threat to their honour, the woman replies: “It does not concern you” (98); “This is none of your business” (99). These and similar other expressions by the hero’s mother exemplify the novel’s representation of what could be called the “women’s zone”. They suggest not simply that the boy is a young, inexperienced person, but that he is not female. Both her statements here and the schema (discussed below) which she enacts in order to cover up their children’s scandal are an illustration of women’s silent empowerment as well as the existence of certain women-controlled realms within the male-dominated hierarchical social system.

25 Saddeka Arebi, Woman and Words in Saudi Arabia: The Politics of Literary Discourse (New York: Columbia University Press), p. 141; and for a translation of the story “The Reflection”, see pp. 155–156. 26 al-Mughni, op. cit., p. 47. 27 Ibid., p. 28.

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Consequently, both the “offending” hero and the reader become curious about how Abdullah and Wasmiyya’s mothers would handle the matter. If these women are able to resolve the issue amicably between themselves, what would they tell the people was the cause of the girl’s death? And how convincing could that be? Often portrayed by Abdullah/the author as a kind of female ‘demigod’—“trustworthy”, “reliable” and “clever” (94, 102)—Abdullah’s mother comes out with a “wise lie” (103). The gist of his mother’s subterfuge is put in the mouth of a minor female sympathiser-character, who explains the cause of the heroine’s death to another sympathiser. The former informs the latter: “They’d taken Wasmiyya to the sea . . . her mother and Abdullah’s . . . [They’d taken her there] in order to wash her hair and [some] pieces of clothes before the sun rose . . . But she was grasped by the sea (103).” The bereaved woman, Wasmiyya’s mother, “totally agrees to and affirms” this “great lie” (103). According to Abdullah, “no one would ever doubt” the chastity of a completely secluded, closely watched girl like Wasmiyya (103). This shows, therefore, that the two mothers’ lie is societally acceptable. It is convincing and rational. This is how al-ʿUthmān inversely represents the societal expectations from the typical Kuwaiti female—conformity to the norms—to demonstrate how restrictive controls on women’s social interactions could be exploited to the disadvantage of patriarchal hegemony. By publicly attributing the blame for the girl’s death to themselves— that it happened by accident—in order to avoid the associated societal punishment, Wasmiyya and Abdullah’s mothers demonstrate women’s affection and compassion as mothers. Their act of covering up the ‘scandal’ might be viewed as perpetuating some of the oppressive Kuwaiti traditional values, as they struggle to avoid any confrontation or disturbance to the patriarchal ideal. Nevertheless, this cover up serves to emphasise the necessity of women’s solidarity in protecting themselves in the face of male assertive social authority. With the older women’s cleverly concocted lie, the novel’s devised chain of evasions of patriarchal oppression is thus complete. Conclusion Despite its small significance to the plot of the novel, al-ʿUthmān’s adoption of “fantasy” as a narrative strategy in order to explore the

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social realist themes of love, class, and gender in Wasmiyya creates a remarkable literary effect. This can be corroborated by the fact that the author makes the time as well as the manner of the hero’s death correspond with those of the heroine. After prolonged hours of sorrowful recollection of the tragic loss of his lover many years back, the solitary Abdullah begins to hallucinate. Under the illusion that the late Wasmiyya is emerging from the sea, calling on him to come and re-unite with her, he rushes ferociously into the sea. He drowns on a night that shares many climatic features with the one of Wasmiyya’s death (111). By constructing the same form of heroically suicidal death for her two protagonists in the novel under study, al-ʿUthmān illustrates some of the fatalistic consequences of any attempt by an individual to attain superior freedom in a society where such freedom is excessively limited and can only be exercised within strict boundaries. (The relationship between human freedom and agency will be explained further in chapter six). This seems to explain why the author chooses ‘evasion’, rather than ‘confrontation’, as a form of subverting patriarchy. Wasmiyya’s discourse (including perhaps the underlying authorial intention) is arguably in contrast with the dominant masculinist narrative discourse of female selflessness and complacency. The novel reproduces and, at the same time, criticises repressive patriarchal beliefs and practices. Its reproduction of the hierarchical social structure of pre-oil Kuwaiti society is embodied in its expansive representation of the pervasiveness of class and gender dichotomies in that era. Its questioning of the dominant masculinist literary discourse is both explicit and implicit in its form and content. The hero’s voice is evidently authorial, and ‘feminist’. In this novel, al-ʿUthmān demonstrates that she is a conscious feminist writer: she has worked “within the patriarchal literary tradition”, but she has worked tirelessly “to subvert it.”28

28

Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar, The Madwoman in the Attic (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1979), p. 73, in Sue Spaull and Elaine Millard, “The Anxiety of Authorship” in Sara Mills, et al., Feminist Readings/Feminists Reading (London: Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1989), p. 129.

CHAPTER FIVE

RACE, CLASS, WAR, AND GENDER IN Ṭ AYYIBA ALIBRĀHĪM’S MUDHAKKIRĀT KHĀDIM . . . being may determine consciousness but revolutionary transformation of the conditions of being will depend upon raising the level of class [and gender]-consciousness. —Michele Barrett, Women’s Oppression Today: The Marxist/Feminist Encounter, p. 89. . . . war and nationalist struggle may operate as catalyst[s] for change, breaking down traditional barriers between men and women . . . —Therese Saliba, “A Country Beyond Reach: Liana Badr’s Writings of the Palestinian Diaspora” in Lisa Majaj et al. (eds.), Intersections: Gender, Nation, and Community in Arab Women’s Novels, p. 134.

Introduction Whereas Laylā al-ʿUthmān’s Wasmiyya treats the themes of love, class, and gender in pre-oil Kuwait, Ṭ ayyiba al-Ibrāhīm’s Mudhakkirāt khādim [A Servant’s Diary] explores the same themes in post-oil or contemporary Kuwait. Born in Kuwait in 1952, al-Ibrāhīm1 has a Diploma in Mathematics and has worked as a teacher and civil servant in Kuwait. She started writing at the age of thirteen (in the 1960s); her stories began to appear in the Kuwaiti dailies in the late 1970s. She has since published more than ten novels, most of them belonging to the science fiction genre.2 She is also a social and feminist critic, granting regular 1 For al-Ibrāhīm’s biography and list of her works, see Laylā M. Ṣāliḥ , Udabā’ wa-adībāt al-Kuwayt (Kuwait: The Kuwait Writers’ Association Press, 1996), pp. 173–177; available online: http://www.althakerah.net/inner.php?Level=2&Id=7&list=; or http://www.maraya.net/inner.php?Level=4&Id=78&list= (last accessed on 12 September, 2008). 2 Her science fiction novels—the first in the series being al-Insān al-bahiṭ [The Bewildered Human] published in Kuwait in 1986—deal with human cloning. They received some media attention throughout the Arab world beginning from the late 1990s consequent upon the real life cloning of a living being, Dolly the Sheep. See for example, the Kuwaiti weekly Mirʾāt al-umma [The Mirror of the Nation], no. 1117, 16 May, 1998; and al-Siyāsa [Politics], no. 11225, 29 February, 2000).

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interviews to the press and writing newspaper articles in support of the struggle for Kuwaiti women’s political and human rights. Her social reality narratives—mainly short stories—are very few. One of them is Mudhakkirāt khādim, which is the focus of our discussion in this chapter, hereafter referred to as Mudhakkirāt. As shown in its title, Mudhakkirāt—a novel of two parts published in 19953—is in diary form. This is a very rare mode of writing in the Kuwaiti literary tradition. The novel has two narrative levels. The main story—largely narrated using the first person, confessional mode—is contained in a diary, written by an unnamed domestic servant who is employed by a middle-class Kuwaiti family. Though already married and a father of several children, he soon develops an inordinate passion for his mistress, Madam Sāra, who is the heroine of the novel. Because the servant-diarist (herein simply referred to as ‘Indian’ because he, presumably, comes from the Subcontinent)4 is not literate in Arabic, the author claims that what we are reading is a translation from English into Arabic. The narrative of this diary—a ‘secondary narrative’—is embedded in a ‘primary or frame narrative’, which is ‘focalised’5 and narrated by the translator, a Kuwaiti man and friend of the family around whom the story revolves. In his introductory remarks that can be regarded as a ‘prologue’, the translator notes that he has been asked by the central female figure in the diary to change all the real names of persons and places that appear in the diary before publishing it (57). But, instead of replacing the names with other ones, the translator reverses their linear arrangements in such a way that the reader could easily recognise them.6 This makes it

3 Ṭ ayyiba al-Ibrāhīm, Mudhakkirāt khādim Parts I & II (Cairo: al-Muʾassasa al-ʿarabiyya al-ḥadītha, 1995). Please note that Part I was first published in 1986. 4 From the description of the servant and his country of origin, it is very easy to conclude that he comes from the Indian Subcontinent, which includes, notably, countries like India, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, and Pakistan. Bangladeshis constitute the highest percentage of domestic workers in Kuwait. 5 On ‘primary and secondary narrative levels’, ‘focalisation’ (point of view) and ‘narration’, see Gerard Genette, Narrative Discourse, (Basil Blackwell, 1972). For brief explanations of Genette’s narratology, see Peter Barry, Beginning Theory: An Introduction to Literary and Cultural Theory, first published in 1995, (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2002, 2nd edition), pp. 231–247; and Shlomith Rimmon-Kenan, Narrative Fiction: Contemporary Poetics (London: Routledge, 1983), pp. 71 ff. 6 The names, as they appear in the novel, are put as Tayūk (for Kuwayt), Daʿūs (for Saʿūd), Harās (for Sāra[h]), Līban (for Nabīl), Riṣān (for Nāṣir), etc. Please note that the arrangement of these words is better understood in its original Arabic scripts, rather than in transliteration.

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possible for readers to identify the story with Kuwait, its people, and its social and political history in recent times. Combining social and historical realisms, the novel depicts the life of the heroine for more than a decade—from 1977 to 1991 (Part I)— before linking it with the events of the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait (Part II). The broader argument of this book is that the selected texts portray the older/pre-oil generations of Kuwaiti women as resistant/revolutionary figures. Being a novel about post-oil Kuwait only, how does Mudhakkirāt fit into this argument? Al-Ibrāhīm’s specification, in the novel, of the age of the heroine in particular, as a woman in her thirties in the late 1970s, is very illuminating. It shows that the heroine was born in the late 1940s or early 1950s. It is the heroine who is portrayed in the novel as revolutionary, rather than, for instance, her daughter, who belongs to the younger, post-oil (1970s–1980s) generation. This chapter examines the novel’s representation of class and gender relations in Kuwait before, during, and after the Iraq-Kuwait war. My analysis follows this chronology in order to show how the war has helped not only in raising the level of Kuwaiti women’s revolutionary consciousness, but also in transforming some aspects of their social conditions. Race, Class, and Gender in Pre-War Kuwait Constituting the main theme that situates al-Ibrāhīm as a socialist writer in Mudhakkirāt is the treatment of the systemic exploitation and segregation of immigrant workers in Kuwait.7 Whereas in the pre-oil era the

7 Another issue raised in the novel that situates the socialist persuasion of the author is ‘the Bidūn question’, which features as a sub-theme in Mudhakkirāt. As has been briefly discussed in the introduction to this book, the problems of the Bidūns (Stateless) are, no doubt, one of the major sociological problems facing virtually all the modern Arabian Gulf States. Some human rights groups and women’s organisations in Kuwait in particular continue to make efforts to have the Kuwaiti government solve this problem, not least in view of the obvious population crisis facing the country. The Bidūns problems remain at the marginal level of the narrative. Captured in a dialogic scene set in Mr Nabīl’s house, al-Ibrāhīm’s criticism of the Kuwaiti government policy on the Bidūns is filtered through the consciousness of Mrs Nabīl who is a minor character in the novel (see Mudhakkirāt, p. 115). For more on the problems faced by the Bidūns and their spouses and children in Kuwait see, for example, a collection of interviews granted by some Kuwaiti women and edited by Mutʿib al-Dawṣurī under the title “Worries and Aspirations of Kuwaiti Women Married to Non-Kuwaitis [including the Bidūns]” (in Arabic) in the Kuwaiti newspaper al-Fajr al-Jadīd [The New

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class dichotomy was between the upper and lower class strata of Kuwaiti society, the post-oil era is characterised more by the citizen-immigrant dichotomy than by any clear-cut class difference among the Kuwaitis themselves. Domestic servants are no longer native (Kuwaiti/Arabian Gulf) citizens. The servants nowadays could be male or female, working as both house-keepers and drivers. This phenomenon has complicated the level of interaction between the sexes of both classes: masters/ mistresses and servants. The novel not only reflects this complexity in class and gender relations but also provides several alternatives to the Kuwaiti patriarchal social system. Can women and immigrant workers in Kuwait speak? Gayatri Spivak’s famous essay “Can the Subaltern Speak?”8 continues to be a significant reference point in the areas of postcolonial and subaltern studies. The subject of debate and controversy in these areas is slightly different from the situation in the contemporary Arabian Gulf States, where the issue is not that of the struggle between the colonist-Europe/ West as the dominant culture, and the colonised-Third world as the subaltern “Other”. Rather, it is the case of Kuwaiti/Arabian natives as the dominant group/employers, versus low-waged immigrant (mainly Asian) workers as the victimised/oppressed ‘Other’. Hence, the social and economic conditions of immigrant workers in these states can be situated within the global context of the “international division of labour”, which is at the centre of the post-colonial debate. The Gulf States continue to rely on the countries of South and Southeast Asia as their source of cheap labour. Recently, in July and August 2008, the world media attention was drawn to the plight of the low-waged immigrant workers, mainly of Bangladeshi origin, in Kuwait. The workers embarked on a strike and demonstrated (turning violent at one point) on the streets of Kuwait City. They were demanding higher wages and much better, more humane working conditions.

Dawn], no. 95, (7 August, 1991); and another by ʿĀʾisha al-Jiyār in al-Siyāsa newspaper, no. 10634, (3 July, 1998). 8 Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, “Can the Subaltern Speak?” in Patrick Williams and Laura Chrisman (eds.), Colonial Discourse and Post-colonial Theory: A Reader (New York: Columbia University Press), pp. 66–111; also in C. Nelson and Grossberg (eds.), Marxism and the Interpretation of Culture (Basingstoke: Macmillan Education, 1988), pp. 271–313.

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The Kuwaiti government tried to control the situation in two ways. First, it responded by ordering a quick pay rise for the workers by both government-owned and private (mainly Asian-owned) companies and recruiting agents. Second, some of the striking workers were later arrested and instantaneously deported.9 Mudhakkirāt exposes the deplorable conditions in which unskilled immigrant workers in Kuwait live. Specifically at the beginning of Part I, the novel demonstrates how, as has been noted by al-Mughni, class and sexual segregation is systemic and holistic in contemporary Kuwait.10 In the narrative of his experience on his first day at the service of his Kuwaiti employers, the servant-diarist-narrator informs us that he is given a room in an annex, detached from the building in which Madam Sāra and her family live. Though put in an uncritical way, his comments—that the room is sparsely furnished and too tiny to accommodate even a single individual—give an impression of the prevalent exploitation of unskilled, immigrant workers in the region at large. In some cases the situation of the female immigrant subaltern is even worse. In addition to their economic woes, some female domestic servants in the region are victims of both physical and sexual abuse by their employers. These kinds of ‘gendered offences’ (it is hard to find a male servant victimised in these ways) are represented in the first ship episode in the novel (6). According to Spivak, one of the main issues of concern in a Marxistoriented, socio-political conversation between the French poststructuralist theorists Michel Foucault and Gilles Deleuze11 was “the worker’s struggle”. Deleuze says: “We [proletariats/working class] are unable to touch [power] in any point of its application without finding ourselves confronted by diffuse mass, so that we are necessarily led . . . to the desire to blow it up completely. Every partial revolutionary attack or defense is linked in this way to the worker’s struggle.”12 Commenting on this 9 For several media reports on this, see for instance, “Employer abuse behind strike, says Kuwait” in the UAE based Gulfnews: http://archive.gulfnews.com/articles/ 08/08/01/10233296.htm; and “Kuwait sets minimum wage for state-contracted firms”: http://archive.gulfnews.com/articles/08/08/04/10234362.htm). 10 Haya al-Mughni, Women in Kuwait: The Politics of Gender (London: Saqi Books, 1993), p. 59. 11 The conversation between these two theorists was published in Michel Foucault, Language, Counter-Memory, Practice: Selected Essays and Interviews, trans. Donald F. Bouchard and Sherry Simon (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1977, pp. 205–217); and cited in Spivak, op. cit., pp. 66–67. 12 Cited in Ibid.

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statement, Spivak writes: “The link to the worker’s struggle is located in the desire to blow up power at any point of its application. This site is apparently based on a simple valorization of any desire destructive of any power” (original emphasis).”13 Mudhakkirāt reflects the struggle of an Asian worker in Kuwait. That struggle is not for political representation but for improved and dignifying social conditions. As this chapter progresses, we shall see how the Indian servant’s ardent “desire” to be his Kuwaiti mistress’ husband/ lover disrupts the Kuwaiti patriarchal social order when, with the aid of war, he eventually achieves his ‘lofty’ goal. Apart from the desire (and “interest”) which the oppressed people “must” have in order for them to able to “touch power”, or at least gain political representation, and therefore have their social conditions transformed, Spivak also emphasizes two things which the French theorists seemed to have agreed upon. Only one of them is very pertinent to our discussion here: that “intellectuals must attempt to disclose and know the discourse of society’s Other.”14 It is based on this important role of representing society’s Other (the subaltern), which is expected of intellectuals of the dominant group/culture, that Spivak has asked the two questions: “Can the subaltern speak?” and “What must the elite do to watch out for the continuing [social and cultural] construction of the subaltern?”15 Even if the subaltern—the Third World people and women in particular—cannot speak in the face of the overbearingly dominant (Western) cultural and literary discourse, they can be, or are being made able to speak through locally produced forms of the same media. This is the view expressed by Rahul Gairola in an article entitled “Burning with Shame: Desire and South Asian Patriarchy, from Gayatri Spivak’s “Can the Subaltern Speak?” to Deepa Mehta’s Fire”. Gairola argues that through the medium of the film Fire the subaltern is able to “speak” even to a global audience.16 It is plausible to suggest that al-Ibrāhīm demonstrates that, through the medium of works of art like the novel under study, the subaltern—in the fictional world of the text: immigrant workers and Kuwaiti women—

13

Cited in Ibid. Cited in Ibid. 15 See Ibid., p. 90. 16 Rahul Gairola, “Burning with Shame: Desire and South Asian Patriarchy, from Gayatri Spivak’s “Can the Subaltern Speak?” to Deepa Mehta’s Fire”, Comparative Literature, vol. 54, Issue 4 (Fall 2002), pp. 307–324. 14

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can speak. What is significant in Mudhakkirāt as a medium through which the subaltern groups in contemporary Kuwaiti society can become speaking subjects is the claim by the author that the novel is the personal account (diary) of the Indian servant, as explained earlier. A further note on this point will be made later. Before the outbreak of war in Kuwait, the servant as a subaltern figure could not ‘speak’. How? As in most countries of the world today, which are ‘consumers’ of international labour, there are two categories of immigrant workers in Kuwait: the skilled and the unskilled. Two major characters in the novel, Mr Nabīl and the servant, respectively, represent these two categories. Mr Nabīl is a married Arab man of undisclosed nationality (probably from Egypt, Syria, Lebanon, Palestine, and so on). He becomes Madam Sāra’s business partner, the manager of a trading company, which she establishes after the death of her husband and after her retirement from the teaching profession (58). A kind of relationship often determined by social class affiliation rather than racial factors, the Madam Sāra-Mr Nabīl relationship symbolises the much better living conditions and high prestige accorded skilled immigrant workers in contemporary Arabian society. This is contrasted with the way Madam Sāra deals with the servant (before the Iraqi invasion). Although she respects the servant’s intelligence and knowledge, the heroine does not feel free to interact with him or engage him in any intellectual debate as she always does with Mr Nabīl. Nevertheless, it is very obvious in the text that, though a servant-mistress relationship, their relationship at this stage is based on the notion of class rather than racial difference between the duo. Instances of Madam Sāra’s revolutionary-mindedness before the war can be found, more glaringly, in her manners and approaches of handling intra-family matters which are contradictory to the patriarchal system. Gender and marital fidelity Like other texts selected for study in this book, Mudhakkirāt represents the family as the main avenue for the perpetuation of patriarchal authority and control over women. But the Kuwaiti family life depicted in the novel is not a very typical one. The husband/father as the traditional family head appears in the novel only briefly. He lives abroad for most of the time and, on his return to Kuwait, does not live long. He dies before the Iraqi invasion. Whereas the servant often describes his mistress as pretty, cool-headed, and sociable, her husband—a middle-aged man in his forties—is portrayed as ugly, hard-hearted, and unfriendly (20–24).

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A patriarchal figure, Madam Sāra’s husband represents a category of Kuwaiti men who lack chastity and not only exploit but also abuse the subaltern. While her husband flirts around with women, the heroine remains chaste and self-restrained, even in the man’s prolonged absence from home (25). This kind of male infidelity in Muslim societies is what Pamela Allegretto-Diiulio would interpret as tantamount to ‘female sexual entrapment in Islam’. Using Naguib Mahfouz’s Midaq Alley and other novels as her guide, Allegretto-Diiulio relies solely and quotes profusely from works by Arab feminist-sociologists to infer that the entrapment of female sexuality depicted in those novels is in line with Islamic values.17 Although she occasionally quotes, either directly or indirectly, from the Qur’an and Hadith (sayings of the Prophet Muhammad), AllegrettoDiiulio’s opinions about and interpretations of the gendered aspects of Mahfouz’s novels are drawn largely from a comparison of Islamic/ Arab culture with the ‘hegemonic’, modern Western culture. Hence, she innocuously stresses how some aspects of the former (including the segregation of the sexes, marriage customs and the wearing of the hijāb) may be considered “unethical”.18 Her critique of and frequent reference to the religion of Islam as a determinant in female sexual entrapment in the Arab world, rather than (Arab patriarchal) cultural practices, is ill-informed. Just as we cannot say that everything that Westerners do nowadays—especially as regards love and sexuality—is approved of and encouraged by Christianity (the presumed religion of the majority of the Western population), so, too, do the behaviours and practises of Muslims not necessarily represent the teachings of Islam. Like some Asian and African cultures and religions, Islam permits the practice of polygamy (or ‘polygyny’: marrying more than one wife at a time). But the religion prohibits sexual immorality and licentiousness, which are considered adultery, or fornication. Not all al-Ibrāhīm’s above-named male characters comply, as Muslims, with the Islamic rules regarding love and marital relationships.

17 Pamela Allegretto-Diiulio, Naguib Mahfouz: A Western and Eastern Cage of Female Entrapment (Youngtown, NY: Cambria Press, 2007), pp. 31–71. I acknowledge Professor Hilary Kilpatrick for introducing this book to me, when she asked me to review it for the journal Middle Eastern Literatures (MEL). 18 Ibid., p. 58.

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Like some of Mahfouz’s male characters in the above-named novel in particular, three of al-Ibrāhīm’s characters in Mudhakkirāt—Madam Sāra’s husband, her son-in-law Nasir and, of course, the Indian servant—demonstrate a lack of marital fidelity in their respective ways, which we shall see as this chapter progresses. This behaviour is reflective not of the men’s religious precepts, but of their own desires. With the sudden death of her husband—he dies from a heart attack (134)—the heroine becomes the sole head of the household. As matriarch, she neither dictates to her children, nor forces them to do anything against their wishes, as her husband, had he remained alive, would have done. This is evident in the narrative of Hudā’s divorce plan, which serves to illustrate how Kuwaiti family law is discriminatory against women, and how the women are advocating for change. Gender and Kuwaiti family law “Family law” writes Leila Ahmed, “is the cornerstone of the system of male privilege set up” by what she calls “establishment Islam”, i.e. the male-dominated governments of most Muslim countries. “That it is still preserved almost intact signals the existence of enormously powerful forces within [especially] Middle Eastern societies determined to uphold male privilege and male control over women.”19 Ahmed unequivocally condemns and declares as “misogynist” the social, political, cultural and religious systems enforced by governments in most Muslim states. She emphasises that “Clearly, the Islam such governments set up bears no relation to an Islam reinterpreted [by Islamic modernists/feminists] to give precedence to the ethical voice of Islam.”20 Mudhakkirāt reflects the oppressiveness of Kuwaiti legal provisions on family matters, specifically divorce. In what serves to strengthen his reliability as a narrator, the servant tells us that having lived in Kuwait for over a decade and having become fluent in the Kuwaiti (Arabic) dialect, he begins to spy on his mistress. In doing this, he taps information about Madam Sāra’s thoughts, plans, and actions through different categories of informants. These include his own wife who has joined him as a co-servant working for the same Kuwaiti family. He also uses an electronic device, an audiotape recorder, which his “unsuspecting”

19 Leila Ahmed, Women and Gender in Islam, (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1992), “Conclusion”, p. 242. 20 Ibid.

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wife colludes with him in operating and positioning in strategic points within the house (59, 63, 65). One of the events surreptitiously recorded in the audiotape is a family meeting between Madam Sāra and her grown-up and married children, Murād and Hudā. They are meeting to discuss some urgent family matters. The mother’s second marriage plan, which features first in this family-meeting episode, is overshadowed by the latter issue, her daughter’s divorce proposal. Playing the role of a third person ‘reflector’—as he listens to the cassette, he transcribes what he hears and, at the same time, comments intermittently on the speeches and actions of the respective characters involved—the servant tells us that Madam Sāra approaches the issues at stake here in her characteristically “democratic spirit” (96). “I have not a single objection to any decision you think is best for your life” (Ibid.). This is how she begins her parental advice for Hudā. As Carol Gilligan has observed “women and men take moral decisions differently”21 This statement, as Michele Barrett has argued, is “generalist” as it tends to emphasise “gender essentialism”. Hence, it should be understood within specific cultural and historical contexts.22 In the context of the Kuwaiti family depicted in the novel under discussion, the statement is very accurate. Implicitly, Madam Sāra’s late husband (as Hudā’s father) would not have made such a democratic pronouncement. He would have employed the patriarchal rule of force in handling matters like his daughter’s divorce plan. The problems of gender discrimination and women’s oppression in post-oil Kuwaiti society feature significantly in the episode under discussion. Portraying Murād as an emerging patriarchal figure is the fact (not that he is the one who introduces the issue of his sister’s agitation for divorce, rather than the affected Hudā herself but) that when Murād does, he acts in a bullying manner. Referring to his sister, Murād says addressing their mother: “She’s crazy . . . you’ve spoiled and pampered her. She is insisting on getting a divorce” (94).

21

Carol Gilligan, In a Different Voice, (London, n. p., 1982); cited in Michele Barrett, Women’s Oppression Today: the Marxist/feminist Encounter (London: Verso, 1988, revised edition), “Introduction”, p. xxxii. 22 Ibid.

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Moreover, Murād and Nāṣir, Hudā’s husband who is being accused of disloyalty,23 seem to have formed a kind of patriarchal solidarity. This can be corroborated by the fact that as soon as the dispute between the couple erupted it was Murād whom Nāṣir contacted, rather than his mother-in-law. Thus, Murād, rather than Madam Sāra, is recognised as head of the family. Whereas the Kuwaiti male characters in the novel continue to think and act in line with patriarchal social values, their female counterparts continue to do just the opposite. In the family-meeting episode for instance, Hudā—trying to defend her right to divorce (at any time she wishes)—furiously declares Kuwaiti family law as “man made”, and unfair to women (98). In the same manner, Madam Sāra voices her awareness and dislike of women’s social repression. “In our society women are always suppressed” she laments. “It is surely a great humiliation for a woman to find her husband chasing another woman” she adds (104). Pointing to the fact that the novel is ‘theorised’, the author demonstrates her knowledge of or acquaintance with some modern Western linguistic, philosophical, psychoanalytical, and feminist theories. In the scene under discussion here for instance, the author, speaking through Hudā, refers to the young men in the family—Hudā’s husband and brother—as agents of what she calls “the patriarchal logic” (98). I think by this phrase the author simply means ‘the patriarchal discourse’ through which women are reduced to the disadvantaged (object) position in society. The phrase can be understood in terms of Jacques Lacan’s notion of the ‘nom-du-pèré’, or ‘the law of the Father’. Otherwise known as the ‘Symbolic Order’, ‘the law of the Father’ “is marked by the law of structuration of meanings.”24 Explained from social and cultural contexts, it is the system of language and discourse by which the “feminine” is considered repressed and silenced, while the masculine assumes the (speaking) subject position. Feminist theorists

23 Men’s disloyalty in marriage is also an important theme in Mudhakkirāt. Like Nāṣir’s emerging disloyalty in this episode, Madam Sāra’s husband is disloyal for his ‘un-solemnised’ affair with a non-Kuwaiti ‘playgirl’ because of whom he abandons his wife and children for four years; Mr Nabīl is disloyal for loving Madam Sāra; and the servant-diarist exploits and later abandons his wife during the war because of his obsessive passion for Madam Sāra. 24 See Elaine Millard, “French Feminisms”, in Sara Mills et al. (eds.), Feminist Readings/Feminists Reading (London: Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1989), p. 156.

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and critics have vigorously countered this kind of ‘phallogocentric’ discourse, as it is male-centred.25 It is important to note here that, like so many other Arab/Muslim women’s texts, Mudhakkirāt does not point to the rules of Sharīʿa (Islamic law) as oppressive of and discriminatory to women. Rather, the novel blames patriarchal culture and institutions. In the case of Muslim societies, “establishment Islam” is the one to blame, as has been noted by Ahmed as explained above. Another example of Islamic-feminist scholars and critics who have emphasised the same point was the late American Muslim woman convert, Lois Lamya’ al-Fārūqī, who was assassinated together with her husband in 1986. In her Women, Muslim Society and Islam, she writes: “As far as Muslim women are concerned, the source of any difficulties experienced today is not Islam and its traditions, but certain alien ideological intrusions on our societies, ignorance, and distortion of the true Islam, or exploitation by individuals within the society.”26 Yet, some critics and commentators would want to emphasise and see everything done by a Muslim (real or fictional figure)—especially as regards gender relations and women’s sexuality—as representative of Islamic values.27 Although al-Ibrāhīm does not make reference, or even allude, to any Islamic alternatives to the Kuwaiti legal provisions on family matters, it is pertinent to note here that Islam recognises women’s rights in all cases, including marriage and divorce. In the Sharīʿa, there is room for male-instigated and female-instigated forms of divorce. Al-Fārūqī lists the four circumstances under which “[t]he wife is entitled to originate dissolution of her marriage.”28 All four are valid and applicable.29 The novel’s criticism of gender discrimination inherent in the maledictated Kuwaiti legal system is voiced by the heroine and her daughter,

25

Elaine Millard’s chapter above (in Ibid., pp. 154–186) and Lynne Pearce and Sara Mills’ chapter on “Marxist-Feminism” (in Ibid., pp. 187–226), contain some examples of feminist interpretations and critiques of Freud’s “the Symbolic Order” and Lacan’s “the Law of the Father”. 26 Lamyaʾ al-Fārūqī, Women, Muslim Society and Islam (Plainfield, IN: American Trust Publications, first published in 1988; reprinted edition, 1994), pp. 29–30. The book was a product of a series of lectures she gave in the US prior to her assassination. 27 See Allegretto-Diiulio, op. cit., p. 31 ff. 28 al-Fārūqī, op. cit., p. 73. 29 For more information on the permissibility and legality of female-initiated divorce in Islam, see, for example, Abdur Rahman I Doi, Sharīʿah: The Islamic Law (London: Ta Ha Publishers, 1984), pp. 192–197.

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rather than by the non-Kuwaiti male narrator. Thus the author makes Kuwaiti women themselves expose and condemn the modern form of their oppression. If the heroine was revolutionary-minded in peacetime, as we have just seen, to what extent was her character affected in wartime? Race, Class, and Gender during the Iraq-Kuwait War In its entry dated 2nd of August 1990—corresponding to the real date of the Iraqi invasion—Mudhakkirāt begins to turn into a war narrative. Pointing to the multi-vocal nature of the novel, al-Ibrāhīm captures the panoramically presented, initial forms of the Iraqi offensives through the consciousness of Madam Sāra’s sister—an unnamed, minor character whom we never meet directly. Early in the morning of the day of the invasion, the servant hears the extremely perplexed Madam Sāra, after a telephone conversation with her sister, address Hudā: “[She] was forced back home trekking, . . . [I mean] your aunt, after [the Iraqi forces] have extorted her car” (122). According to the heroine’s sister, the invaders militarised all major roads, “humiliated most [Kuwaitis] who had gone to work [that] fateful morning”, targeted government buildings, banks, oil refineries, and so on (122). These kinds of war time experiences have been documented in many eyewitness accounts by Kuwaitis and expatriates as well. Al-Ibrāhīm’s fictional representation of the events of the invasion is akin to the personal account of, for instance, Lt. C. Fred L. Hart Jr., who was then serving as an American military adviser to the Kuwait Land Forces.30 Our focus in the rest of this chapter will centre on the gendered dimensions of the war and the impact of the war, both positive and negative, on Kuwaiti women’s lives. Women’s struggle for ‘dual liberation’ Miriam cooke and Roshni Rustomji-Kerns have noted the fact that “Women’s experience of twentieth-century war in South Asia and the

30 See “The Iraqi Invasion of Kuwait: An Eyewitness Account” by LTC Fred L. Hart Jr. http://users.lighthouse.net/danvaught/eyewitness01.html (retrieved on 28 July, 2008). For a list and brief study of Kuwaiti short stories depicting the Iraqi occupation, see Barbara Michalak-Pikulska, The Contemporary Kuwaiti Short Story in Peacetime and War, 1929–1995 (Krakow: The Enigma Press, 1997), pp. 88 ff.

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Middle East challenges the separation of [war-]front and home-front and of family and society common to most modern Western wars.”31 They note further that South Asian and Middle Eastern “women as well as men [. . .] became actively involved in opposing their [. . .] colonizers/ [occupiers]”; and that “Their joint struggle against an external enemy made them aware of a parallel, yet barely unacknowledged, conflict at home.”32 This kind of struggle is what Margot Badran has called “dual liberation”, a phrase that serves to capture how the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth century Egyptian women struggled for liberation from patriarchal social domination at the same time as they participated in “the nationalist movement against British occupation.”33 The theme of ‘dual liberation’ is dominant in some Arab women’s novels, as it “similarly informs women’s struggles for political and social transformation in Lebanon, Palestine, and Algeria.”34 Like their counterparts from South Asia and other countries of the Middle East, Kuwaiti women struggled against both external (Iraqi) occupation and internal (Kuwaiti patriarchal) domination. The representation in some war narratives of Kuwaiti women’s violent and nonviolent forms of resistance to the Iraqi occupation has been discussed elsewhere by the present writer.35 Hence, the discussion here will centre on Mudhakkirāt’s depiction of women’s activism not as ‘resistant combatants’ but as ‘resistant ideologists’, as explained below. Kuwaiti women as double victims of war and the ideology of faḍīḥ a That women are often victims of both war and patriarchal social values is not peculiar to the Third World countries of the global south (Africa,

31

Miriam cooke and Roshni Rustomji-Kerns (eds.), Blood into Ink: South Asian and Middle Eastern Women Write War (Boulder and Oxford: Westview Press, 1994), “Introduction”, p. 2. 32 Ibid. 33 Margot Badran, “Dual Liberation: Feminism and Nationalism in Egypt, 1870– 1925”, Feminist Issues; cited in Lisa S. Majaj, Paula W. Sunderman, and Therese Saliba, Intersections: Gender, Nation, and Community in Arab Women’s Novels (Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 2002), “Introduction”, p. xx. 34 See Ibid. 35 See O. I. Tijani, “Gendering the Iraq-Kuwait Conflict: Literary Representations of Kuwaiti Women’s Resilience and Resistance”, Journal of Arabic Literature, vol. 39 (2008), pp. 241–260.

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Asia, and Latin America). Gender and War in Twentieth-Century Eastern Europe36 is one of the products of feminist inquiries not just on gender roles, but also on the prevalence of women’s objectification and oppression during modern Western wars. In her essay “The Nation’s Pain and Women’s Shame”, for instance, Katherine R. Jolluck reveals how some Polish women used “the idea and ideals of the nation in coping with the physical adversity and violence they endured as a result of their conditions and treatment in exile”37 in Russia during World War II. Jolluck’s findings, based on interviews and personal (oral and written) accounts of some of the victims, reveal that women as well as men suffered many traumas and violations in the name and interest of the nation. Some forms of violation, however, “affected [the] women so specifically, [. . .], that they could not talk about them in terms of the nation; the more gendered the indignities and assaults, the less relevant the category of the nation for discussing them.”38 Like Caroline Moser and many other feminist scholars,39 Jolluck emphasizes the fact that in most armed conflicts of the modern world “women’s sexuality became a weapon in the hands of men with authority, a tool with which to humiliate and control them.”40 In the novel under study here, al-Ibrāhīm demonstrates how Kuwaiti women have suffered certain “gendered offences”—offences perpetrated by men, and which victimise “women specifically as females” and encompass “a range of situations and conducts”41 by the Iraqi occupiers. Through the ‘house-raid’ and the ‘escape to Saudi Arabia’ episodes in the novel, al-Ibrāhīm captures Kuwaiti women’s vulnerability to rape, humiliation, abduction, and sexual abuse during the war. House raid Set in Nāsir’s house (located on the outskirts of Kuwait City, and to where all of Madam Sāra’s household has just moved for safety reasons),

36 Nancy W. Wingfield (ed.), Gender and War in Twentieth-Century Eastern Europe (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2006). 37 Katherine R. Jolluck, “The Nation’s Pain and Women’s Shame” in Wingfield, op. cit., p. 194. 38 Ibid. 39 See Caroline O. N. Moser and Fiona C. Clark (eds.), Victims, Perpetrators or Actors?: Gender, Armed Conflict and Political Violence (London and New York: Zed Books, 2001), p. 30 ff. 40 Wingfield, op. cit., p. 198. 41 Ibid.

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the events of the house-raid episode are filtered through the consciousness of the servant-narrator. He informs us that in the morning of the fourth day of the invasion, five Iraqi soldiers, too impatient to wait for the door to be opened, force their way into the house with powerful gunshots (148). Peeping from one of the rooms where he, his wife, and Madam Sāra are hiding, the servant recounts that “[t]he Iraqi troops surrounded [Hudā] and her husband from all angles . . . Their commander shouted at her: ‘why did you prevent him from coming out to us?’” (149). One of the soldiers asks their commander for permission to “discipline” Hudā for preventing her husband from opening the door for them. Then, Nāṣir quickly goes down on his knees. Holding the commander’s leg, he pleads with him fervently: “Please, kill me before a hand will touch the [women] in my house” (149). Nāṣir’s passionate plea here implies that rape is what the soldiers meant as their method of disciplining a young woman like Hudā. The statement: “[y]ou’re [an Arab] man, you know the value and meaning of what I’m saying . . .” (Ibid.), with which Nāṣir continues to beg for leniency, also implies the notion of sharaf (social dishonour). The events of this episode also reflect some of the “economic consequences of armed conflict” on society in general and women in particular.42 Though Hudā is eventually spared being raped, it is not without a price. “You’ve saved the women with a large amount of gold” (153). This is what the servant-narrator says, consoling Nāṣir, after invaluable pieces of jewellery belonging to Hudā have been taken (as ransom) by the raiding Iraqi soldiers. Nāṣir’s actions and speeches above serve to underscore the fact that, although women are the actual victims of rape and sexual abuse, they are not just the only ones suffering shame. It is the entire family. To protect the loss of a family’s social standing is considered the responsibility of the male members like father, husband, and brother. As Hudā’s husband, Nāṣir performs this protective role in this house-raid episode and the ‘escape to Saudi Arabia’, discussed in the next section.

42

See Moser and Clark, op. cit., pp. 30–51.

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Is leaving one’s homeland during conflict an unpatriotic act? In War’s Other Voices: Women Writers on the Lebanese Civil War, miriam cooke asserts: “All who have lived through a war, even if on the margins, have participated [. . .].”43 While one would agree with her on this statement, she tends to generalise with regard to her other gendered assertions on the wars which some Middle Eastern countries have experienced. For instance, in a more recent work Women Claim Islam: Creating Islamic Feminism through Literature, she states: “Despite the dangers [of the war], many Kuwaiti women stayed to endure the invasion while the men left.”44 Apparently influenced by her findings in the Lebanese women’s war texts, cooke continues to question, in her writings on Middle Eastern women’s war narratives, the patriotic sensibilities of people, especially men, who leave their country in times of war and armed conflict. In contrast to cooke’s assertion above, Mudhakkirāt, like many other war narratives by Kuwaiti male and female writers, shows that Kuwaiti people of both sexes left their country during the 1990–1991 period of Iraqi military occupation. One of the Kuwaiti female writers and critics cooke has relied upon in emphasising that staying in a beleaguered nation is sheer patriotism is Dalal al-Zibn. The latter argues that “staying in the country is a nationalist action for anyone who feels any sense of responsibility. . . .Whoever during times of trouble can think of something other than saving the nation does not deserve to live in a free state.”45 The heroine of the novel—a revolutionary female from the viewpoint of this book—decides and ‘advises’ members of her extended family to leave Kuwait some days after the invasion (141). Going by al-Zibn’s statement above, is Madam Sāra’s decision here ‘unpatriotic’? No. The novel provides many instances of her patriotic sensibility and of her love and sacrifices for the nation. That she has “lived through [the] war,” even if only for a few days, suggests that

43 Miriam cooke, War’s Other Voices: Women Writers on the Lebanese Civil War (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988), p. 2. 44 Miriam cooke, Women Claim Islam: Creating Islamic Feminism through Literature (New York: Routledge, 2001), p. 15. 45 Dalal Faysal Suʿūd al-Zibn, Ayyām al-qahr al-Kuwaytiyya al-thani min aghustus 1990 ḥ attā 27 fabrāyir 1991 [Kuwaiti Days of Oppression August 2, 1990–February 27, 1991] (Kuwait: Dār Suʿād al-Sabah, 1993, pp. 128, 141; cited in cooke, Women Claim Islam, p. 15.

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she has “participated” in the war. In fact, as we shall see, Madam Sāra participates in the war at home and in exile, going by cooke’s argument above. One thing we should try to remember is the fact that no amount of joint efforts by the Kuwaiti armed forces and its entire citizens could have defeated Saddam Hussein’s forces. It is not incomprehensible, therefore, that, in a situation like that, the struggle for individual survival overrides that of the nation. Al-Ibrāhīm could have made her heroine stay in the war-torn country. However, she exiles Madam Sāra. This is for a purpose—the attainment of which will perhaps be much more significant to the personal (feminist) than the communal (Kuwaiti nationalist) struggle. Madam Sāra and her family members’ reason for deciding to leave occupied Kuwait is explicitly stated in the text: to avoid the women—the heroine, her daughter, and her daughter-in-law—being victims of rape. This decision follows widespread reports that Iraqi soldiers have been violating women sexually through their aggressive house-raids (144). Hence, like the Palestinian woman writer Saḥar Khalīfa (in some of her war narratives), al-Ibrāhīm illustrates in Mudhakkirāt “the sexualized and gendered tension between a nation’s honor and its people’s dishonour.”46 The ‘escape to Saudi Arabia’ episode portrays the destructive extent to which conservative Kuwaiti men can go to protect, not the lives of their women, but their own sharaf (dishonour). The entire family set out on the escape journey using three cars: Madam Sāra, her daughter and son-in-law, Hudā and Nāṣir, with their own daughter—also named Sāra—all in the first car; Murād, Madam Sāra’s son and his family are in the second; and the servant (alone) is asked to follow them driving the third. The servant does not claim omniscience in everything he tells us (a point that serves to underscore his ‘reliability’ as a narrator). Thus, the reader finds that it is Nāṣir who relates the events of what the servant describes as “the greatest disaster” of his life. On the day following their departure from Kuwait, the lonely and distressed servant, who has arrived at the Saudi border, luckily finds Nāṣir in the surround-

46 Barbara Harlow “Partitions and Precedents: Sahar Khalifeh and Palestinian Political Geography” in Majaj et al., op. cit., pp. xxv, and 114.

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ing desert. Nāṣir, shivering terribly, appears to have bled profusely. His clothes are tattered and bloodstained; and his shoulders bandaged haphazardly (160 ff.) From Nāṣir’s inconsistent and non-sequential recounting of their experience on the way to Saudi Arabia, the servant/reader gathers that Nāṣir’s car “was stuck for the third, or fourth time” in a sandy road when an army of the invading forces surrounded them. The soldiers targeted Hudā in particular, wanting to abduct her and not willing to accept any ransom. Rather than having his wife subjected to what he describes as an “ominous” shame (rape), Nāṣir decided to kill her. “[Death] was the only single solution to prevent [Hudā being raped]” (168), the dying young man claims. “I [first] fired three bullets onto to my wife’s chest in a single release, and turned the remaining to my heart” (Ibid.), he admits unremorsefully. Nāṣir dies a few minutes afterwards. “Valuing a woman’s honor—her sexual propriety—over her very life has occurred in various societies and across time.”47 Hence, we can find some similarities between the narrative of Hudā’s honour-incited murder and the personal accounts of some European war victims. Jolluck’s findings in this regard are very revealing. She reports the horrific ordeal of a Bulgarian woman, Anastasia Pavlova, “at the hands of Greek soldiers during the Balkan Wars of 1912–1913.” “Herself badly beaten and raped”, Anastasia made every effort “to prevent her daughter’s rape”. “My one consolation is that I saved her honor”, Anastasia notes.48 Stressing the extent of women’s internalisation of “the supreme importance” attached to their sexual honour in a patriarchal society, Jolluck goes further to note that, when interviewed about their lived experiences during the Yugoslavian war, “many Bosnian women stated that they ‘would prefer to be killed than raped.’”49 In a similar vein, she cites Norman Naimark, who has “uncovered” not just “the mass rape of German women by Soviet soldiers in the aftermath of the World War II,” but also the “suicides [the women committed] in response to the threat of rape and humiliation.” According to Naimark, there was the case of a professor who, like Nāṣir in Mudhakkirāt, “killed his

47 48 49

Wingfield, op. cit., p. 75. Ibid., p. 77. Ibid., p. 76.

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wife and daughters and then himself in order not to have to bear the anguish [of their rape].”50 Coming back to the Middle Eastern context, we can find similar cases of armed-struggle-engendered honour killing. For instance, in an analysis of the Palestinian woman writer Saḥar Khalīfa’s writings, Barbara Harlow cited a newspaper report about an incident that happened in December 1994 in Jericho, in the West Bank. “[A] Palestinian prisoner recently released from Israeli prisons was to celebrate his marriage to the woman he had been engaged to eight years previously, when he had been convicted and sentenced for the slaying of a collaborator.” The story continues: On the wedding night, however, the bride was shot and killed. Accusations were made against the collaborator’s family who, it was claimed, in seeking revenge, had missed their target, the bridegroom, and murdered the bride instead. [. . .] But a few days later, following [a lot of] investigation, the bridegroom was himself [arrested and put] in custody of the Palestinian police, charged with the death of the woman. The former prisoner had, it seems, discovered on their wedding night that his bride was not a virgin, and had exacted his own revenge.51

This incident reflects, in Harlow’s words, two “tragically related” issues: “the defence of the [Palestinian] national honor and the punishment of a [Palestinian] woman’s dishonor”.52 Mudhakkirāt seeks to deconstruct this ‘transcultural’, sexualised ideology of sharaf through the heated dialogue that ensues between the badly-injured and dying Nāṣir and the servant. When Nāṣir stands his grounds that “death is the only protector for [Hudā] in [that] type of situation” (169), the extremely dismayed and disappointed old man reacts: “I wish you had left her to her fate. Certainly, there is hope in her remaining alive; why did you interfere with her destiny?” (Ibid.). “Don’t you know the meaning of sharaf?”, retorts Nāṣir. The servant reacts: “[r]ather, I know the meaning of life” adding that “[It’s] selfishness, which has made you think only about your own self, even at the most crucial of all times” (170).

50 Norman Naimark, The Russians in Germany: A History of the Soviet Zone of Occupation, 1945–1949 (Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 1995), pp. 81 ff.; cited in Wingfield, op. cit., p. 210. 51 See Majaj et al., op. cit., pp. 113–114. Barbara Harlow makes reference here to the Jerusalem Times (16 December, 1994) and al-Quds [Jerusalem] (21 December, 1994). 52 Majaj et al., op. cit., p. 114.

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It is this point of men’s selfishness regarding the taboos often attached to women’s sexuality that the author wants to highlight here. She wants to underlie the injustice inherent in the practice of “crimes of honour” with women as victims. As al-Mughni has noted, in most Arab societies where this practice is common, “it is very rare to see a sexually-immoral man killed for bringing ‘shame’ to the family.”53 From the Islamic legal perspective (as usual, the novel does not allude or refer to Islam’s position on this issue),54 Nāṣir’s homicidal act is a far greater evil than resigning himself to Hudā’s becoming a rape victim. Al-Ibrāhīm’s authorial stance could be deduced from the humanistic perspective of her non-Arab narrator, as noted above, and the feminist one of her Kuwaiti heroine. Although she was a witness to the events of Hudā’s death, Madam Sāra’s reaction to this ideologically-instigated, homicidal act is delayed until later in the novel, after she has recovered from her war-engendered memory loss and on her reunion with her surviving son Murād. Speaking through Madam Sāra in that episode, al-Ibrāhīm decries the objectification of women’s sexuality. She condemns Kuwaiti/Arabian men’s surveillance, behaving as watchdogs over the lives of their womenfolk. She laments the lack of respect for women’s souls in her society, for example, a woman like Hudā being made “a sacrificial animal” and “a ransom” for the so-called honour of her husband (215). The next section examines the ways by which the events of the war contribute to Madam Sāra’s nationalist and feminist consciousness. War and Female Subjectivity Many analysts of gender relations during conflict and in post-conflict eras have highlighted some of the ‘benefits’ of war to women’s public and domestic life. In Women, Sexuality and War, for instance, Philomena Goodman notes that “War disrupt[s] social relations and practices by the formation of new spatial practices.” Commenting on the personal accounts of some (European) women who witnessed and were victims 53

See al-Mughni, op. cit., p. 43. From the Islamic point of view, murder/homicide is a great sin; see, for example, Qurʾan 4:93; 5:32; 6:15. A woman who is raped commits no crime; it is the rapist that should be brought to justice. For a study of rape according to Islamic Law, see Azman Muhammad Noor, “Rape in Islamic Law: Problems of Classification and Adjudication”, an unpublished PhD thesis, University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, 2005. 54

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of WWII, she writes: “Women’s accounts demonstrate that they were aware of the contribution they were expected to make to the war effort as women, yet they were able to subvert the dominant discourses and draw on other constructions of identity.”55 ‘Patriotic femininity’ and ‘for the duration’ are two forms of warinstigated social relations. As Goodman explains, these two are social “constructs” that “have been developed as ideal-types, as aids to interpretation, in order to reconstruct and recognise reality imaginatively.”56 “An ideal-type” is defined as “the construction of certain elements of reality, of sets of ideas that were in existence, in this case during the war years.” ‘Patriotic femininity’ and ‘for the duration’ “are abstractions that are rooted in the meanings and values established at that particular historical conjuncture.”57 “Only last[ing] for the duration”, patriotic femininity entails the “contributions”—including the “strategies of resistance in feminine practice”—which women make or are “expected to make to the war effort as women”. Goodman explains: “As the ontological status of ‘woman’ during [. . .] war years, patriotic feminine identity varie[s] according to class, age, marital status and [social] responsibility [. . .]. Nevertheless, the spatial dislocations of war [usually] enable[s] some women to determine their contribution in the new spaces that [are] created or opened for the duration.”58 Patriotic femininity can be understood in terms of what cooke has described as “humanist nationalism”, the types of which were constructed by some Kuwaiti women during the period of the Iraqi occupation: “The women who stayed in Kuwait throughout the fall of 1990 provided the needy with food, medical help, and logistical support in disposing of the dead and consoling the bereaved. They shared the anger, grief, and the determination not to submit. In all that they did they risked imprisonment and even execution.”59 Many war narratives by Kuwaiti writers have documented these and other forms of patriotic femininity. The present writer has demonstrated elsewhere that, like their Palestinian counterparts in particular, Kuwaiti 55 Philomena Goodman, Women, Sexuality and War, (Gordonsville, VA: USA: Palgrave Macmillan, 2002), pp. 2; 3–4. 56 Ibid., p. 4; reference made to P. Abrams, Historical Sociology (Somerset: Open Books, 1982). 57 Goodman, op. cit., p. 4. 58 Ibid., p. 3. 59 Cooke, Women Claim Islam, pp. 15–16.

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women were involved in the anti-Iraqi resistance movement through various non-violent and violent means, as reflected in some Kuwaiti fictional and non-fictional war narratives.60 Al-Ibrāhīm’s Mudhakkirāt constructs several ideal-types which altogether “reveal how attitudes to women, their capabilities, their relation to men, domesticity and their sexual identities, shaped their lives”61 during the period of the occupation. The novel demonstrates not just how the Iraq-Kuwait conflict was a nationalist struggle, but how the war was a gender war, one that was the average Kuwaiti “woman’s war too”.62 Mudhakkirāt minimalizes the narrative of the anti-Iraqi occupation resistance movement which Kuwaiti men and women participated in. (It describes only briefly Murād and Nāṣir’s involvement in the resistance; 131 ff.). This narrative strategy is used to allow wider room for the author’s exploration of the ‘ideological’ war—the women’s struggle against patriarchal social oppression—which predates and will outlive the ‘real’ (Iraq-Kuwait) war. The rest of this chapter will look at the social disruptions occasioned by the war, with special focus on the impact of the crisis in further eliciting the heroine’s revolutionary character. Disruption of social hierarchy during the war Through the characters of the heroine first, followed by other members of her family, the novel portrays a kind of eradication of class and sexual segregation in Kuwait during the period of the conflict. The first scene in the novel reflecting this situation is set in Madam Sāra’s house, located in Kayfān, in the centre of Kuwait City. The servantnarrator tells us that, as the area comes under incessant and sporadic shootings and bombing by the occupying forces on the second day of

60

This is the focus of my above-mentioned article. Therein I discussed female subjectivity during armed conflict from the points of view of Kuwaiti women’s war texts like Fāt ̣ima Y. al-ʿAlī’s “Dimāʾ ʿalā wajh al-qamar” in Dimāʾ ʿalā wajh al-qamar [Blood in the Face of the Moon] (Cairo: al-Hayʾa al-Miṣriyya al-ʿāmma li-l-kitāb, 1998); and Wafāʾ al-Ḥ amdān’s “Wa-kāna-l-waṭan ṭiflan” [The Nation Became an Infant] in al-Shams lā taghrub marratayn [The Sun Does not Set Twice] (Kuwait: Maṭābiʿ al-khaṭt ̣, 1994). I also noted that unlike their counterparts from Arab countries like Egypt, Lebanon, and Algeria, Kuwaiti women’s literature of resistance is not engendered by war. Kuwaiti women writers began writing against male domination in the mid-twentieth century, long before the Iraqi invasion of their country. 61 Goodman, op. cit., p. 121. 62 Ibid., p. 4.

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the invasion, the heroine says to him: “Call on your wife . . . let’s all sit in the passageway” (128). Pointing to the fact that every process of change in human mentality and behaviour is usually gradual, the heroine, as matriarch, still segregates/discriminates at this stage. She asks the couple-servants to sit at one end of the corridor, while she and her daughter Hudā (who has remained at her parents’ house since the beginning of the rift between her and her husband, discussed earlier) sit at the other end (Ibid.). This seating arrangement is unsatisfactory to the silent-lover servant, who has been thinking of becoming an opportunist. “All I have wanted”, he tells us, “is to sit by her side, (at the moment of) her agony and fear; I have had an excessive desire to embrace her within my arms, so that I can protect her” (129; my emphasis). As the events of this scene continue to unroll, the servant notes: [As] if my wife were diabetic . . . I did not notice that until [this] day. Every moment, she rose and went to the toilet. But my fearful mistress prevented her from going to the annex where we lived, because of its distance. [Madam Sāra] asked [my wife] to use her private toilet, in the other passageway (129).

The significance of this quotation to the plot lies not in corroborating the novel’s portrayal of the servant’s wife as often behaving childishly and foolishly (see 128), but in depicting another instance of the eradication of class segregation between the Kuwaiti employers and their Indian/ Asian employees. In fact, all of them in the house on this occasion use the same toilet throughout the day (130). “No one among us could be so courageous as to use [Madam Sāra’s] toilet before [this wartime]” (129), remarks the servant. For both servants, it is unbelievable that they could ever be allowed to sleep under the same roof, and in a room next to where their employers sleep (132). “[C]ertain events do make a lot of changes in people’s thinking and behaviour” (129), he concludes. Kuwaiti women were not the only ones affected by this reality of war. The men too had abandoned their feelings of superiority over the people of other races. This is evidenced by several actions and speeches of Murād and Nāṣir. For instance, one day during the crisis period, the two youths invite the servant and his wife—whom the ‘boys’ have always treated with disrespect—“to sit and have dinner together with them [. . .].” “Wonderful,” notes the servant-narrator. What he has always described as Murād’s characteristic arrogance is here contrasted

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with his exhibition of respect and brotherly attitudes. Murād begins to address the elderly man in the respectable, possessive form: yā akhī (my brother; 134 and 135). As the events of the Iraqi aggressions escalate, the mistress entrusts the servant: – I want to request something from you.

I said, frightened: – My mistress, requesting something from me?! – I’m no more a mistress to anyone . . . We’re all equal in this type of situation [. . .] My request is that you, please, take care of your son, Murād, and your daughter, Hudā, in case any incident happens to me [. . .] They are your children . . . Don’t forget that you nurtured them with me after the death of their father (137).

Occupying nearly a page in the text, Madam Sāra’s passionate speech, part of which is quoted above, is illuminating. It is further confirmation of the loss of any sense of superiority and supremacy by Kuwaitis over even their domestic servants. It also exemplifies the fact that, like in most other wars, there were “limits” to gender and class as categories during the Iraqi-Kuwait conflict.63 Hence, the servant-narrator remarks: “There no longer exists among us servant and served, or leader and led” (134). His silently pronounced, socialist proposition: “Let there be equality between masters and servants” (130), may sound too idealistic, however. This is because such disruptions, in most cases, last only for the duration of the war, as shown in Murād’s reversion to the status quo after the crisis, to be discussed later. The above-described “astonishing” change in the attitudes of the Kuwaiti mistresses and masters illustrates the point that “During wars reality monopolizes the place that ideology [had once occupied and] soon comes to occupy.”64 Mudhakkirāt expansively treats “the [overbearing] dynamics of such a reality, rather than its later ideological ordering and re-ordering”.65 The following investigates how

63 See Rey Chow’s discussion on the limits of gender as a category in relation to the Chinese Tiananmen Square massacre in her chapter “Violence in Other Country,” in Chandra Mohanty et al. (eds.) Third World Women and the Politics of Feminism, 1991, p. 83; cited in Therese Saliba, “A Country Beyond Reach: Liana Badr’s Writings of the Palestinian Diaspora”, in Majaj et al., op. cit., pp. 136–137, footnote 3. 64 Cooke, War’s Other Voices, p. 12. 65 Ibid.

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the heroine is revolutionary not only by words of mouth, but also by practice/action. Interracial Marriage The Kuwaiti government’s policy against interracial marriage is mainly targeted at Kuwaiti women. This is supported by the fact that even though the government tries to discourage both males and females from marrying non-Kuwaitis, it is only the female dissenters who are punished by the government. A Kuwaiti woman who defies this order will have her non-Kuwaiti husband and children denied rights of Kuwaiti citizenship as well as social benefits from the State. A Kuwaiti man married to a non-Kuwaiti woman is exempted from this type of punishment. The controversy over this issue—as widely debated in the media and academia from the 1970s through 1990s66—is not the concern of this chapter. But a brief note like the above is essential in order to show some forms of gender inequalities prevalent in contemporary Kuwait. How does Kuwaiti women’s writing constitute a source of ‘oppositional values’, as the ‘cultural materialist’ critic67 would argue, against patriarchal oppression of this nature? Three different forms of women’s reaction to societal restriction on their relationships with men of other class and racial/ethnic backgrounds are discernible through Kuwaiti women’s (fictional and nonfictional) narratives and media reports. First, a real-life story covered by the Kuwaiti magazine al-Sāʿī [The Messenger] in 2002 shows that some non-conformist girls, who want to defy this kind of patriarchal conventional order, would rather do it secretly by escaping with their non-Kuwaiti suitors. The story is about a twenty-three-year-old Kuwaiti

66 See, for example, a related report in al-Fajr al-Jadīd, op. cit.; an article entitled “Whither the rights of Kuwaiti women married to non-Kuwaitis?” (in Arabic) by Sanāʾ al-Ḥ amūd (Ph.D.) in the Kuwaiti newspaper al-Qabas, no. 6578 (17 July, 1991). Most importantly, see Fahed A. Al-Naser’s “Attitudes of Kuwaitis Towards the Issue [sic] of Marriage with Non-Kuwaitis” (in Arabic), Annals of The Faculty of Arts, Kuwait University, vol. xv, 1995, pp. 11–79. This is a monograph that specifically concentrates on Kuwaiti men marrying non-Kuwaitis. Its findings reflect the influence of patriarchal conservatism with regard to interracial marriage. 67 See Barry, op. cit., p. 184.

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girl, a university student for that matter, who eloped with her family’s Indian driver.68 There is a second category of Kuwaiti girls/women who, though madly in love with a non-Kuwaiti, would still comply with this form of societal restriction. The category is represented by Ṭ ayyiba, the heroine of Hidāya al-Sālim’s earlier mentioned short story, “Kharīf bilā maṭar”. While resisting her social oppression by refusing to even marry at all, Ṭ ayyiba could still be seen as conformist. She lacks the courage to go ahead and marry the non-Kuwaiti, young Arab man she loves.69 It is in comparison with the above two categories that al-Ibrāhīm’s heroine in Mudhakkirāt—representing the third category—can also be seen as a revolutionary female. Servant marries mistress Featured at the end of the second part of the novel and set largely in Saudi Arabia, the construction of the heroine’s agency in defiance of the Kuwaiti patriarchal rules against interracial marriage consists of two stages. The first stage is constituted by her acceptance (while still semi-psychotic) of the servant as husband. According to the servantnarrator, Madam Sāra becomes psychotic consequent upon the cumulative traumas she suffers as a result of the Iraqi occupation. On the fateful day of their escape attempt to Saudi Arabia (briefly discussed earlier), the heroine watches in horror Nāṣir kill her daughter. Worse still, her son Murād and his family, her granddaughter (Sāra Junior) as well as the servant all are missing (168). After ten days of wandering and suffering in the desert, the criticallyill Madam Sāra is brought to Saudi Arabia by a group of people. It is there and then that she is re-united with the servant, who has continued to wait, in anxiety and distress, at the Saudi border following his earlier encounter with the dying Nāṣir as described above. In the ‘analeptically’ narrated story of the process of the heroine’s recovery, the servant-narrator tells us that, after his reunion with the mistress, he refuses to either take her to any of the refugee camps provided by the Saudi government, or for psychiatric treatment in a hospital. He resorts to psychotherapy, instead. He begins to give her

68

al-Sāʿī, no. 2 (1 November, 2002). Hidāya S. al-Sālim, “Kharīf bilā maṭar”, first published in 1972 and serialized in al-Majālis (8 January, 2000; 15 January, 2000; and 22 January, 2000). 69

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some speech learning instruction (182 ff.). His first success in this respect comes after two months, when Madam Sāra begins to pronounce some words at the same time as she “reacts positively” to the man’s joyful attempts to embrace her (Ibid.). Receiving this dramatic improvement in the woman’s health with mixed feelings—his happiness about it is contrasted with his fear of being disowned, should Madam Sāra recover fully (183)—the servant swiftly takes the first step towards achieving his ultimate goal. He tells her several “lies”: that her name is Mira (184), an Indian name; and that both of them have been betrothed for thirteen years, but her “prolonged” illness has caused the delay in their marriage (185). While “accepting” the name “with no objection”, the heroine appears indifferent to the marriage proposal. When asked if she desires marriage to the servant, “Madam Sāra did not respond positively, and neither did she decline; as if the matter did not concern her, or it meant both to her.” Thus, the man interprets her indifference as “silence means ‘yes’” (Ibid.). The marriage event is arranged and conducted secretly, in collusion with a few of the servant’s friends/fellow countrymen in Saudi Arabia. One can argue that the heroine is a victim of sexual exploitation, a common phenomenon in times of war and crisis.70 Madam Sāra finds herself in a kind of “romantic entanglement” (Goodman’s phrase), not only because she is forced to live with the servant in a clandestine manner, but also because she has yet to regain her memory at the time of the marriage. On the other hand, it can also be argued that although the heroine is still suffering from memory loss at that time, she is not unconscious. Corroborating this fact are the parts she plays during the solemnisation of the marriage. Summarised in just five lines, the marriage scene features the heroine willingly signing (in her new ‘name’) and thumb printing on their marriage certificate (188). The second stage of the heroine’s agency in this interracial marriage is when she articulates her ‘sane approval’ of it, as evident in the narrative of the events that mark her total recovery. One day, following the commencement of the US-led “Operation Desert Storm”—as Gulf War II is called—a series of bombs begin to explode in the part of Saudi Arabia where the couple live. The explosions are so terrifying that, while embracing each other, the servant inadvertently mentions

70

Goodman, op. cit., p. 122.

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the commencement of war within the hearing of his traumatised “wife”. Hearing the word “war” jolts Madam Sāra’s memory. “ ‘Is it the Iraqi assaults on us [i.e. Kuwaitis]?’ ”, she “impulsively” queries (Ibid.). “I disengaged from her, instantly”, the servant narrates, “and she, too, slipped away from me.. We stood up face to face with each other, exchanging looks with extreme amazement” (200). Noticing the servant’s excessive nervousness, Madam Sāra asks, “maturely and affectionately: what’s wrong with you, my dear . . . are you afraid of the bomb . . . or of something else?” (201). Before the servant can respond, she quickly adds: “I, definitely, will not leave you, whatever happens . . . I’ve lived happily with you for days, don’t forget. I just want to know everything . . . everything” (Ibid.). With this statement, which is followed by prolonged moments of grieving and weeping over the loss of her homeland (thus constituting some of the instances of her demonstration of patriotism), the heroine begins to express, while in a complete state of sanity, her approval of her new relationship with the servant. Her decision to remain the (former) servant’s wife forever can be viewed as revolutionary because, on the one hand, it is an aberration of the Kuwaiti patriarchal social convention. On the other hand, unlike Hidāya al-Sālim’s Ṭ ayyiba in the above-named story, who is as equally educated, mature, and economically independent of men as Madam Sāra, the latter demonstrates women’s selfhood, total subjectivity, and overt resistance to this form of patriarchal oppression. How? War of words and war of rockets In her discussion of the theme of dual liberation in the Palestinian woman writer Liana Badr’s writings, Therese Saliba notes, “Conventional nationalist discourse positions women in two often contradictory roles, both as participants in the struggle and as preservers of cultural identity.”71 What is of particular interest to our discussion here is the latter: the expectation and belief that women should be “preservers of cultural identity.” According to Saliba, “Male dominance is one of the many ‘old idols’ which Badr’s main female characters ‘attempt to dismantle, as they try to construct a new world and simultaneously to reconstruct their lives from the fragments of exile.’ ”72 Saliba observes 71 72

See Majjaj et al., p. 142. Ibid., p. 134.

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that Badr’s ʿAisha, the heroine of the novel The Eye of the Mirror, “represents the Palestinian woman’s struggle for survival against both the external forces of the war and the internal gender oppressions of her society.”73 Apart from the honour-related story of Hudā’s death described earlier, al-Ibrāhīm’s Mudhakkirāt presents another example of women fighting two concurrent wars of liberation through the narrative of Madam Sāra and her son’s re-union after their separation as they were trying to escape from Kuwait. The news of Murād’s survival comes to the servant-narrator as a great shock. In a classified newspaper advertisement shown to him by one of his friends, the old man gets to know that Murād, now living in the United Arab Emirates, is seeking information about the whereabouts of his mother and other members of his extended family (193). The servant believes that the young man—symbolizing the Kuwaiti public—will consider his marriage to his (former) mistress as “abominable” and “disgraceful” (205, 206). Murād acts in accordance with the servant’s prediction, as evident in the two scenes of quarrel between him and his mother on their reunion. On the first occasion, the servant recounts how he is on tenterhooks, sitting with extreme anxiety in the backyard of his rented apartment, from where he follows the mother-son quarrel. Pointing to the pervasiveness of male authority in Kuwaiti society is the narrator’s/author’s use of the word ḥ ukm (208)—meaning “rule,” “ordinance;” “verdict”, “judgement”, etc.—to refer to what the outcome of the heated dialogue is likely to be. In fact, when he hears Murād shout at his mother, the old man thinks the judgement has been passed. “I thought my happy life has been sentenced to death” (207), he notes. The author is fond of using the technique of coincidence in order to mark some significant events in the world of the novel. Like the earlier-described occasion of Madam Sāra’s recovery from memory loss, the second occasion of the quarrel over the heroine’s new life with the servant is also made to coincide with the occurrence of a series of bomb blasts. (The explosions on this occasion are part of Iraq’s offensives against Saudi Arabia for hosting the international coalition of forces in support of Kuwait). Put in the servant-narrator’s mouth, al-Ibrāhīm

73

Ibid., p. 157.

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describes the coincidence here as the simultaneity of two categories of war: ḥ arb kalāmiyya (war of words) and ḥ arb ṣārūkhiyya (war of rockets) (211). Thus, the author rhetorically points to the fact that the heroine is fighting an ideological war, even as the armed conflict caused by the Iraqi occupation of her country is not yet over. “Is it true that you’re married to my mother?! Or do you just keep her with you like that?” (212). This is how the angry Murād begins his interrogation of the servant. When the old man replies: “God forbid . . . how do you think this way, my son?” (Ibid.), Murād shouts at him: “I’m not your son” (Ibid.). This illustrates how the young Kuwaiti man has betrayed the sense of brotherhood he had earlier instilled in the servant during the crisis period when they were in Kuwait. That the war for liberating Kuwait had hardly commenced when Murād turned back to his characteristic arrogance and masterful attitudes (206–207) is indicative of the fact that some war-engendered social disruptions (and subjectivities) often last only temporarily, ‘for the duration’. Although the author does not mention directly the Swiss linguist Ferdinand de Saussure’s name, as she does with regard to Freud,74 it is plausible to suggest that she is well aware of the Saussurean concept of the ‘signifier’ and the ‘signified’. According to de Saussure, the “signifier” is a sound image or its graphic equivalent, and the “signified” is the referent, or concept referred to.75 In line with this concept, we find Madam Sāra, in an effort to prove the legality of her marriage with the servant to her sceptical son, arguing that “name is but a symbol of a person, not the person him/herself” (214). “It is possible to change a symbol at any time we so desire” (Ibid.), she concludes. For Murād, however, the quarrel is not really as regards the legality of the marriage. His problem lies in the ideological belief in the

74 Speaking through the servant in the scene of the conversation between him and his friend on the shocking news of Murād’s survival, al-Ibrāhīm specifically refers to and criticises Sigmund Freud and his theory on human motive or intention for doing things. The friend, representing Freud’s “generalist” view, thinks that the servant has married his Kuwaiti mistress in order to dispel the pervasive notion of class and racial inferiority between Kuwaitis and their domestic servants. But the servant proves him wrong, claiming that he married Madam Sāra out of genuine love, not just to prove his lack of inferiority. For more on the Freudian psychoanalytical theories also see Barry, op. cit., pp. 96–109. 75 For a simple explanation of the Saussurean concept of the “signifier” and the “signified”, see J. A. Cuddon, The Penguin Dictionary of Literary Terms and Literary Theory (London: Penguin Books, 1992, third edition), p. 879.

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“incommensurability” (lack of social compatibility) between the couple. “‘Mum . . . what’s wrong with you. Have you forgotten that he’s your servant?’” (Ibid.), the young man interrogates, furiously. When he eventually “tear[s] the marriage certificate into pieces”, his mother retorts: “[T]ear it as you like . . . we’re capable of replacing it with another certificate that will be much more official, and will carry the symbol that is identifiable with my actual personality” (214). Thus, she further affirms her subjective agency in her new relationship with the servant. The heroine’s (al-Ibrāhīm’s) identification of the cultural ideology with which Kuwaiti society is being governed as “imaginary, . . . not representing any element of pristine truth” (215), exemplifies Louis Althusser’s concept of the Ideological State Apparatuses (ISAs) and their operation through the process of ‘interpellation’, as discussed in the ‘Introduction’ and in several other parts of this book. A conscious feminist figure, Madam Sāra expresses her lack of interpellation by the “imaginary” patriarchal ideology (Ibid.). She refuses to be controlled by her son. Reacting to her son’s threat to cut any relationship with her unless she divorces the servant, she retorts: “[I]n any case, [the servant] is my husband.. and I feel honoured by him, I’m proud of him” (216). Shamed by his mother’s rejection of his authority, Murād leaves the apartment, angrily, declaring that his mother will never see him again (216). True to his words, Murād refuses to visit or contact his mother after the liberation of Kuwait. His mother, too, never bothers to ask about her only surviving child—a son for that matter. While further illustrating Kuwaiti female decisiveness, independence, and selfhood, all of the heroine’s actions and statements above symbolise a defeat for patriarchal authority. For the subaltern servant, the moment of the heroine’s proclamation of her agency in the marriage is a moment of triumph. Marking the aspect of the novel in which he finally has his new relationship with his mistress openly proclaimed, it is from this point in the text that the servant-diarist begins to refer to the heroine as “zawjatī” (my wife), rather than the usual “sayyidatī” (my mistress) (216). What an interesting change of fortune! “Can the subaltern be heard?”: race, class, and gender in post-war Kuwait In a critique of “Can the Subaltern Speak?”, J. Maggio notes that Spivak’s argument in the article is that “translation”—rather than (literary) “representation”—is a more appropriate role that scholars/intellectu-

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als from the dominant group should play in an attempt to speak for “society’s Other”. This is because such representations, as critics like Spivak herself and Edward Said (in his Orientalism) have emphasised, are often shrouded in embroidered and prejudiced distortions.76 While arguing that Spivak’s article is “wrongly” framed—and suggesting an alternative title: “Can the Subaltern Be Heard?”—Maggio states that “The subaltern speak [sic] all the time: We are simply unable to hear them.”77 But how can they be heard? “Translation”, she writes, “implies a certain distance, and in that distance is the space for the subaltern to speak.”78 In the context of Kuwait, Arabic is the language of the dominant culture, while English and several Asian languages (especially Urdu/ Hindi/Bengali) are the languages of the subaltern immigrant communities. By ‘translating’ the Indian servant’s diary into Arabic and then ‘publishing it in a newspaper on the order of the heroine,’ the Kuwaiti male translator and the heroine have tried to make the subaltern Asian workers in Kuwait speak or, at the very least, be heard. As an intellectual from the dominant group in Kuwaiti society, al-Ibrahim thus combines in the text the two acts of ‘translating’ and representing the subaltern agitations and aspirations. The author presents a clear picture of the transformation of the subaltern conditions in the world of the novel. Before the war, the Indian servant remains at the marginal level within Kuwaiti society. His status improves a little during the war. After the war, he graduates to the position of a ‘speaking subject’. How? After liberation, the couple return to Kuwait and, according to the Kuwaiti translator of the diary, the servant dies a few years afterwards (p. 219). Nevertheless, the heroine and her servant-turned-husband’s post-war life in Kuwait symbolises the empowerment of the subaltern. Featured in the last entry of the diary, the narrative of their post-war life reveals that the Indian servant becomes his Kuwaiti mistress’ partner not only in love and marriage, but also in business. Transferring the directorship of her trading company to her new husband, Madam Sāra decides to remain a full housewife (217).

76

J. Maggio, “‘Can the Subaltern Be Heard?’: Political Theory, Translation, Representation, and Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak”, Alternatives 32 (2007), pp. 419–443. 77 Ibid., p. 437. 78 Ibid.

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The servant’s conjecture—that this decision by the woman might be because she is feeling shy with appearing in public as wife of her former servant (Ibid.)—suggests a serious weakness in the tightening of the plot. It is undermining to the author’s depiction of the heroine as a revolutionary figure. However, the fact that the couple often go out together—the servant-turned-husband driving their new car, and Madam Sāra sitting by his side (218)—serves to suggest the contrary. A democratic figure, Madam Sāra unreservedly allows her new husband to have a say in her public and domestic life. For instance, she agrees to his suggestion that they should forget about the idea of employing any domestic servants. The man’s suggestion here can be interpreted is different ways. First, it might be that, as a former servant, he does not want to be a master to another fellow countryman/woman to be employed. Second, it might be understood to imply the servant’s interest in (or a proposition by the author towards) abolishing such a system, based on the simple fact that it is a form of modern slavery. Third, it can be conceived as stemming from ‘jealousy’: he might want to avoid another male servant, who is also likely to develop interest in the heroine. Conclusion “Every feminine act, even charitable and seemingly unpolitical ones, was regarded as a rebellion in this world where women had always played servile roles.”79 This statement, by the Lebanese woman writer Etel Adnan, is made in her novel Sitt Marie Rose with respect to the disruptive character of the heroine. Marie Rose embarks on different kinds of revolutionary and political activism during the Lebanese civil war, which are seen by her male comrades as ‘unfeminine’. Even though not a direct participant and combatant in the anti-Iraqi-occupation resistance struggle, al-Ibrāhīm’s Madam Sāra, like Marie Rose, embodies women’s rebellion against the Kuwaiti patriarchal social order.80

79

Cited in cooke, War’s Other Voices, pp. 141–142. Although one can observe several autobiographical elements in the text of Mudhakkirāt, the author has strongly denied any relationship between her real life experiences and those of her heroines, including Madam Sāra. See her interview with ʿAlaʾ al-Jābir, in Mirʾāt al-umma, op. cit. 80

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While her son epitomises Kuwaiti male chauvinism and conservatism, Madam Sāra symbolises female egalitarianism and progressivism. Her speeches and acts are indicative of how Kuwaiti women of the post-oil/ post-war era have gained voice. This is a feature to which most women of the pre-oil era had aspired but failed, one way or another, to achieve, as shown in the characters of most of the heroines of the other texts studied in this book. Through the character of Madam Sāra, the author illustrates how the mid-twentieth century generation of Kuwaiti women have utilised the minimal education and job opportunities they have had to transform, at least, their micro domains and personal lives in peacetime and war. While reflecting how the Iraq-Kuwait conflict has been as a source of the evocation of Kuwaiti women’s subjectivity, the novel also exemplifies—through the servant-marries-mistress aspect—a symbolic (even if not long lasting) eradication of the class/racial dichotomy in the contemporary Kuwaiti social system. That the general conditions of unskilled, immigrant Asian workers in Kuwait and the Arabian Gulf region in general have not improved satisfactorily in real life (in line with the novel’s socialist proposition) is highly unfortunate. The next chapter examines the character of another defiant Kuwaiti/Arabian female who is considered the most revolutionary and culturally-subversive of all the heroines in the selected texts.

CHAPTER SIX

CULTURE AND GENDER: SEXUALITY, FEMININITY, AND IDENTITY IN FAWZIYYA S. ALSĀLIM’S MUZŪN Introduction Fawziyya Shuwaysh al-Sālim1 was born in Kuwait in 1949. She has a degree in the social sciences from Kuwait University. She began by writing poetry and short plays before changing to the novel. Now one of the leading Kuwaiti women novelists, her novels on social and historical realisms include al-Shams madhbūḥ a wa-l-layl maḥ būs [The Sun is Slaughtered and the Night is Confined] (1997), al-Nuwākhidha [The Shipmasters] (1998), and Muzūn [Muzūn] (2000). Ḥ ajar ʿalā ḥ ajar [Stone upon Stone] (2003) can be classified as a quest and travel fictional narrative; and her latest, Rajīm al-kalām [Curse-Mouthed] (2006), is about the Iraq-Kuwait war. A novel of some 350 pages, Muzūn [Muzūn], which is the focus of our attention in this chapter, can be regarded as a feminist tract which, like the other selected texts, is intended perhaps to raise Arabian women’s consciousness. More importantly, this novel represents the women’s perspective vis-à-vis the ‘hegemonic’ Western feminist discourse through its exploration of several themes of feminist concern which range from femininity and gender socialisation to female sexuality, abortion, mothering, “clitoridectomy” (female genital mutilation), and so on. The story of three matrilineal generations of Arabian women, Muzūn is given a transnational and transcontinental setting—largely set in Oman, and partly in Kuwait, Zanzibar, Cairo, and Paris. Though a

1 There is not enough information in print about Fawziyya S. al-Sālim’s biography. This woman always avoids media attention, and she does not like discussing her private life in particular. The little I know is based on my interviews with her, conducted in Kuwait between December 2002 and March 2003. Perhaps to avoid censorship, all of her novels were published outside Kuwait: al-Shams madhbūḥ a wa-l-layl mahmūs (Damascus, Dār al-Mada, 1997); al-Nuwākhidha (Damascus, Dār al-Mada, 1998); Muzūn (Beirut, Dār al-kunūz al-adabiyya, 2000); Ḥ ajar ʿalā ḥ ajar (Beirut, Dār al-kunūz al-adabiyya, 2003), and Rajīm al-kalām (Amman, Dār Azmina, 2006).

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novel, its prose is lyrical and poetic. It is a postmodernist fictional text: its modes of narration are largely impressionistic (presented using the stream-of-consciousness technique) and its narratives are unconventionally fragmented, following the non-chronological unfolding of events.2 The adoption of this narrative strategy aids the design of the novel as a literary deconstruction of patriarchal ideology. The text subverts Arabian patriarchal conventions not only through its choice of a taboo subject (celebration of women’s sexual freedom) but also through the use of language. This is evident, for instance, in the author’s adoption of symbolic names for her three heroines: Zayāna, Zuwayna and Muzūn. All of these names denote ‘beauty’ (zīna). From the social context of the world of the novel, they also connote the commission of ‘adultery’ (zinā) and its psycho-social effects and implications.3 2 For an introduction to literary postmodernism and its narrative strategies, see for example, Peter Barry, Beginning Theory: an Introduction to Literary and Cultural Theory, (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2002, 2nd edition), pp. 91–94. On the postmodern and post-colonial novel in mainstream Arabic literature see Muhsin J. al-Musawi, The Postcolonial Arabic Novel: Debating Ambivalence (Leiden and Boston, Mass.: E. J. Brill, 2003) and Stefan G. Meyer, The Experimental Arabic Novel: Postcolonial Literary Modernism in the Levant (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2001). 3 I would like to note here the significance of al-Sālim’s use of language regarding the names of the heroines and the Arabic word for adultery. The words zayāna and its diminutive, zuwayna, simply mean “beautiful” and are used as women’s names. The word muzūn, or its singular form, muzn, is also a woman’s name; it denotes “beauty” as well. Muzūn (pronounced with “u” after “m” also means “clouds of rain”, while mazūn (with “a” after “m”) is an old name for Oman. Al-Sālim’s advertent adoption of these names suggests a profound ambiguity. Etymologically, the nominal words zayāna and zuwayna derive from the verbal root zāna (to beautify, ornament, decorate, adorn, etc.), or the verbal noun zayn (beauty, prettiness); their other derivatives are zīna, zayān, ziyāna, zayāna, zuwayna, etc. (For the meanings and various derivations of zayn and muzn see Ibn Manẓūr, Lisān al-ʿarab [The Arabic Language] (a classical Arabic lexicon), vol. 13, Beirut: Dār ṣādir, n.d., pp. 200–203; 406–407; see also J. M. Cowan (ed.), The Hans Wehr Dictionary of Modern Written Arabic (New Delhi, India: Modern Language Services, n. d.). Juxtaposing those beauty-connoting words—zīna, zayān, ziyāna, zayāna, zuwayna— with the Arabic word for adultery, zinā, its verbal root zanā, and its derivatives like zāniya, zuwayniya, as feminine verbal nouns (see Cowan, op. cit., for example), exemplifies what in Arabic rhetoric is called jinās, or assonance: words that sound similar but are/may be different in meaning. The pun here is in the use of zayāna and zāniya both of which the text of Muzūn is replete with. According to the novel, the first heroine, Zayāna, is zāniya (an adulteress); the second, Zuwayna, is bint zinā (a product of an adulterous relationship); and the third, Muzūn, is not only bint bint zinā (granddaughter of an adulteress) but also an openly sexually free Arabian woman. Al-Sālim gives her three heroines in the novel somehow societally acceptable names. But an analysis of the novel might interpret these

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The novel celebrates adultery as “part of a feminist outburst against the institution of marriage as created not in heaven but on earth by unjust, man-made laws.”4 Through it, al-Sālim commences a process of revolutionising the Kuwaiti female literary tradition. She begins to break free from the claustrophobic embrace of the ‘chastity’ of language— avoidance of the use of vulgar language—that has characterised most Arabian literary works. This is a process the author pursues, more explicitly, in her later novel, Ḥ ajar ʿalā ḥ ajar, mentioned above. This chapter posits that Muzūn portrays Zayāna—the first and principal of the novel’s three heroines, representing the pre-oil generations of Arabian women—as not only defiant and disruptive, but also as a revolutionary female figure. Despite her lack of education and the pervasiveness of patriarchal culture in her time, Zayāna is the one who pioneers ‘sexual revolution’ in the novel. This is in spite of the fact that Zuwayna and Muzūn, Zayāna’s daughter and granddaughter, represent later generations of women who actually belong to the oil-engendered era of modern civilisation in the region. Culture and Sexuality5 The repression of Arabian women’s sexuality is a recurring motif in Muzūn. Love and sexuality are represented in the novel as aspects of human life which most Arabian women are conventionally denied the right to explore subjectively. The story of Zayāna typifies this kind of women’s objectification. As a teenage girl, she is forced to marry Ḥ ammūd, a man from the rich, upper class in Oman. Zayāna has two daughters from him: Khawla and Mayyā. Some years later, Ḥ ammūd migrates to Zanzibar in East Africa in search of greener pastures.

names as symbolically connoting much deeper, unacceptable meanings in the Arabian context. Just as the author’s use of word-play is evident in the frequent occurrence of these names and the words zinā and zāniya, so too are there elements of pun in several other aspects of the novel’s language (See Muzūn, pp. 9, 22, 46, etc.). 4 Ellen Moers, Literary Women (London: The Women’s Press, 1977), p. 154 quoted by Sue Spaull in ‘Gynocriticism’ in Sara Mills et al., Feminist Readings/Feminists Reading (London: Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1989), p. 86. 5 An earlier version of this section of the chapter was presented at the British Society for Middle Eastern Studies (BRISMES) Annual Conference held at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), University of London, July 2004, under the title “Male Domination and Women’s Revolt: Love and Sexuality in Muzūn by Fawziyya S. al-Sālim”.

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During her husband’s absence, Zayāna meets and falls in love with a Frenchman, Yves Doran, who is on an archaeological research visit to Oman (71 ff.). Al-Sālim’s treatment of the Zayāna-Ḥ ammūd relationship is minimal: it is represented only as part of the more expansive narrative of the Zayāna-Yves relationship. The author seems to have adopted this narrative strategy in order to evoke the contrast between Arabian traditional norms regarding love and marital relationships and the common practice in some modern (Post-industrial/sexual revolution) Western societies. In a series of fragmented reflections and evaluative processes, filtered through her retrospective first person narration, Zayāna tells us about her previous life with Ḥ ammūd. Whereas Zayāna had hitherto remained faithful to him, Ḥ ammūd is “unfaithful” and “unchaste” (see 85 ff.). Ḥ ammūd’s approach to the Islamically tolerable customary practice of polygamy is described, by Zayāna, as driven principally by wealth rather than sex. Contrary to the strict Islamic rules on polygamy, he marries many wives abroad. And because of his obsession with and greed for wealth accumulation, he abandons his wife (and children) in Oman for years. Unlike much of the androcentric literary tradition whereby sexual guilt is often transferred to the female, al-Sālim, in Muzūn, puts the blame for Zayāna’s commission of adultery on the Arabian patriarchal culture, personified by Ḥ ammūd. Following Yves’ flirtation with her, to be discussed shortly, Zayāna begins to feel that her faithfulness to Ḥ ammūd is under threat. She begins to identify her husband’s long absence and unfaithfulness as symptomatic of the oppression of the preoil generations of Arabian women through the transcontinental commercial and occupational activities of their men. “Living abroad . . . does change men’s character, and their lustful desires [towards their wives]” (85), Zayāna reflects with disgust. As Zayāna’s internal musings on the issue of women’s dissatisfaction with the prolonged absence of their husbands continue, we find her reflecting: [Economic] emigration always takes our men away forever. Among them are those who will return [with] half love . . . and those who will never return. And those who marry other women and so forget [about their wives at home] [. . .] (81).

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While this serves as a subtle critique of men’s disloyalty in marital relationships, its significance lies, more importantly, in supporting Zayāna’s argument that her eventual surrender to temptation is caused by Ḥ ammūd’s negligence of her in the first place (83). It is obvious that Zayāna has never really consciously reflected on her circumstances as an oppressed, marginalized female both within her matrimonial home and society at large. (She already senses the social injustices prevalent in her society and time, though, as I shall explain later). Her fear of the possibility of being tempted by Yves’ passionate moves incites her to give adequate thought to her objectification both previously as a daughter and now as a wife. Speaking through Zayāna, al-Sālim expresses some propositions: 1) that love be allowed to develop naturally between male and female; 2) that it should precede marriage. Both of these are, to a large extent, lacking in the traditional marriage system. That women’s objectification is commonplace amongst Arabian society is reflected not only in Zayāna’s being a victim of forced marriage, but also in that at the time of her marriage, she was too young to understand the psycho-social implications of such relationships. Furthermore, there was no prior acquaintance, especially through familial relationship, between her and her husband. This is an indication not just of patriarchal domination but of the fact that there had been a total lack of prior emotional feelings and attachments between the couple. It is implied, therefore, that Zayāna was forced to marry Ḥ ammūd because of his economic status. Marrying a daughter off for economic gains was the most common marriage custom in pre-oil Arabia. It is next only to the practice of endogamy: marriage between cousins.6 Captured metaphorically through the use of the interior monologue technique, the contrastive features of Arabian and (modern) Western concepts of love and sexuality are also presented using both Zayāna’s experience with Ḥ ammūd and her emergent, apparently promising flirtation with Yves. She compellingly argues that she would not have fallen for the Frenchman were it not for her incessant longing to satisfy “the hunger of the body” (82, 83). By this she implies her persistent sexual urge, the only “lawful” antidote for which is to meet with the absentee husband.

6 See Haya al-Mughni, Women in Kuwait: the Politics of Gender (London: Saqi Books, 1993), p. 44.

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In addition to lacking any serious amorous affection (Ibid.), her sexual life with Ḥ ammūd is characterised by her experiencing orgasmic pleasure only occasionally. Previously (before meeting Yves), sex, for her, meant violent copulation between male and female. It was often devoid of any form of “foreplay” (Ibid.): It used to be hot and hellish being in bed together with Ḥ ammūd . . . The meeting point of a stallion-like male and a disinclined female (84).

How does Zayāna transform from a stereotypically compliant, to a secretly transgressive woman? East meets West In his essay “Encounter Between East and West: A Theme in Contemporary Arabic Novels” Issa J. Boullata examines various fictional representations of Arabs’ contact with the West in the modern period.7 The most commonly represented form of this contact has been intellectual/civilisational. Some texts represent sexual contacts. Examples of Arabic novels that depict love and sexual encounters are Tawfīq al-Ḥ akīm’s ʿUṣfūr min al-sharq [A Bird from the East] (1938), Yaḥyā Ḥ aqqī’s Qindīl Umm Hāshim (which has been translated by M. M. Badawi as) [The Saint’s Lamp]8 (1944), Suhayl Idrīs’ al-Ḥ āyy al-Lātīnī [The Latin Quarter] (1954), and al-Ṭ ayyib Ṣāliḥ’s Mawsim al-hijra ilā al-shamāl [Season of Migration to the North] (1969).9 In a brief analysis of the two kinds of female protagonist—‘flat’ and ‘rounded’—in early modern Arabic literature, miriam cooke notes: “Whereas in the 1930s and 40s [Arab male] writers had gone to Europe and then composed romantic fantasies about relationships with Western women, in the 1960s these fantasies changed.”10 Explaining the political symbolism of most forms of East-West sexual encounters

7 See Issa J. Boullata, “Encounter Between East and West: A Theme in Contemporary Arabic Novels” in Issa J. Boullata (ed.), Critical Perspectives on Modern Arabic Literature (1945–1980) (Washington, D. C.: Three Continents Press, Inc., 1980), pp. 47–60. 8 M. M. Badawi (trans.), The Saint’s Lamp and Other Stories (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1973). 9 For more on the theme of love and sexual encounters between the East and the West in modern Arabic literature, see Ibid. See also some of the chapters in Roger Allen et al. (eds.), Love and Sexuality in Modern Arabic Literature (London: Saqi Books, 1995). 10 Miriam cooke, War’s Other Voices: Women Writers on the Lebanese Civil War (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988), p. 77.

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in Arabic writing, cooke notes further that “Western women became targets of male frustration” in the works of North African writers. This is because “Western women were no longer worthy prizes, they represented a corrupt West.” She concludes that, in Ṣāliḥ’s Mawsim al-hijra ilā al-shamāl for example, “Western women were no longer desirable but violable [. . .]”. The sexual domination of the protagonist of that novel, named Muṣtạ fā Saʿīd, over his British female lovers symbolises his “vengeance against the colonial power that tried to rob Sudan of its authenticity.”11 Al-Sālim’s Muzūn differs from most of the above-listed texts in some respects. The Arab-Western sexual encounters in those texts take place in Western countries (notably France and England); and they happen between Arab men and European women. Moreover, such contacts often come through the process of study abroad, regular visits, or emigration to any given Western countries by Arab men. By contrast, in Muzūn, al-Sālim makes that contact take place in the Arab land, and between a (visiting) European man and an Arabian woman. In effect, the novel inverses the trend in male writing. It is a European man (Yves) who, extremely enchanted by an Arab woman’s (Zayāna’s) beauty, “composed romantic fantasies” about his relationship with her, which are reflected in his book in which he documents his romance both with the woman and with her homeland, Oman. The full title of the Frenchman’s book is the same as the novel’s: Muzūn: wardat al-ṣaḥ rāʾ [Muzūn: Desert Rose]. It is a title that contextually serves to link women and nature (99, 103). Muzūn presents the effects of the contact from a feminist perspective, using a seemingly insignificant (not least in the Arabian context), but highly sensitive theme: Arab/ian female sexuality. It is the “illicitness” of Zayāna’s commission of adultery—an affair that is to have, from a feminist perspective, positive trans-generational effects—that haunts the entire text. Love, sex, and sexuality are the most significant things that Zayāna admittedly learns from Yves. (This is notwithstanding her acknowledgement that she also learns cultural appreciation from her French neighbours Vanessa (who is Yves’ sister) and her husband Jean; 75–76), with whom Zayāna lived as neighbours in the Omani town of Matraḥ). In contrast with her enforced relationship with Ḥ ammūd, Zayāna begins

11

Ibid.

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to notice something natural and rational in her evolving affair with Yves right from day one of their acquaintance with each other. She begins to observe a big difference between the concept and practice of love in Western and Arabian cultures. An example of such cultural differences is handshaking, a practice that is traditionally less common between unrelated Arab males and females. Zayāna informs us, in the present time of the novel, that on her first meeting with Yves, she exchanged a warm handshake with him. The Frenchman “held [her hand] for a while” in his “strong, warm hand” (71–72), while he continued to speak to her. It sounds unrealistic, however, that a pre-oil-era, uneducated, yet-unexposed Arabian woman like her would not mind shaking hands with an ajnabī (a man alien to her both by blood and by marriage). Couched in a series of figurative terms, Zayāna’s unusual sensual feelings following the warm handshake with Yves are predictive of the possibility of her falling in love with him. While it is obvious that Zayāna’s relationship with Ḥ ammūd is utterly unromantic, her affair with Yves is characterised by a lot of romance. Romance begins between the two lovers on the second day of their acquaintance with each other, when the former prepares a special, traditional Omani dish as lunch in honour of her French neighbours’ visitor. Zayāna narrates that after the two households—hers and Vanessa’s—have had a nice meal together at the latter’s house, Yves begins to give her continual, “provocative” looks (78). When it is time to leave as the sun is about to set, it is Yves, rather than Vanessa as Zayāna’s friend, who offers to see her off. Similarly, Ṣāliḥa—Zayāna’s often supportive and cooperative female domestic servant—has quickly taken home her little girls. These two narrative facts suggest an air of design in the author’s construction of her first heroine’s chances to fall in love with the visiting Frenchman. It is in what follows that the reader is presented with the first of the romance scenes in the novel going by both the ‘story-order’ (chronology of events) and the ‘text-order’ (the linear arrangement in the text). Depicted pictorially through Zayāna’s narrative perspective, the ensuing romance between her and Yves is initiated by the latter. As they both reach the gate of her farmyard and are about to part: [Yves’] hand suddenly gripped mine, firmly . . . I turned round [towards him]; my heart began to beat fast in a repressed excitement and total confusion.

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We stood face to face [. . .] [. . .] All of a sudden he embraced me in his arms . . . firmly hugging me to his chest, [I could feel] his extreme heartbeats in my vein . . . (80).

She inadvertently surrenders to his sexual appeals, offering “her lips for his kisses”. Zayāna has done this because “[her] body had started betraying [her]” and so “[she] could not restrain herself ” (Ibid.). This indicates that she is a ‘passive agent’ in the defiance of the Kuwaiti social order at this initial stage of her affair with the Frenchman. That she soon cautions herself “hesitantly slipping away from him” and “rejecting him while [she] actually desired [such] sensual moves” (Ibid.) suggests the notion of women’s “self-contradiction” in the issue of love—that is, women saying “no” when they actually mean “yes.” Zayāna’s tacit “no” here does not simply reflect the (natural) feminine tactic of suspending ‘falling for’ a man. Rather, it stems from what she often sees as societally-imposed restrictions on her body: that as a married woman she must refrain from extra-marital love and sexual affairs, no matter the circumstances. Zayāna’s initial fidelity and faithfulness to her absentee husband is reflected in the narrative of the beginning of her affair with Yves, under discussion here. We find the woman, after kissing the Frenchman for the first time, expressing a seemingly sincere wish that Ḥ ammūd could send for her, or return to Oman at the “most critical moment” in her life (Ibid.). This is a moment which can be described as that of Zayāna’s transition from an ‘immanent’ to a ‘transcendent’ Arabian female figure. Her effort to maintain her marital fidelity is demonstrated, more vividly, in her evasive tactics: she refuses to visit her French neighbours for three days following the event of her first, brief but impetuous romance with the Frenchman. Unlike her male-enforced relationship with Ḥ ammūd, Zayāna admits that she, too, has been naturally amorously attracted to Yves for his handsomeness, lovable character, profound sociability, and high intellectual standing (75). Using various figurative expressions to stress her perception of both the timeliness of the Frenchman’s visit to Oman and the symbolic changes her acquaintance with him are going to make in her life, Zayāna declares to the reader that her pathological sexual feelings towards Yves are a good omen (83).

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Zayāna’s nostalgia for her secret affair with the Frenchman preoccupies the narrative of her eight years stay in Zanzibar, which is presented in a panoramic and reminiscential manner. She tells us that, no sooner had she had her first sex experience with Yves (described below), than she concluded that he had completely “displaced” Ḥ ammūd in her mind. “The second man [Yves]”, she notes, “has displaced the first [Ḥ ammūd]” (314). She concludes that though Ḥ ammūd still legally possesses her body, it is Yves who is endeared to her (311). Culture, society, and individual freedom In its advocacy for sexual revolution in Arabian society, Muzūn juxtaposes the conflict between the concepts of individual ‘freedom’ in Arabian and Western societies. This is featured in the narrative of the very first ‘romance episode’ in the novel. Set in Vanessa’s (or Yves’) home, and captured largely through Zayāna’s monologic ‘angle of vision’ often interspersed by the lovers’ dialogic communion, this episode is one of the most significant aspects of the novel from a feminist perspective. Having promised to meet with Yves the day following his societally tabooed gestures—calling on her loudly and in an affectionate manner, to be discussed later in this section—Zayāna goes alone to see the visiting Frenchman. That Vanessa and her husband, Jean, are away from the house at the time of Zayāna’s visit further suggests an air of design in the author’s bid to create a perfect environment for her heroine’s evolving transgression of societal norms. Although the Frenchman serves as the source of her enlightenment, Zayāna is already conscious of women’s subordinate status in Arabian society: We’re [a people] whose traditions are deep-rooted. Our conventions and customs are much more firm and rigid . . . we live much more in accordance with these conventions than in compliance with our own wishes and desires . . . We live by the logic of the public not by the logic of the individual . . . [. . .] We accept it as an ‘invisible’ law, by which we are governed, and under the sovereignty of which we live . . . We cannot contravene it . . . or else we offer our souls for fatal destruction (88).

This is what she says, at the beginning of the episode in question here, in response to the Frenchman’s proposal for her hand in love and marriage.

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The text seems interested not in merely reflecting and subtly critiquing the imbalances embedded in Arabian cultural practices, but in making a proposition towards the emergence of a progressive, egalitarian society. This is expressed through the consciousness of Yves, symbolizing the “free” Western culture. “You are free in your love for me . . . free in choosing me as your lover” (88), the Frenchman says to her in a democratic spirit, as opposed to the love-by-force manner of the latter’s relationship with Ḥ ammūd. “[Loving you]”, Zayāna replies, “will cost me my life, disgrace, and the total loss of my family’s honour.” She adds: “If a married woman loves another man, thus betraying her husband, her punishment is nothing but stoning to death” (Ibid.). This last statement signals not her refusal of Yves’ proposal, but her interpellation by both the ideology of sharaf (social honour), and the Islamic doctrine of capital punishment for adultery. Yves’ notion of individual ‘freedom’, while not strange to Zayāna, contravenes her own cultural belief. Whereas for her, “freedom” is determined and dictated by society (as explicit in the quotation above), for the Frenchman, it is “personal”. He voices the view that freedom should stem from within someone’s mind, not be imposed from outside (88–89). This conceptual discord regarding ‘freedom’ between the two characters exemplifies what the contemporary social scientist Peter Manicas has identified as the confusion of ‘human freedom’ with ‘agency’. Clarifying that confusion, Manicas explains that “Freedom regards what agents are able to do and this depends upon their ‘resources’” (original emphasis). He adds: “Freedom which presupposes agency is disturbed very unequally; agency is not.” He concludes: “A person faced with but two disastrous alternatives is not very free; but that person remains an agent”.12 As a female member of pre-oil Arabian society, Zayāna is “faced with but two disastrous alternatives,” as far as her emerging relationship with Yves is concerned. She is torn between remaining a conformist woman, or committing the life-threatening “crime” of adultery. She is, therefore, “not very free” with regard to her sexual life and desires. 12

Peter Manicas, “Agency and Recent Philosophy of Social Science”. This is an ‘unpublished’ article but available on the author’s website http://www.libstudy.hawaii .edu/Manicas/pdf_files/unpub/AgencyAndRecentPhilosophyOfScience.pdf, 1994 p. 5. This site was last accessed on 07 June, 2008.

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What Yves describes as Zayāna’s ‘freedom’, going by Monicas’ definition above, can thus be understood rather as the issue of the woman’s ‘agency.’ If, based on her social circumstances, her freedom has been “disturbed”, she still “remains an agent” who is to decide whether or not to violate patriarchal values. That Zayāna is apparently convinced by Yves’ claim that she is “free” to offer her body and spirit to anyone she chooses is evidenced by her surrendering herself, wilfully and wholeheartedly for the first time, to the man’s sexual advances that ensue. I will argue here, however, that the woman does not become an ‘active’ agent in her defiance until after her first sexual experience with him. Though (as characteristic of the novel) non-explicit, the narrative of Zayāna’s first-of-its-kind, pleasurable sexual encounter with a man is expressed in highly romantic language that also serves, primarily, to reflect the wide difference between Western and conventional Arabian sexual practices. The sex-starved woman tells us that, unlike Ḥ ammūd, Yves’ approach to sex is tender; it is preceded by highly arousing foreplay. Also, unlike her husband who used to rush into her, the Frenchman approaches her “magically” through his gentle, pleasurable and enjoyable ritualistic method that will stimulate and arouse all parts of the body . . . it will ignite and revivify them . . . inciting in them holistic excitement and carnal appetite. He is neither hasty as to always be eager to get at the end [of the intercourse] . . . nor does he make it boring . . . He is naturally sexy . . . libidinous, perfectly mastering the accurate and exact timing [for ejaculation] (92).

This description continues with her admittance of having learned (much more) about love, sex, and sexuality from the Frenchman. Al-Sālim depicts an enjoyable sex act as having ‘transcendent’ capability, as not merely a source of bodily pleasure but one that evokes female self-realisation and self-fulfilment. Thus, Zayāna’s realisation of the repression of female sexuality in Arabian society stems from her experience of pleasurable sex with Yves. Even though she has wilfully given in to sex with the man, she has never before given her indulgence in an extra-marital affair any serious contemplation. After their first sex together, Zayāna says to herself: “Never . . . will things be as they were before, henceforth” (90). Her first sex with Yves is an eye-opener. She describes herself, before her encounter with the man, as having been blindfolded, as being ‘docile’ and ‘submissive’ “like Vanessa’s domestic animals” (93). Her life had hitherto been characterised by total “darkness”. “With Yves there are different meanings

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[to issues]” (Ibid.), she reflects, referring to how he has helped change her sensibility. Zayāna uses the metaphor of an “entangled snake” and an “entrapped fly/bird” to portray women’s status in Arabian society. In her internal musings after the above sex scene, we find her reflecting: I must cast off my slough, and set free the butterfly of my soul. That I should believe in myself first, so that I can free my mind from myself . . . That I should take the first step toward freedom (93).

If agency connotes “the capacity to act in realizing one’s genuine interests”,13 then Zayāna’s ‘active’ agency is not evoked until this moment of her reflection on the necessity of resisting male domination. Zayāna: Subverting and Evading Patriarchy Muzūn illustrates the ‘religious’ and ‘cultural’ ideologies constituting part of Althusser’s Ideological State Apparatuses (ISAs). Like the other selected texts, the novel in focus here vividly depicts how individuals in a given society “are victims of social relations that they perceive to be natural and determinate, but which are imposed upon them by the State.”14 In the character of Zayāna, al-Sālim constructs the processes of a woman’s ‘mis-recognition’, and later, ‘recognition’ of the possibility of evading the ideological forces prevalent in her society. An example of Zayāna’s initial interpellation by cultural and religious ideologies is reflected through the recurrent terrifying image of the zāniya (adulteress). For instance, when (after hours of sleeplessness consequent upon her first kissing Yves discussed earlier) the woman eventually falls into “a brief, horrible sleep” (81), she dreams of a woman she had seen in her childhood, who was put in a well and then stoned to death for committing adultery (Ibid.).15 With the help of Yves as noted above, however, Zayāna is able to realise the “imaginariness” of

13 This is a part of Bhashkar’s definition of ‘human freedom/agency’ cited in Peter Manicas, op. cit. 14 Louis Althusser, ‘Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses’ (ISAs) in Lenin and Philosophy and Other Essays, (trans.) Ben Brewster (London: New Left Books, 1971), p. 152. See also Louis Althusser, op. cit., cited in Sara Mills et al., op. cit., p. 193. 15 The haunting image of the stoned adulteress keeps occurring in Zayāna’s subsequent thoughts during her affair with Yves and, most especially, during her pregnancy with, and after the birth of, Zuwayna.

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this kind of ideology (93). Hence, such a horrifying image has little or no effect on her psychical being at the later stages of her life. The novel exposes the logic behind the circumscription of Arabian women’s public appearances and interaction and represents the various ways through which women can undermine the effectiveness of this kind of restrictive mechanism on their social life. An instance of Zayāna’s disruption of “patriarchal logic” is presented first in a dialogic scene in chapter two of the novel—entitled the “Chapter of Love”—where most of her personal acts of defiance are featured. She had feigned sudden sickness in order to avoid Yves, consequent upon their first kissing described above. After three days of her self-imposed total seclusion, Yves—an alien who is perhaps ignorant of Arabian traditions (or is it that he is intentionally contravening them?)—decides to go to her farmyard in order to verify the reality of her sickness. Standing at the gate in front of her compound, he calls her name, loudly. Taken unawares by this, Zayāna fearfully rushes out to meet him in the “garden before he would repeat the call, thus making other people [. . .] aware of his presence” in her compound in the dark hours of the evening (86). One can argue, therefore, that it is her fear of Yves’ ‘illicit’ intention with her being known to the public that indirectly ‘encourage’ the woman’s meeting with the man in secret. The story of Zayāna’s several ways of subverting the Arabian social order is set during the World War II years. With the escalation of the war (between 1941 and 1942), Ḥ ammūd’s hypocrisy as regards his promised early return to Oman from Zanzibar is fortified. It becomes risky for him to embark on any intercontinental journey. In like manner, it becomes dangerous for Yves to return to France, which has fallen under Nazi Germany’s control. As both lovers become obsessed with each other and the war continues, Zayāna begins to accompany the Frenchman in some of his research tours of Omani villages and towns. What is ‘deconstructive’ of the Arabian social order here is not just her secret travels and outings with Yves, but her utilisation of the difference in the traditional dressing code for the two sexes to her own benefit. She disguises herself as a man, dressing in dishdāsha—a long, loose garment—and other pieces of clothes associated with Arabian men (105 ff.) Zayāna’s indulgence in an extra-marital affair or, in religious terminology, adultery, symbolises women’s protest against patriarchy. “The revolt of the body had freed my mind and thoughts” (93), Zayāna admits. Her self-given sexual freedom is tantamount to a “transgressive,

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rebellious disruption” of patriarchal culture (Ibid.). Her deviant thoughts and actions, nevertheless, represent the inchoate phase of ‘sexual revolution’ in Arabian society. This is because her assumption of sexual liberty remains at a very secret and personal level, as she is yet incapable of proclaiming or openly demonstrating it. Now a non-conformist female, she expresses the fact that her success in her affair with Yves would be consequentially subversive. “If I succeed [in my relationship with you], I’ve violated the social order” (108), she says addressing her lover on one occasion. Zayāna does succeed. Her secret affair with Yves culminates in her impregnation by him; the latter returns to France without being aware of the former’s pregnancy (109, 115–116) which spurs Zayāna on to further subverting patriarchal society through her various forms of evasion. Evasion of physical and social destruction In Sexual Politics, Kate Millet hypothesises that “A sexual revolution would require, perhaps first of all, an end to traditional sexual inhibitions and taboos, particularly those that most threaten patriarchal monogamous marriage: homosexuality, “illegitimacy,” adolescent, pre- and extra-marital sexuality [. . .]”16 Al-Sālim makes her first heroine launch a process of “sexual revolution” in the Arabian society depicted in the novel under study. The novel opens with the episode of the birth of Zuwayna, as Zayāna’s secret daughter from Yves is called. This features in chapter one, entitled the “Chapter of Birth”. Then we have the story of Zayāna’s initial defiance of patriarchal social authority featuring in chapter two, the “Chapter of Love”. Adopting this kind of non-sequential ordering of events in the narrative serves to attract the reader’s attention to the author’s seductive ‘legitimisation’ of both Zayāna’s “adultery” that presupposes Zuwayna’s birth, and the latter’s right of existence as a ‘legitimate’ child. It is through the perspective of Zuwayna-the-infant that the author first presents to the reader Zayāna’s post-Yves (after Yves’ departure from Oman) subversion of patriarchal social order. Narrating her own predicament as bint ḥ arām (an ‘illegitimate’ child), Zuwayna tells us that her mother further protests against patriarchal society by insisting 16 Kate Millet, Sexual Politics, first published in 1971, (London: Verso Press Limited, 1977), p. 62.

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on the former’s right of existence as a human being. Describing the baby as a product of the “semen of a genuine but forbidden love” (197), Zayāna argues for the eradication of the notion of “illegitimacy”: labelling as illegitimate children who were born as a result of adulterous or un-solemnised sexual encounters. Just as the Zayāna-Yves affair was characterised by unsurprising fears and secrecy, so too does Zuwayna’s birth take place amid extreme fears, anxieties, and ‘top’ secrecy. At Zuwayna’s birth, Zayāna again turns patriarchal discourse against itself. Firstly, as she had done during the time of her romance with Yves, she uses the dress code for women (wearing a long, loose garment that covers all the parts of a woman’s body, and using the veil) to conceal her pregnancy with Zuwayna from the public. Secondly, Zayāna’s silence—not publicly confessing—about her adultery, which could be proved by her pregnancy with another man’s baby in the absence of her husband, is a way of avoiding the stoning-to-death punishment. Rather than delivering Zuwayna at home (as customary in the preoil era) Zayāna, with Ṣāliḥ a acting as midwife, delivers the baby on a mountainside, in a bush located halfway between Maṭraḥ and the village of Jabal. Consequently, Zayāna abandons the baby. The former never completely abandons the latter, however. She orders that Ṣāliḥa watch out for prospective adopters and monitor the well-being of the foundling in her foster home (12). Baby abandonment is a common problem in most societies. Al-Sālim represents it in Muzūn as an “abominable act”. But she argues that the blame for its regular occurrence should be transferred to society rather than be put on the women who do it. Zayāna commits this ‘non-humanitarian act’ in order to avoid a major humanitarian crisis: so as to save her own life and that of the baby, to safeguard the honour of both mother and daughter. Hence, Zayāna’s negative action is for a positive end. There appears to be some contradiction between Zuwayna’s initial narrative of the story of her birth, and Zayāna’s version that is characteristically meant to complement it. The discrepancy here is as regards Zayāna’s reason for protecting the life of her baby in spite of all the anxieties and dangers involved. According to Zuwayna-the-infant— when expressing the idea that her existence in life has been predeter-

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mined (9–10)—her still culturally-interpellated mother “had [initially] attempted several times to abort” the ‘shameful’ pregnancy (10). Zayāna’s thoughts and reflections on this issue, however, portray her as an agent in refusing to abort the pregnancy. For instance, when and after taking the ritual post-natal bath (a recommended practice in Islam), we find her reflecting: “What would keep me alive . . . should keep the seedling [baby] from my (womb) alive, too” (19). She contends: “Why should I eliminate it, while I could neither create it, nor is it within my rights to abort it”, adding that “[pregnancy] is the medium for human procreation, and so I have no moral right to eliminate it” (Ibid.). Thus, although she is capable of (and might have initially attempted) eliminating the pregnancy, she has refused to do so in order to subvert societal authority. Zayāna believes abortion is anti-human. She tries to ‘deconstruct’ the notion that adultery and any product therefrom are taboo ‘objects’. Her discursive contemplations on the legality or illegality of this act situate al-Sālim, in Muzūn, as an “Islamic feminist” writer. In her Women Claim Islam, cooke defines an “Islamic feminist” as an Arab/Muslim woman writer/activist with “a difficult double commitment: on the one hand, to a faith position, and on the other hand, to women’s rights both inside the home and outside.”17 The text of Muzūn presents “abortion” not as human right but as God’s right; it will become human/women’s right only when justifiably necessary. The author enunciates, also through the consciousness of Zayāna, the views that human reproduction/procreation is a divine process and that mankind should not tamper with God’s creation except for special, humanly ‘legitimate’ reasons. This kind of Islamic feminist discourse of ‘conditional abortion’ is in contrast with the radical Western feminist advocacy for women’s ‘unconditional’ right to the practice. “[F]eminists have opposed”, writes Michele Barrett in Women’s Oppression Today, “the reduction of women to breeding machines. This argument underlies one of the women’s movement’s most frequently

17 Miriam cooke, Women Claim Islam: Creating Islamic Feminism through Literature (New York: Routledge, 2001), p. 59.

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articulated demands—the right to control our own bodies—[to control, among other things] women’s reproductive functions.”18 As an Islamic feminist text, however, Muzūn presents two perspectives on abortion using two different circumstances. They are: Zayāna’s anti-abortion stance under discussion here, and Muzūn’s medically recommended abortion of her pregnancy with her Kuwaiti husband Khālid’s supposedly male baby (pp. 61–63). Arguably, the novel represents these two female stands against and for abortion for both (Islamic) religious and feminist/humanistic ends. In both instances, the women’s decisions on whether or not to carry out abortion are used to expose the oppressive patriarchal culture and to protect the female body and soul. The kind of women’s subversion and evasion of patriarchal hegemony in the novel is more sophisticated than what has thus far been discussed in this chapter. That the author works towards providing women’s alternatives to the traditional hierarchical social system becomes more and more evident in the character of Zayāna. Her revolutionary disposition as a matriarchal family head is the focus of attention in what follows. ‘Evasion’ of the institution of the family In their study of Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë19 and some other nineteenth-century British women’s novels, the ‘Marxist Feminist Literature Collective’ (MFLC), discussed earlier in the introduction to this book, note that “Some texts refuse to reproduce contemporary economic and ideological determinations; instead they represent a systematic evasion or interrogation of the law of these determinations.”20 Invoking Althusser’s argument that: “the Law cannot be ‘ignored’ by anyone, least of all by those ignorant of it, but may be evaded or violated by everyone [. . .]” the ten-woman collective “argue that this ‘evasion’ of the law occurs in the [selected] texts in the interrelated areas of social class, kinship and Oedipal socialisation.”21

18 Michele Barrett, Women’s Oppression Today: The Marxist/Feminist Encounter (London: Verso, 1988, revised edition), p. 46. 19 Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre (London: Smith, Elder & Co., 1847, 2nd edition). 20 The Marxist-Feminist Literature Collective, “Women’s Writing: Jane Eyre, Shirley, Villette, Aurora Leigh”, Ideology and Consciousness, vol. 1, no. 3, (Spring, 1978) p. 29. 21 Ibid. Reference is made to Althusser’s article on “Freud and Lacan” in Althusser, op. cit. p. 195.

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In line with MFLC’s arguments above, one can say that Muzūn evades the conventional hierarchical structure of the institution of the family. The novel represents three examples of Arabian homes: Ḥ ammūd’s (Omani), ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz’s and Khālid’s (both Kuwaiti) as Zayāna, Zuwayna, and Muzūn’s matrimonial homes, respectively. But the author refuses to let any of the heroines (including Zayāna, of course, for she is an almost completely lone parent) belong to the normative Arabian family structure, where the father/husband would frequently exercise total restrictive control over his daughters/wives. Even the avoidance of constructing any modern Western-styled home, with Yves possibly as its head and Zayāna and Zuwayna as his wife and daughter, suggests the author’s tactical evasion of any typical, male-headed home in the fictional world of the novel. As matriarch, Zayāna devises an unconventional matrimonial home for her special daughter, Zuwayna—something she never does with her other girls who live with their respective husbands. She persuades her son-in-law, ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz, to allow Zuwayna to remain with her in Oman, rather than have her live with him in Kuwait (225). The apparent reason we can decipher from the text for this act by the matriarch is Zuwayna’s suffering from psychological depression and lack of selfconfidence. But there is an unspoken sub-text to Zayāna’s action here. Because of Zayāna’s schema, Zuwayna never experiences the total control of a man. Still she procreates, as her husband occasionally visits and cohabits with her. If the essence of marriage—as conventionally believed in Arabian and some other societies—is procreation, then the story of Zuwayna demonstrates the evitability of the institution of the family as a necessary medium for ensuring the continuity of humanity. This unspoken aspect of the text constitutes an “interrogation” of the family as a social institution. Femininity and Gender Socialisation Other instances of Zayāna’s subversion and revolutionisation of her society at the domestic level pertain to children’s socialisation. The text makes the processes of the socialisation of both Zuwayna and Muzūn its central narrative focus. (The description of the development of these second and third heroines from childhood through womanhood occupies almost three-quarters of the text). Whereas both Zayāna (implicitly)

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and Zuwayna are victims of the discriminatory, male-empowered pattern of gender socialisation, Zayāna ensures that all the female children under her custody escape such a stereotypical process. She also works hard to re-socialise her secret daughter. De-interpellating the interpellated The story of Zuwayna reflects women’s internalisation of the effects of patriarchal culture. Already eight years old at the time the reader meets her again in the novel—we first met her in the scene of her birth in the “Chapter of Birth” described above—Zuwayna re-appears to inform us about her childhood socialisation and marriage in the “Chapter of Love”. She narrates that after her abandonment by Zayāna, she finds herself in the custody of a rustic woman, Umm Salmān, whom she sees as her mother (119 ff.). Umm Salmān inculcates in Zuwayna the ideology of female domesticity. The woman frequently emphasises to the small girl that “a woman’s place is but her home”, that “A clever woman is the one who is jealously mindful of the proper care and protection of her [matrimonial] home [. . .]” (141). What is worrying for Umm Salmān is Zuwayna’s behaving “like a boy rather than a girl”. The outspokenness and physical agility which the girl has begun to manifest at childhood are emblematic of the “licentious and devilish female” (120–122). In the character of Umm Salmān, women’s complacence and complicity, their collusion in the perpetuation of their own oppression, are personified. Perhaps very unusual of Kuwaiti women’s writing (as evident in the other selected texts at least), Muzūn reverses the construction of a patriarchal ‘representative’. Rather than Sālim ibn Masʿūd (Umm Salmān’s husband) being the typical ‘father figure’ who will be authoritatively controlling, and directly oppressing the women within his household, it is Umm Salmān who treats Zuwayna in accordance with societal norms. It might be unfair, nevertheless, to conclude that this woman is temperamentally aggressive, violent and wicked, as Zuwayna wants us to believe (120). From another perspective, the woman symbolises female kindness, sacrifice and humanitarianism. She has voluntarily adopted Zuwayna in the first place (20–21). She always “prays” for the girl’s future prosperity and success (120). Umm Salmān often defends her ‘highhandedness’ on the premise that she is training the girl so that the latter can become “a good housewife” in the future, so that “[Zuwayna’s] husband will be

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happy with her and he will not curse us [mothers] for our deficiencies in giving [her] a proper (domestic) training” (142). The elderly woman, therefore, is just an ‘innocent’ agent of patriarchy. Implicitly, Umm Salmān suspects that Ṣāliḥ a and Zayāna’s love, affection, and over-generosity towards herself and other members of her family are all because of Zuwayna. But the elderly woman refuses to query the duo (Ṣāliḥa and Zayāna) on this, a phenomenon that is suggestive of her collusion in the adulteress Zayāna’s evasion of both physical and social destruction. Umm Salmān’s silence—ignoring the very possibility of any blood relationship (the too glaring resemblance) between Zuwayna and Zayāna (203)—also implies solidarity as the oppressed women’s strategy of survival in the face of the pervasive patriarchal dominance. It is with regard to the issue of Zuwayna’s circumcision that Zayāna becomes an ‘informal’ women’s liberation activist in the novel. Featured in a dialogic scene set in Umm Salmān’s house, the narrative of Zayāna’s first meeting with Umm Salmān and Zuwayna since the birth of the girl is filtered through the fragmented ‘points of view’ of the eight-year-old Zuwayna and, later, Zayāna. Zayāna informs us that no sooner had she seen the girl than she noticed some abnormalities in Zuwayna’s outlook and behaviour. Zayāna’s observation here is contrary to the impression Ṣāliḥa has previously given her: that Zuwayna has been very “cheerful”, “active”, and “talkative”. Zayāna soon becomes impatient with the girl’s reticence, her unusual silence (202). She therefore asks what is amiss. Umm Salmān replies that it is perhaps because of the girl’s recent experience of the operation of circumcision. For Umm Salmān, circumcision is not just a perennial customary practise but a way of ‘taming’ women, of keeping them under control, of making them “submissive and compliant” to patriarchal social order (146). Zayāna’s outright condemnation of the practice before Umm Salmān (here representing patriarchal authority) symbolises the global women’s movement’s advocacy for its eradication. Zayāna tells us: “I descended on [Umm Salmān] with blames and reproof out of my grief and surprise, my regret and fear” (203). Even though she is cautioned by Ṣāliḥa to “swallow” her “extreme fury” (204) and act calmly, Zayāna continues, through her internal musings at this point in the narrative, to articulate (modern) women’s antagonism to the practice of female genital mutilation.

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Consequently, Zayāna begins to think about how to “repair the damage already done” (204). Intent on preventing her “lost” daughter from continuous patriarchal oppression, she sees the amelioration (iṣlāḥ ) of the depressed Zuwayna’s psychical being as an obligation upon herself. “I must atone (yajib an adfaʿ kaffāra) for my mistake [of abandoning the child in the first place]” (204), she says to herself for example. Through several of her schemas,22 she is able to realise her plan to “adopt” Zuwayna, thus reclaiming the girl. “At last [. . .] I brought my little daughter back into my life and my being [. . .]” (207), Zayāna tells us. Having achieved this “goal”, she makes every effort to re-socialise and de-interpellate Zuwayna. Zayāna’s contribution towards the liberation of the girl from patriarchal oppression, real and ideological, is first presented in the text through the consciousness of the latter. Zuwayna reflects that “but for [Zayāna] I would have [remained] entwined in mountains of fear and horror.” “Without [Zayāna]”, she continues, “what could I have become? She changed Zuwayna, the mentally deranged (al-mamsūsa), the psychologically depressed . . . who was being haunted by demons and elves” (231). Zayāna’s reformation of the stereotypical pattern of gender socialisation is illustrated in her efforts to encourage formal education for her girls, in contrast with the norms of the first half of the twentieth century in Arabia. For example, Zayāna had proposed taking the eight-year-old Zuwayna into her custody using the latter’s stark illiteracy and lack of Qurʾanic education as an excuse before Umm Salmān. In an ensuing dialogue between the two women, filtered through the consciousness of Zayāna, Umm Salmān argues that “knowledge is but a waste of time and money” (207), thus echoing the notion of the uselessness of women’s education. Al-Sālim represents literacy and religious (Qurʾanic) knowledge as women’s weapons for overcoming some of their social and psychological problems. “The best of Zayāna’s gifts to me”, Zuwayna reflects, “is [that she makes me] learn how to read [and write] . . . and to be able to

22 Zayāna’s schemas in this regard are that, using Ṣāliḥa, she is able to manipulate her ways and be re-united with Zuwayna. Zayāna ingratiates Umm Salmān with money. Now a rich woman having inherited wealth from her late husband Ḥ ammūd, she establishes some trading companies in the Omani capital, Muscat (where she is based since her return from Zanzibar), and puts Umm Salmān’s all-male biological children in charge (Muzūn, pp. 205–206).

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memorise the Qurʾan with which I dispel my [imaginary] fears” (232). This is another instance in the novel that portrays al-Sālim as an Islamic feminist writer, who is neither attacking Islam, nor, in cooke’s words, “question[ing] the sacrality of the Qurʾan.”23 What al-Sālim is apparently doing in the novel, however, is “engag[ing] with and interrogat[ing] the norms and values of Islam as a cultural and religious practice and discourse.”24 In effect, it is the Arab(ian) cultural values and practices often attributed to and confused with Islam that Muzūn critiques as oppressive. Whereas Zuwayna’s childhood socialisation was in consonance with the stereotypical norms of female passivity, submissiveness, and immanence, her half-sisters, Khawla and Mayyā, were socialised according to Zayāna’s Yves-influenced policy of gender equality in terms of social and intellectual development. Signalling the difference in their respective socialisations, Zuwayna notes that it is Mayyā in particular who changes her perception of femininity and sexuality. Mayyā and Zuwayna experience girlhood and adolescence at almost the same period of time (the former is only three years older than the latter). The former acts as the matchmaker between the latter and ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz—a (presumably) middle-aged and polygamous, Kuwaiti aristocrat (237). Unlike Mayyā, Zuwayna is always ashamed of discussing or exposing anything relating to her growing sexuality, like menstrual blood, the size of her breasts, love making, and so forth. “Mayyā never feels morally guilty like myself” when discussing about female sexuality; “Rather, she always shamelessly celebrates her femininity” (235). These kinds of displeasing reflective remarks by Zuwayna serve to underscore Zayāna’s achievement in inculcating self-pride and self-esteem in her girls. As matriarch, Zayāna reforms Arabian marriage customs in several ways. She maintains a ‘no forced marriage’ policy for her daughters and granddaughters. This is evident in the narrative of Zuwayna’s marriage, which is presented more expansively in the novel than the narratives of Khawla and Mayyā’s wedding ceremonies (215, 221). Zayāna’s act of not dictating whom to marry let alone what to collect as her daughters’ mahr (bridal gift) implies women’s discontent with their objectification and economic oppression that are characteristic of

23 24

Cooke, Women Claim Islam . . ., op. cit., p. xii. Ibid., p. xx.

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the traditional Arabian marriage system (238). It also serves to demonstrate women’s alternative to the male-dictated customary practice of forced marriage. Zayāna disapproves of the socially-constructed notion of female as the weaker sex (239). Her radicalisation of the pervasive pattern of gender socialisation is most successful in the character of her secret granddaughter, Muzūn, who is Zuwayna’s only daughter. Women as victims of conflicting socialisations Zayāna becomes obsessed with Muzūn, all because of Zuwayna’s (Muzūn’s mother’s) specialness. Zayāna’s influence on Muzūn begins at birth25 and is largely illustrated in the section entitled ‘Between Two Opposing Poles’ in the “Chapter of Birth”. Through several expressions of “binary oppositions” (as characteristic of the style of the novel), al-Sālim, through Muzūn’s perspective, describes two categories of women: the passive and immanent woman, here represented by Zuwayna, and the active and transcendent woman, represented by Zayāna (27). These two representative women engage in a kind of ideological “war of influence”, struggling with each other over whose opinions should hold sway concerning their beloved (grand)child. Muzūn gratifyingly acknowledges the immense role Zayāna plays in her life. She notes that if any day the psychologically-depressed, selfconfidence-lacking Zuwayna “infuses fear into [her mind], Zayāna will dispel it the following morning” (Ibid.). Whenever Zuwayna ties down Muzūn to prevent her from playing outdoors, Zayāna “undoes the chain of this captivity .. and sets [the little girl] free to go into the expanse of fields where [she] could flap [her] wings and fly” (32). Through the narrative of Muzūn’s childhood, al-Sālim deconstructs the androcentric, ‘Enlightenment discourse’—personified in the characters of Zuwayna and Umm Salmān—of “consign[ing] women to the ‘private’ realm of feeling, domesticity, the body, in order to classify a public realm of Reason as masculine.”26 Zayāna inculcates in Muzūn 25

It is Zayāna who names the baby “Muzūn” shortly after the latter was delivered in a hospital in Muscat. At the time of Muzūn’s birth, it is only the reader who can comprehend Zayāna’s allusion to the reason why she has given what, according to the doctor who acts as midwife to Zuwayna, sounds like a very “strange” and “uncommon name for [Omani/Arabian] girls”. Indirectly playing her role as the secret biological grandparent of Zuwayna’s baby, Zayāna has named the baby “Muzūn” in order to ‘immortalise’ her clandestine relationship with Yves (see Muzūn, p. 26). 26 Patricia Waugh, “Modernism and Postmodernism, Gender: The View from Feminism” in Sandra Kemp and Judith Squires (eds.), Feminisms (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997), p. 206.

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the idea of the necessity for women to struggle for “agency, personal autonomy, self-expression, and self-determination”27 in a male-dominated world. Reflecting on her problematic childhood socialisation, Muzūn narrates that she, Zuwayna, Zayāna and Ṣāliḥa usually visit her so-called “grandmother”, Umm Salmān, in the countryside. Each time she wants to join her male peers at the village in order to go and play, Zuwayna infuses in her a sense of gender-based otherness, saying: “Come back, Muzūn . . . come back, girl . . . you aren’t a boy” (32). Whereas Zuwayna instils in Muzūn the sense of female inferiority, Zayāna imparts in the girl that of gender equality. To support this, Muzūn recounts that as soon as they arrive at the village on one occasion, she is invited by a group of friends in the neighbourhood to attend an entertainment session by the ghajar (Gypsy). This is a tribe of Bedouin Arabs who entertain people and perform various forms of magic and soothsaying (33). The significance of ‘the gypsy episode’ lies not in Zayāna’s overruling that Muzūn is allowed to participate with the boys in attending the ghajar’s entertainment in the woods. Nor is it the fact that Muzūn does pleasantly compete with the boys in all physical activities they embark upon like running, jumping, and swimming. What is much more noteworthy here is contained in the dialogue that ensues between all the women, consequent upon Muzūn’s lateness to return home until dusk. All but Zayāna are so seriously devastated that they could not even utter a word on the girl’s return: Zayāna asked why we were late, and I replied that we were so engrossed in swimming in the lake ( falaj), that we were not conscious of the passage of time until it was dark. [. . .] My grandmother, Umm Salmān, said: “Girls don’t swim in the lake.” Zayāna replied: – There is no difference between girls and boys. – Strange [idea]!! How can girls and boys be equal in this era? What is suitable for male, can never be suitable for female . . . or else, this world would become topsy-turvy (38; my emphasis).

That al-Sālim is very conscious of language structure is evident especially in the emphasised portion of Zayāna’s statement above. Zayāna/ al-Sālim mentions “girls” before “boys” in the sentence, which is very much unconventional in the so-called man-made language, written

27

Ibid., 208.

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and oral. The dialogue here exemplifies two things. On the one hand, it reflects the patriarchal concept of ‘biological determinism’: the belief “that physiological difference between men and women determine social roles” and on the basis of which women are denied “full expression of their potential.”28 On the other hand, al-Sālim articulates, through Umm Salmān, a kind of “patriarchal anxiety”: that proclaiming and asserting the notion of gender equality, as Zayāna is doing, is potentially subversive and disruptive to male authority. Muzūn is able to escape cultural interpellations, thanks to Zayāna. This is reflected, most notably, in the narrative of Muzūn-the-schoolgirl’s participation in an interesting but horrifying excursion organised by her primary school to Muscat Castle. The little girl is specifically appalled by “the groans and [wailings] of al-zāniya (the adulteress) in the depth of a well . . . having been [reportedly] stoned the previous night” (45). As she recounts her experience in the castle in the presence of Zuwayna and the similarly ‘adulteress’ Zayāna, Muzūn curiously interrogates her mother: “Mother, who is al-zāniya?!” (Ibid.) Rather than answering the question, Zuwayna silences her daughter: “Shut up, Muzūn! This is not a matter for girls to discuss” (Ibid.). Muzūn’s insistence, both on knowing why girls are not allowed to talk about the issue of zinā and, implicitly, who precisely is al-zāniya, provokes Zuwayna’s reference to the concept faḍīḥ a. When Zuwayna replies to Muzūn, it is that “[Talking about who al-zāniya is] is just impermissible . . . it’s utterly a shame to pronounce that word . . . [zinā] is greatly unlawful” (Ibid.). Zayāna’s efforts towards changing the ideology of no-sex-education ingrained in traditional Arabian culture are vividly represented in what then follows. According to Muzūn, Zayāna intervenes in “a calm, cool and gentle manner” saying that “al-zāniya is a woman . . . who had genuinely loved . . . but could not restrain [herself from expressing] her sexual desires . . . and so people stoned her, fatally” (45). This definition implies a criticism of the practice of forced marriage and the repression of women’s sexuality due to the bond of marriage. That the word for a male who commits adultery/fornication, al-zānī, is never used in the text suggests the prevalent existence of this form of sexual politics; it is a pointer to the fact that the word has much less

28 See Maggie Humm (ed.), Feminisms: A Reader (London: Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1992), “Glossary”, p. 404.

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currency in Arab(ian) society than its feminine form, al-zāniya. From an Islamic feminist perspective, presenting only the gruesome image of the al-zāniya in the castle (which is as a tourist attraction) without that of the al-zānī is symbolic of a kind of superimposition of patriarchal values over those of religion. To punish the adulteress to the exclusion of the adulterer is contravening to the very explicit Qurʾanic injunction that both be liable to punishment of equal magnitude. The Qurʾān stipulates: “The woman and the man guilty of adultery and fornication, flog each one of them with a hundred stripes [. . .]”.29 Zayāna’s continual impact on Muzūn constitutes the cornerstone of the latter’s development of feminist consciousness (29). While a student at the Kuwaiti Higher Institute of Dramatic Arts in the 1980s, Muzūn meets Khālid, also a young Kuwaiti aristocrat, whom she marries, and together with whom she lives in Kuwait for a few years. For medical reasons, she is compelled to abort her pregnancy from the husband during their visit together to Cairo. Soon afterwards, Khālid dies in a car accident and Muzūn returns to Oman (160, 167 ff.). Muzūn-the-young-woman embodies non-sexist ideas and beliefs. She believes in ‘sexual revolution’. For her (and this is true even while a married woman as briefly noted above), marriage often constitutes the chief avenue for the perpetuation of male domination over female and for the suppression of women’s intellectual capabilities and professional development. This is what alienates her from the circle of her siblings, her half-sisters with whom she lives in Kuwait when studying for a degree in journalism (160–167) at the above-mentioned institute. Female (Self-)Identity: Muzūn as a Quest Story The story of Muzūn—the youngest of the novel’s three heroines—is basically a quest story. As an adult, Muzūn embarks on two separate but coterminous quests. On the one hand, she has been longing, right from childhood, to know who Zayāna is to her, in reality. She wants answers to this question: ‘why does Zayāna specially and preferentially love and care for her and Zuwayna over even her (Zayāna’s) so-called

29

Qurʾān 24:2. Please note that as evident in this Qurʾanic verse stoning to death is not mentioned as punishment for adulterer and adulteress. Because it is not explicitly stated in the text of the Qurʾān, there is a divergence of opinions over this kind of capital punishment among Islamic scholars and jurists.

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biological children and grandchildren?’ On the other hand, Muzūn as a young woman embarks on an “identity” quest: a kind of quest for what Jane Flax has described as “a positional self always in the process of becoming a ‘deep subjectivity’ that is informed by critical social relations.”30 Put simply, it is more, in Sally Robinson’s words, “of a ‘doing’ rather than a ‘being’”31—a female quest for self-realisation in a male-dominated society. The Arabic word al-maʿrifa, which appears in the title of chapter three (the “Chapter of Awareness/Self-Identity”) contextually refers both to Muzūn’s “awareness/recognition” of Zayāna as her biological grandmother, and her subsequent attainment of self-realisation. In the section tellingly entitled, “Miʿrāj al-raḥ ma wa-l-khilāʿ” (The Ladder of Mercy and Relief)—featured in the last part of the chapter in question here—Muzūn narrates how she eventually realises the two quests. The arrival in Oman of a young Frenchman, Bernard Martin, who brings the sad news about the death of his uncle Yves to Zayāna, engenders the latter’s confession of her secret relationship with the deceased to Muzūn (287). Bernard’s arrival constitutes a “relief ” (288) not only for Zayāna, who was still awaiting the return of Yves, but also for Muzūn, who has been searching for her identity regarding love and sexual relationships. Both Zayāna’s courage in asserting her subjectivity concerning the control of her body and mind and her bravery in disclosing the “Great Secret” to Muzūn provoke the latter’s further exhibition of sexual freedom. Following her role-model-grandmother’s philosophy that “satisfaction lies but in satisfying the body” (304), Muzūn, too, expresses the belief that satisfaction of one’s sexual desires is essential to human existence (Ibid.). Al-Sālim makes every effort to ‘incarnate’ the character of Zayāna in that of Muzūn. While there is a big contrast between Zayāna and Zuwayna’s love and marital affairs, and Zuwayna and Muzūn’s, the story of Zayāna’s romantic life with Yves parallels that of Muzūn and

30 Jane Flax, Thinking Fragments: Psychoanalysis, Feminism and Postmodernism in the Contemporary West (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990), p. 210, cited in Marilyn Marxwell, Male Rage, Female Fury: Gender and Violence in Contemporary American Fiction (Lanham: University Press of America, 2000), p. 95. 31 Sally Robinson, Engendering the Subject: Gender and Self-Representation in Contemporary Women’s Fiction (Albany: State University of New York, 1991), p. 11, quoted in Maxwell, op. cit., p. 95.

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Bernard. Both love stories are romanticised, set against the descriptive background of the idyllic landscape of (ancient and modern) Omani cities, towns, and tourist attractions. Like Zayāna with Yves, Muzūn, too, offers to give Bernard both moral and professional support in his research visit to Oman. Just as Zayāna had found in Yves her true soulmate, so too Muzūn soon finds in Bernard’s personality the perfect soulmate she has been looking for. Admittedly, it is the achievement of self-satisfaction embodied in her emerging relationship with Bernard that was missing in Muzūn’s earlier relationships with two Arabian men: her late Kuwaiti husband, Khālid, and her Omani lover, Ḍ ārī. Just as Yves had “displaced/replaced” Ḥ ammūd in Zayāna’s mind (as noted earlier), so does Muzūn decide to abandon Ḍ ārī because of Bernard (303–304). This act of replacing their Arabian husbands/lovers in favour of the Western ones symbolises the women’s rejection of the conservative concept and practice of love and sexuality. It is only Muzūn who can be said to have been consciously intent upon embarking on this quest for self-fulfilment. For Zayāna, it is an unsolicited achievement. And it is an opportunity which Zuwayna—who suddenly dies after a brief illness (305)—utterly “misses” throughout her life. Zuwayna is a character to be empathized with; Zayāna is one to be envied, at least by an inclined feminist like Muzūn. Muzūn’s proclamation of her sexual freedom is symptomatic of the era of sexual “permissiveness” (not strictly in the Western sense) which, according to the novel, began to evolve on a greater scale in Arabian society from the 1980s onward. Conclusion Al-Sālim’s Muzūn incorporates several elements of the messages contained in the other selected texts. It depicts the social conditions of Kuwaiti/Arabian women from the pre-oil era to the contemporary period. Through the respective stories of its three heroines, the novel demonstrates how women’s oppression in Arabian society is not transhistorical and transgenerational. Thus the text represents modern Arabia as a dynamic society, where social change is happening, even if relatively slowly. The first and second quarters of the twentieth century (Zayāna’s generation) were extremely conservative periods. The third quarter (Zuwayna’s generation), was an

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era of cultural conflicts, a period of transition to a less conservative, less restrictive cosmopolitan society. The last quarter up to the present (Muzūn’s generation), is an era of ‘feminist progress’ when forced marriage in particular has become much less prevalent and when women’s education and entrance into the public sphere have become widespread in modern Arabia.

CONCLUSION The five texts selected for this study constitute parts of Kuwaiti women’s ‘literature of resistance’. They collectively present a picture not only of the various forms of women’s oppression, but also of their resistance to male domination in both the pre- and the post-oil eras. Through the lens of these fictional texts, we have seen how, as part of a rapidly changing, global community, the Arabian Gulf region has witnessed many changes with regard to gender relations and the social status of women. The use of the veil, which has continued in some quarters of this society, no longer constitutes a barrier to women’s aspirations and entrance into the public sphere. Seclusion is no longer a reason for women’s denial of education and job opportunities. Even in the so-called most conservative of the states, Saudi Arabia, there have been, and continue to be (especially during the current regime of King Abdullah) some radical changes regarding women’s rights and roles in nation-building.1 The induction of women into the public sphere has particularly lessened the degree of the suppression of Arabian women’s love and sexual expression. Through the introduction of several ultra-modern technologies—notably mobile telephone, satellite television and the Internet—into the social and economic systems of the region, a great many women have been exposed and are getting connected to the world beyond their restrictive environments. The Internet in particular has made possible online dating. While working on the research for this book sometime in early 2003, I

1

Recently, King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia appointed the first woman minister in the history of his country. For more information of this, and some more radical changes and policies the king is on the verge of introducing, see http://archive. gulfnews.com/articles/09/02/26/10289649.html and http://archive.gulfnews.com/ articles/09/02/26/10289377.html. Most importantly, the Saudi monarch has just founded a new university—King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST)—which is a co-educational institution to be open to students in September 2009. For more on the changing status of women in contemporary Saudi Arabia see Saddeka Arebi, Women and Words in Saudi Arabia: the Politics of Literary Discourse (New York: Columbia University Press, 1994) and miriam cooke, Women Claim Islam: Creating Islamic Feminism Through Literature (New York: Routledge, 2001), pp. xvi, 2, 115–118.

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personally logged on to a website of this nature. The website, which will be rendered anonymous here for security reasons, is run presumably by a US-based Islamic organisation concerned with the problems of marriage in Arab communities at home and abroad. I found that the percentage of Kuwaiti and other Arabian girls who subscribed to the website and were seeking love and marital relationships through this medium was far higher than that of their male counterparts. The higher level of the girls’/women’s interest in online dating corroborates what was reported in an article in the Saudi Gazette of the 7th of November 1999 that “[Saudi] women are the ones spending the most time at their computer terminals, and the trend is increasing.”2 Miriam cooke cites this article in Women Claim Islam while explaining the role of information technology on the growing awareness (feminist and political consciousness) among women in the Arab and Muslim worlds in general and in Saudi Arabia in particular. She mentions some of the ways through which some Arab/Muslim women in the Middle East and beyond have been connecting one another very easily, and the implications which the revolution in information technology is having on Arab/Islamic feminist activism. Cooke notes that “It is too early to know what the cultural outcome will be, but the fact that this radically new form of connection among the most disconnected section of the [Saudi/Arabian] population has caught on so widely is suggestive.” “Sex segregation”, she concludes, “seems to have enhanced networking among women [. . .]”3 One can argue that the revolution in information technology has already started having some impact on contemporary Arabian society. Its cultural implications are becoming noticeable in the type of radical mentality that some Arabian female youths are now evincing with respect to the concepts and practices of love, sexuality, and marriage. For instance, for the main reasons of avoiding male domination, some Arabian girls (mainly female students and fresh graduates) I have so far interviewed, albeit informally, would rather remain single than get into any marital bond with a man. On the other hand, some of them spend the most time on the Internet not only for the purpose of feminist networking, as cooke has noted, but also for making connection with prospective male lovers. Thus,

2 3

Cooke, op. cit., p. 116. Ibid.

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another thing I noticed in the contents of the ‘advertisements’ placed by the Kuwaiti female subscribers to the online-dating website referred to above has to do with the issue of race and nationality, which is a major theme in al-Ibrāhīm’s Mudhakkirāt. For example, one Kuwaiti female seeker of a male for marital relationship stated that the most essential thing (ahamm al-shayʾi) she required in the prospective husband was that “he should be a khalījī”, or a national of one of the six oil-rich states that currently constitute the Gulf Cooperating Council (GCC): Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Qatar, Bahrain, Oman, and the United Arab Emirates. Here, we can see the extent of the women’s internalisation of the Kuwaiti patriarchal societal inhibition of interracial marriage. By situating their texts within the socio-cultural and historical contexts in which they were produced, this book has tried to reveal the type of egalitarian society that Kuwaiti women writers propose. Raising their voice through every possible means including literature (specifically, fiction), the women continue to fight for social and political recognition. Their recent entrance into the political terrain not only signifies ‘feminist progress’, it also signals the possibility of a new (whether realistic or utopian) political trend emerging in their literature.

BIBLIOGRAPHY Primary Sources (Fiction) al-ʿAlī, F. Y., Dimāʾ ʿalā wajh al-qamar [Blood in the Face of the Moon] (Cairo: al-Hayʾa al-Miṣriyya al-ʿāmma li-l-kitāb, 1998). ——, Wujūh fī al-ziḥ ām [Faces in the Crowd] (Kuwait: The Kuwaiti Government Press, 1971). al-Faraj, Khālid, “Munīra” [Munīra] in al-Kuwayt [Kuwait] (November/December 1929); reproduced in al-Zayd, Kh. S., Qiṣaṣ yatīma fi al-majallāt al-Kuwaytiyya: 1929–1955 [‘Orphaned’ Stories in Kuwaiti Magazines: 1929–1955] (Kuwait: Sharikat al-Rubayʿān li-l-nashr wa-l-tawzīʿ, 1982, 1st edition), pp. 33–41. al-Ghirbālī, Khālid “Jināyat ab” [A Father’s Crime] in al-Rāʾid [The Pioneer] (June 1952); reproduced in al-Zayd, Kh. S. Qiṣaṣ yatīma fi al-majallāt al-Kuwaytiyya: 1929–1955 (Kuwait: Sharikat al-Rubayʿān li-l-nashr wa-l-tawzīʿ, 1982, 1st edition), pp. 161–165. al-Ḥ amdān, Wafāʾ, “Wakāna-l-wat ̣an t ̣iflan” [The Nation Became an Infant] in al-Shams lā taghrub marratayn [The Sun Does not Set Twice] (Kuwait: Matạ̄ biʿ al-khatṭ ,̣ 1994). Hāshim, Hayfāʾ, “al-Intiqām al-rahīb” in al-Rāʾid (Year 2, no. 2, May 1953); reproduced in al-Zayd, Kh. S., Qiṣaṣ yatīma fi al-majallāt al-Kuwaytiyya: 1929–1955 (Kuwait: Sharikat al-Rubayʿān li-l-nashr wa-l-tawzīʿ, 1982, 1st edition), pp. 195–201. al-Ibrāhīm, Ṭ ayyiba, Mudhakkirāt khādim [A Servant’s Diary] Part I & II (Cairo: al-Muʾassasa al-ʿarabiyya al-ḥadītha, 1995). Musāʿid, Badriyya, “Amīna” [Amīna] in al-Baʿtha [The Mission], no. 6 (June 1953); reproduced in al-Zayd, Kh. S. Qiṣaṣ yatīma fi al-majallāt al-Kuwaytiyya: 1929– 1955 (Kuwait: Sharikat al-Rubayʿān li-l-nashr wa-l-tawzīʿ, 1982, 1st edition), pp. 202–204. Ṣāliḥ, L. M., “Laylat al-iqtirāʿ ” [The Election Night] in Jirāḥ fī al-ʿuyūn [Wounds in the Eyes] (Kuwait: Maṭbaʿat al-yaqẓa, 1986). al-Sālim, F. S., Rajīm al-kalām [Curse-Mouthed] (Amman, Dār azmina, 2006). ——, Ḥ ajar ʿalā ḥ ajar [Stone upon Stone] (Beirut: Dār al-kunūz al-adabiyya, 2003). ——, Muzūn: wardat al-ṣaḥ rāʾ [Muzūn: Desert Rose] (Beirut: Dār al-kunūz al-adabiyya, 2000). ——, al-Nuwākhidha [The Shipmasters] (Damascus: al-Mada, 1998). ——, al-Shams madhbūḥ a wa-l-layl mahmūs [The Sun is Slaughtered and the Night is Confined] (Damascus, Dār al-Mada, 1997). al-Sālim, H. S., “Kharīf bilā matạ r” [An Autumn without Rain] in Kuwait (1972); reproduced in al-Majālis [The Sessions] (8 January, 2000; 15 January, 2000; and 22 January, 2000). al-Shāyijī, Yūsuf, “Ṭ aʿana fī al-qalb” [A Stab in the Heart] in al-Baʿtha (June 1949); reproduced in al-Zayd, Kh. S. Qiṣaṣ yatīma fi al-majallāt al-Kuwaytiyya: 1929–1955 (Kuwait: Sharikat al-Rubayʿān li-l-nashr wa-l-tawzīʿ, 1982, 1st edition), pp. 89–93. Shuʿayb, ʿĀliya, “Imraʾa tatakawwan” [A Woman in the Making] in Imraʾa tatazawwaj al-baḥ r [A Woman Marries the Sea] (Kuwait: Maṭābiʿ al-waṭan, 1989). al-ʿUthmān, Laylā, Wasmiyya takhruj min al-baḥ r [Wasmiyya Emerges from the Sea] (Kuwait: Sharikat al-Rubayʿān li-l-nashr wa-l-tawzīʿ, 1986, 1st edition). ——, al-Marʾa wa-l-qiṭtạ [The Woman and the Cat] (Beirut: al-Muʾassasa al-ʿarabiyya li-l-dirāsāt wa-l-nashr, 1985, 1st edition).

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INDEX abduction 97 abnormalities 139 abortion 119, 135–136 Accad, Evelyne 1, 155 activism 24–26, 36, 96, 116, 150 adolescent 30–31, 67, 133 adolescents 74 adolescence 67, 141 adulterer 145 adulteress 120, 131, 139, 144–145 adultery 91, 120–122, 125, 129, 132–135, 144 adulterous 120, 134 adventure 45–46, 73 adventurous 46, 69 advocated 35 advocating 91 advocacy 64, 128, 135, 139 Africa 96 African cultures 91 agency 8, 32, 35, 40, 50, 55, 57–58, 61, 72, 81, 109–110, 114, 129–131, 143, 157 agencies 7 agent 25, 74–75, 127, 130, 135, 139 agents 43, 60, 68, 87, 93, 129 Ahmed, Leila 91, 94, 155 Algeria 1, 96, 105 alienated 44 alienates 145 alienation vii, 38–42, 44 Allegretto-Diiulio, Pamela, 90, 94, 155 Allen, Roger 30, 63, 124, 155 Althusser, Louis 5–6, 42–43, 114, 131, 136, 155 amelioration 140 American Muslim 94 American military 95 ancestry 2 ancestries 2 ancient 147 androcentric 31–32, 38, 54, 60, 65, 122, 142 anthropological 1, 7 appropriate iv, 52, 114 appropriated 45 appropriation 5

Arab(s) xiii, 1–3, 10, 13, 16–19, 26, 28, 33, 48, 63, 75–76, 78, 89–90, 94, 96, 98, 103, 105, 109, 124–126, 133, 141, 143, 145, 150 Arab feminist 23 n. 1, 24, 33, 36, 61, 90 Arab-Israeli conflict 20 Arab-Western 125 Arab Women’s Development Society (AWDS) 25 Arab world 1, 13 n. 22, 16–17, 21, 23–24, 31, 62, 83 n. 2, 90 Arabia 8, 10, 123, 140–141, 147–149 Arabian 1–2, 8, 30–31, 44, 61, 65, 68, 73, 76, 78, 89, 103, 119–123, 125–133, 137, 141–142, 144–145, 147, 149–150 Arabian Gulf 1, 10, 14, 30, 51, 64, 85 n. 7, 86, 117 Arabian Peninsula 1, 10, 27 Arabic xi–xiii, 11, 17, 19–21, 27, 30, 56, 74 n. 21, 84, 91, 115, 120 n. 2 and 3, 124–125, 146 Arabic literature 13–14, 120 n. 2 Arabic literary revivalism 17 architecture 10 Arebi, Saddeka 78–79, 149, 155 aristocrat 141, 145 Aristotle 37, 75–76, 155 Aristotelian 37 arranged/forced marriage vii, 7, 38, 52–53, 57–60, 68, 78, 123, 141–142, 144, 148 article 5, 88, 105, 108, 114–115, 129, 136, 150 articles xiii, 14, 25, 27–28, 84, 87, 149 arts xi, 6, 19–20, 37, 108, 145, 154–155 Asian 86–88, 91, 97, 106, 115, 117 autobiographical 116 n. 80 Badr, Liana 83, 107 n. 63, 111–112 Badran, Margot ii, 23 n. 1, 24, 34, 34 n. 42, 36, 44 n. 11, 61 n. 39, 62, 78 n. 24, 96, 155 al-Baqṣamī, Thurayyā 22, 29 Barrett, Michele 83, 92, 135, 136 n. 18, 155 Barry, Peter 84 n. 5, 108 n. 67, 113 n. 74, 120 n. 2, 156

160

index

Bidūns (Stateless) 2–3, 85 n. 7 biography/(ies) 22 n. 51, 83 n. 1, 119 n. 1 biographical 11 n. 14, 18 n. 37, 28 n. 24 biographer 51 biological 2, 33, 53–54, 140 n. 22, 142 n. 25, 146 biological reproduction 8, 54 biological determinism 144 birth 12, 13–14, 18 n. 37, 25, 131 n. 15, 133–134, 138–139, 142 blood 48, 57, 101, 126, 139, 141 body 19, 46, 50, 53, 56–57, 72, 76, 123, 127–128, 130, 132, 134, 136, 142, 146 bomb(s) 110–112 bombing 105 British Society for Middle Eastern Studies (BRISMES) 121 British women 5, 64, 136 British occupation 96 British protectorate 10 British female 125 Brontë, Charlotte 64, 136, 158 Carter, Angela 60, 156 censor 19 censorship 51, 119 n. 1 Centre of Arab Women’s Participation Studies 26 n. 11 chaste 42, 90 chastisement viii, 74–75, 77 chastity 48, 80, 90, 121 cheap labour 86 childlessness viii, 32, 38, 53–55, 59–60 circumcision 139 citizenship 2, 108 civilization 18 class iii, viii, 2, 3–5, 8, 12, 23–25, 40–44, 57, 63, 67, 69, 72, 74–78, 81, 83–87, 89, 95, 104–108, 113 n. 74, 114, 117, 121, 136 classical Arabic literature 12 clitoridectomy 119 compatibility 53, 114 complacence 138 compliant 31, 59, 66, 124, 139 complicity 47, 138 confessional 52, 56, 84 conflict viii, 18, 20, 28, 96–99, 103, 105, 113, 128, 142 conflicting ix, 57 conformist 31, 66

consciousness 3, 5, 20, 24, 34, 40–41, 44, 46, 49, 52, 60, 66, 70, 83, 85, 95, 98, 103, 119, 129, 135, 140, 145, 150 consciousness-raising text 33 conservative 44, 52, 61, 100, 147–149 Cooke, miriam 23 n. 1, 34, 44 n. 11, 61 n. 39, 78 n. 24, 95, 96 n. 31, 99, 124, 135 n. 17, 149 n. 1, 150, 155–156 coterminous 4, 77, 145 counterviolence 37 Cowan, J. M. 56 n. 29, 120 n. 3, 156 crime 52–53, 57, 59, 129 crimes of honour 103 culture ix, 1–2, 6, 15, 17, 19–20, 61, 86, 88, 90–91, 115, 119, 126, 128–129, 144 dating viii, 66, 68–70, 72–73, 75–77, 149–151 de Saussure, Ferdinand 133 death 18 n. 37, 26, 32, 46, 49, 58, 60 n. 38, 72–75, 77, 79–81, 89, 91, 101–103, 107, 112, 129, 131, 134, 145 n. 29, 146 death threats 48 deconstruction 120 defiance vii–viii, 4, 8, 36, 38–40, 43, 63, 66, 69–70, 72–73, 77, 109, 127, 130, 132–133 de-interpellating ix, 138 democratic 10, 92, 116, 129 denominator 8 depression 52, 54, 61, 72, 137 desire 32, 39, 47, 54–55, 57, 61, 66, 68, 72–73, 77, 87–88, 90, 106, 110, 113, 122, 127–129, 144 destruction ix, 32, 48, 60, 74, 128, 133, 139 deviance 4 deviant 57, 133 devilish 54, 79, 138 diary 2, 83–84, 89, 115 dichotomy 74, 86, 117 discrimination 92, 94 discriminatory 8, 34, 43, 69, 91, 94, 138 disruption(s) viii, 50, 105, 107, 117, 132–133 divorce 91–94 Doi, Abdur Rahman 94 n. 29, 156 domestic sphere 38–39, 45, 71 domesticity 39, 105, 138, 142 dual liberation viii, 95–96, 111

index Eagleton, Terry 7, 156 education xi, 2, 12, 16–18, 20, 22–24, 27, 39–40, 51, 117, 121, 140, 144, 148–149 educational contact(s) 16 Egypt 1–2, 13–17, 24, 51, 89, 96 n. 33, 105 n. 60 Egyptian 13, 16–17, 24, 62, 96, 158 Egyptian feminism 24 Egyptian Feminist Union 24 empowerment 49, 79, 115 Enlightenment discourse 142 Europe 86, 97, 124, 158 European 51 n. 26, 101, 103, 125 evasion(s) viii, ix, 8, 63, 74–75, 77, 80–81, 133, 136–137, 139 exile 34–35, 97, 100, 111 experimentation 17, 99 exploitation 8, 85, 87, 94, 110 faḍīḥa (social dishonour) viii, 8, 48, 63, 74–76, 96, 144 family ix, xii, 3, 5–8, 26, 34, 41, 43, 48–49, 51–52, 57, 59, 61, 68–69, 84, 87, 89, 91–94, 96, 98–100, 102–103, 105, 109, 112, 129, 136–137, 139 family law viii, 91, 93 fantasising 60 fantasy 60, 80 fantasies 124–125 fantasist imagination 60 al-Faraj, Khālid 14, 31 father figure 43, 67, 138 female literary subculture 8, 22, 28, 64 female literary tradition viii, 1, 23, 33, 35, 63–64, 121 female violence 60 feminine viii, 63–65, 75, 93, 104, 116, 120 n. 3, 127, 145 femininity ix, 4, 104, 119, 137, 141 feminist 1–3, 5, 7, 24, 26, 28 n. 23, 32–33, 35, 38, 45, 49–50, 55, 58–60, 64–66, 70, 76, 81, 83, 90–94, 97, 100, 103, 114, 119, 121, 125, 128, 135–136, 145, 147–148, 150–151 feminist consciousness 24, 34, 46, 103 feminist movement(s) vii, 23–24 feminist (revolutionary) text(s) viii, 3, 8, 34, 53, 59, 63 fertile 53–54 First Kuwaiti Women’s Day 23 n. 2, 25

161

Foucault, Michel 87, 156 France 16, 17 n. 33, 125, 132–133 French 5–6, 87–88, 125–127 Frenchman 122–123, 125–130, 132, 146 Freud, Sigmund 24 n. 25, 113, 136 n. 21 gender ii–iii, viii–ix, 1–2, 4–5, 7–8, 27, 44, 64, 69, 74, 77, 81, 83, 89, 91–92, 94–95, 97, 107, 112, 114, 119, 141–143, 149 gender inequality(ies) 3, 34, 108 gender equality 141, 143–144 gender relations/interactions 5, 8, 63, 68, 76, 78, 85–86, 94, 103 gender difference 7, 34 gendered 90, 95, 97, 99, 100 genders 78 gender socialisation 34, 43, 69, 78, 119, 137–138, 140, 142 gender roles 35, 55, 97 gender and violence 37, 146 n. 30 gendered offences 87, 97 gender war 105 Genette, Gerard 84 n. 5, 156 genre(s) 12, 14, 28, 30, 35, 76, 83 Gilbert, Sandra 50 n. 19, 55 n. 28, 156 Gilligan, Carol 92, 157 Goodman, Philomena 103–105 n. 61, 110, 157 Gubar, Susan 50 n. 19, 55 n. 28, 156 Gulf Cooperating Council (GCC) 151 Gulf War II 110 hallucination 70 n. 19 Harlow, Barbara 100 n. 46, 102 Hāshim, Hayfā’ 2, 8, 16, 29, 36–38, 50, 61, 153 haunted 140 hegemonic 90, 119 ḥijāb 31, 90 home(s) 17, 39–40, 42–43, 45–48, 51, 67, 71, 73, 75–77, 90, 95–96, 100, 122, 126, 128, 134–135, 137–138, 143, 150 hometown 39 home-front 96 homeland 8, 10, 40, 44, 46, 99, 111, 125 homosexuality 113 house raid viii, 97–98, 100 human reproduction 135

162

index

human rights 26 n. 11, 52, 76, 84–85 n. 7 humanist nationalism 104 humanistic perspective 103 humanitarian crisis 134 humiliation 49, 93, 97, 101 Humm, Maggie 2 n. 2, 5, 157 Hadith (Sayings of Prophet Muhammad) 90 al-Ibrāhīm, Ṭayyiba viii, 2, 8, 22, 28–30, 83–85, 88, 90–91, 94–95, 97, 100, 103, 105, 109, 112–116, 151, 153 ideal-types 104–105 identity ix, 64, 104, 111, 119, 145–146 Ideological State Apparatuses (ISAs) 6, 42–43, 114, 131 ideology viii, 6, 43, 63, 74, 96, 102, 107, 114, 120, 129, 132, 138, 144 Idrīs, Najma 34, 154 illegitimacy 133–134 images of women vii, 30–31, 55 imaginary 6, 114, 141 immanence 61, 141 immanent 127, 142 immigrant worker(s) viii, 3, 85–87, 89 internet 149–150 interpellated ix, 6, 67, 135, 138 interpellation(s) 6, 43, 69, 76, 114, 129, 131, 144 interracial marriage viii, 108–110, 151 interrogation(s) 34, 47, 113, 136–137 interrogative 8, 73 Iraq-Kuwait viii, 20, 85, 95, 96 n. 35, 105, 117, 119 Iraqi occupation 9, 28, 95 n. 30, 96, 104–105, 109, 113, 116 Islam 11, 90–91, 94, 103, 122, 135, 141 Islamic law 94 Islamic values 76, 90, 94 Islamic feminist(s) 94, 135–136, 141, 145, 150 journalism 13, 16, 145 journey vii, 28, 29, 40, 100, 132 Khalīfa, Saḥar 100, 102 King Abdullah 149 kissing 127, 131–132 knowledge 7, 93, 140 Kuwait City 21, 39, 41–42, 46, 86, 97, 105

Kuwaiti dialect xiii, 91 Kuwaiti fiction (fictional texts/ narratives) vii, 7, 13, 15, 17–18, 20–22, 31–32, 35, 59, 105 Kuwaiti Ministry of Arts and Culture 20 Kuwaiti national library 12 Kuwaiti short-story 18 n. 37, 21 Kuwaiti novel 21–22 Kuwaiti Women’s Medal 25 Kuwaiti Writers’ Association 19, 21–22, 26, 28–29, 33, 51, 83, 154 labour force 11, 24 law of the Father 93, 94 n. 25 Lebanon 1, 3, 13, 16–17, 24 n. 6, 51, 89 Lebanese 99, 115–116 legal system(s) 94 legitimate 133, 135 legitimisation 133 liberation 96, 112, 114–115, 140 literature of resistance 1, 105 n. 60, 149 love 18, 20, 57, 63, 66–68, 70, 72, 74–75, 78, 81, 83, 90–91, 99, 109, 115, 121–130, 132–134, 138–139, 141, 145–147, 149–150 Macherey, Pierre 5, 157 madness 59 n. 35, 70 n. 19 magical 79, 130 male domination i, iii, vii, 8, 37, 52, 66, 105 n. 60, 131, 145, 149–150 male dominance 35, 111 male violence vii, 46–47, 58, 60 n. 36 male-oriented 23, 31 male infidelity 90 male control 91 man-made 93, 121, 143 marginal 85, 115 marginalised 1, 11, 42, 123 marginalisation 40–41 monogamous marriage 133 marriage customs 90, 141 Marxist-feminism 4–6 Marxist-feminist theory/criticism 4–5, 7, 77 Marxist-Feminist Literature Collective 5, 157 matriarch 71, 91, 106, 137, 141 matriarchal 136 matrimonial home 123, 137–138 memory 103, 110–112

index Michalak-Pikulska, Barbara 21 n. 47, 63 n. 1, 95 n. 30, 157 Millet, Kate 48, 50 n. 20, 55 n. 28, 68, 133, 157 modern Arabic fiction/literature vii, 7, 9, 12, 17, 30, 124 motherhood 7, 54–55 mothering 119 al-Mughni, Haya 3 n. 3, 9 n. 3, 24 n. 3, 25 n. 8, 39 n. 4, 40–41, 48, 79, 87, 103, 158 murder viii, 50–53, 55–58, 60–61, 101, 103 murder literature 51 nationalist 23, 83, 96, 99–100, 103, 105, 111 nation’s pain 97 nation-building 149 national consciousness 20, 34, 46 non-compliant 35 non-discriminatory 71 non-violent 59, 96, 105 North Africa(n) 1, 24 n. 6, 125 object(s) 53–54, 76, 93, 135 objectification 31, 36–37, 39, 52, 57, 59, 61, 97, 103, 121, 123, 141 objectified 51, 55, 56 oil-rich states 151 oil boom 9–10, 24 ‘Other’ 86 otherness 143 Palestinian 16, 51, 78, 83, 100, 102, 104, 111–112 passivity 2, 30, 52, 61, 70, 141 patriarchy viii–ix, 4, 28, 55, 60 n. 38, 63, 69, 81, 88, 131–132, 139 patriarchal discourse 93, 134 patriarchal culture 2, 32–33, 39, 52, 54, 59, 94, 121–122, 133, 136, 138 patriarchal hegemony 8, 50, 61, 80, 136 patriotic 44–45, 99, 104 patriotic femininity 104 patriotism vii, 44, 46, 99, 111 peacetime 21, 95, 117 pearl-divers 3 Persian 2, 11 phallogocentric discourse 94 philosophical 30, 60, 93 political 1, 3–4, 6–7, 9–12 n. 18, 18, 20, 34–35, 84, 86–88, 91, 96, 116, 124, 150–151

163

polygamy 91, 122, 141 polygamous 144 population 10 n. 10, 11, 85 n. 7, 90, 150 post-colonialism 5 postcolonial 86, 120 n. 2 post-structuralism 5 poststructuralist 7 power(s) 50, 59, 79, 87–88, 125 powerless(ness) 47, 49, 79 powerful 91, 98 pregnancy 131 n. 15, 133–136, 145 progressive 17, 35, 129 prototype(s) 62 prototypical 35, 62 psychotherapy 109 psychoanalysis 5, 70 quest ix, 145–147 Qur’an 90 race iii, viii, 2, 4, 8, 83, 85, 95, 105, 114, 151 racial 2–3, 89, 108, 113, 117 ransom 98, 101, 103 rape 8, 97–98, 100–103 rebellion 37, 39, 52, 61, 116 rejection 35–36, 46, 49, 61–62, 114, 147 repression vii, 38, 42, 43, 46, 55, 68, 93, 121, 130, 144 resistance movement 105 resistant combatants 96 resistant ideologists 96 revenge vii, 46, 49–50, 102 revolt i, iii, 3–4, 8, 38, 40, 50, 132 romantic 68, 73–74, 110, 124–126, 130, 146–147 sacrifice 99, 138 sacrificial 103 Saliba, Therese 83, 107 n. 63, 111, 157 al-Sālim, Fawziyya Sh. ix, 2, 8, 27, 29–30, 36, 70 n. 19, 119–123, 125, 130–131, 133–135, 140–144, 146–147, 153 al-Sālim, Hidāya Sulṭān 26, 28–29, 33, 109, 111 al-Sanousi, H. M. A. 12 n. 17, 13 n. 19, 17–18 n. 37, 21, 31–32 n. 34, 33 n. 38, 158 Saudi Arabia 14, 97–98, 101, 109–110, 112, 149–151 scandal 79–80

164

index

scandalous 76 science fiction 30, 83 sea 2, 6, 33 n. 39, 35 n. 45, 70, 72, 75–78, 80–81 seaside 69, 72, 74 seclusion 7, 39–41, 43–44, 46, 69, 132, 149 second-class 24 segregation 8, 34, 85, 87, 90, 105–106, 150 sex viii, 8, 54–58, 72, 122, 124–125, 128, 130–131, 142, 144 sex object 55 sexual abuse 87, 97–98 sexual freedom 120, 133, 146–147 sexual intercourse 56 sexual revolution 8, 121–122, 128, 133, 145 sexuality ix, 4, 90, 94, 97, 103, 119, 121, 123, 125, 130, 133, 141, 144, 147, 150 sexual difference 2 sexual desires 54, 61, 144, 146 shame 48, 76, 88, 97–98, 101, 103, 144 shameful 31, 135 shameless 49 Showalter, Elaine 45 n. 15, 63–64, 70 n. 19, 158 social change 8–9 n. 3, 35, 72, 147 socialist writer 85 solidarity viii, 4, 8, 63, 79–80, 93, 139 South/Southeast Asia 3, 86, 88, 95–96 Soviet soldiers 101 speechlessness 52 spiritual 32, 79 Spivak, Gayatri C., 6, 86–88, 114–115, 156–158 stereotype(s) 32, 38, 68 stream-of-consciousness technique 34, 120 subaltern viii, 86–90, 114–115 subjectivity viii, 40, 55, 61, 68, 103, 105 n. 60, 111, 117, 146 subject(s) 6, 56, 86, 89, 93, 115, 120 subjugation 3, 5 submissiveness 2, 52, 70, 141 subversion 8, 36, 133, 136–137 suicide 32, 50, 75, 101 Suppression 48, 145, 149 surveillance 67, 103 symbolic order 93 Syria 1, 3, 13, 16–17, 24 n. 6, 51, 89

Ṣāliḥ, Laylā M. 22 n. 51, 26, 27 n. 16, 28–29, 33–35, 51, 153 taboo(s) 68, 103, 120, 128, 133, 135 theoretical 2, 4–5, 70 n. 19 tradition vii, 1, 6, 8, 11, 16, 23, 26, 30, 33, 35, 38, 53, 63–64, 78, 81, 84, 94, 121–122, 128, 132 traditional dressing 132 traditional practice 52, 60 traditional institutions 6 traditional family structure 34 traditional beliefs 7 traditional values 71, 80 traditional Arab woman 33 tragedy 37 n. 1, 49, 74–75, 76 n. 22 transcendence 50 n. 23, 60–61 transcendent 69, 127, 130, 142 transcendental 60 transformation 42, 83, 96, 115 translation(s) vii, xii–xiii, 20, 51, 79 n. 25, 84, 114–115 translated iv, 17, 44 n. 11, 51 n. 26, 61 n. 39, 62 n. 40, 74 n. 21, 124 translating 115 translator 84, 115 traumas 97, 109 traumatised 75–77, 111 unchaste 42, 122 United Arab Emirates 112, 151 al-‘Uthmān, Laylā viii, xiii, 2, 8, 21–22, 29–31, 35, 37, 50–51, 53–55, 58–61, 63, 66, 69–73, 75, 77, 79–81, 83, 153 utopian 151 victim 32, 41, 46, 54, 56–59, 69, 78, 103, 110, 123 victims viii, ix, 2, 42, 47, 52, 74, 78, 87, 96–98, 100–101, 103, 131, 138, 142 victimisation 52 victimise 97 victimised 86–87 violated 39, 133, 136 violate(s) 57, 130 violation viii, 63, 66–67, 71, 97 violating 100 violence vii, 3, 37–38, 42, 46–48, 57–58, 60–62, 67, 97 violent 3–4, 36, 67, 86, 96, 105, 124, 138 virgin 102 virginity 56

index voice 1, 35, 55–56, 65, 66, 71, 81, 91, 117, 151 voices 27, 33 n. 41, 65, 93, 129 voiced 94 war viii, 8, 10, 20, 27–28, 83, 85, 87–89, 93 n. 23, 95–97, 99–101, 103–107, 110–119, 132, 142 wartime 95, 106 war-front 96 war narratives 20–21, 96, 99, 100, 104–105 watchdogs 103 website 10, 19, 26, 29, 129, 150–151 wedding 102, 141 West ix, 1, 10, 51, 86, 124–125, 146 n. 30, 156 Western 1–2, 12, 17, 20, 58, 59 n. 35,

165

88, 90, 93, 96–97, 119, 122–126, 128–130, 135, 137, 147, 155 Westerners 90 West Bank 102 witches 79 Women’s Cultural and Social Society (WCSS) 25 women’s liberation 25, 139 working class 8 women’s oppression 3–4, 42, 53, 60–61, 63, 77, 83, 92, 147, 149 World War II 97, 101, 132 al-Zayd, Khālid S. 11, 13 n. 21, 14 n. 27, 17, 18 n. 7, 28, 29, 38, 154 al-Zibn, D. F. S., 99, 155

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