EDITOR'S NOTEBOOK/ELIE CHALALA

Hanan al-Shaykh on Life, Dreams
and Pain of Afghan Women

By Elie Chalala

Some Muslim and Arab-American women's groups find the sudden interest in the plight of Muslim women, particularly in Afghanistan, by the U.S. administration and media, as well as other non-governmental groups, to be both hypocritical and stereotypical. They object to what they call "reducing Muslim women to the burka." I do not know if Lebanese novelist Hanan al-Shaykh is aware of these objections, but her response to the Sept 11 terrorist attacks focused on the plight of the Muslim women, in Afghanistan and Lebanon. I wonder whether these Arab and Muslim groups consider al-Shaykh part of the Western anti-Muslim crusade. I hope not.

Al-Shaykh offered her impressions on the Sept 11 attacks before the campaign against the Western publicizing of the life Afghan women lived under the Taliban picked up momentum, and she does not analyze the intentions of those exposing the pain of Afghan women. For her, the pain is real. Al-Shaykh writes about hospitals, medical treatment and medications, and male doctors banned from examining sick women. Such pain cannot be alleviated by the rhetoric of those conservative Arabs who do nothing to lessen this pain, afraid that such publicity may give ammunition to the "enemy," an enemy identified as those bent on "distorting Islam."

"I dreamed that the Taliban entered the hospital at the American University Hospital in Beirut and that I was unable to keep them away from my mother's bed, afraid that their thick long beards will touch her bed." So Hanan al-Shaykh begins her impressions on Sept 11 in an article in the London-based Al Hayat newspaper titled "The Narrative as Echo of the Afghan Scene: I Am a Prisoner of the Well or of the Woman Executed in the Soccer Stadium."

Describing the imaginary scene in the hospital, she writes, "They stood like octopuses surrounding her, protecting her from the male doctors because my mother is a Muslim." But the nightmare comes to an end, in her dream: "I feel relieved imagining my mother expelling the bearded men to be replaced by physicians and nurses of all religions moving her from one side to another to alleviate her pain."

The Taliban are not only in Afghanistan, al-Shaykh points out. Lebanon had its counterparts. She also imagines "bearded and unbearded Lebanese entering my mother's room," referring to Lebanese known as Arab or Lebanese "Afghans," put on trial in the northern part of the country for "their plot to establish an Islamic republic in the heart of Lebanon governed by the 'Shariah' through a holy Jihad." Al-Shaykh also is disturbed by what she observed in the hospital halls and waiting rooms, particularly the "continuous increase in the number of veiled women."

Al-Shaykh discusses how the Taliban ruled that "the woman is awra," or defective, in almost her total existence, voice, extremities - "whipped should she accidentally show one foot due to the wind blowing away her veil." Her chilling picture of how "the Afghan woman was banned from working and leaving her home, not because of the noise caused by her footsteps, for she became conscious of her steps and started walking slowly to conceal the sound, but rather because they ruled that she is fitnah (sedition), her look resembling the devil, pointing her out: she is awra to be secluded into the darkness of her home, silently into a clinic, suffering depression, wishing suicide, but the rivers are remote, those which used to receive her body and assist in ending her life by drowning."

Depending on the rivers rather than overdosing on pills appears to be the prevalent method of female suicide in Afghanistan, something that became known after Sept 11 due to the wealth of information about Afghan society (see poetry of Pashtun women on pp. 6-7). Al-Shaykh cannot help but compare what was the preferred suicide method in Lebanon when her mother was a teenager. She recalls tales of Lebanese women taking their own lives to protest men's oppression by "sprinkling their bodies with gas and then setting themselves on fire."

Oppressed women do not only kill themselves; others, particularly men, kill them. While al-Shaykh does not mention it in her essay, the woman's relatives in Lebanon used to do the killing later performed by the Taliban. The murder was justified as a "crime of honor," and the perpetrators were rarely caught and punished. Under the Taliban, it is the "state," if that term applies, that does the killing in open and public places like the notorious "soccer stadiums." About these arenas, al-Shaykh writes, "My place is in the soccer stadiums...I have seen a woman squatting as if she is a tent, and a man aiming a gun at her head, the tent's head, while another woman stands alone not daring to cry."

The author of several novels, almost all translated into European languages, al-Shaykh employs effective literary devices to portray the world in which the Afghan women lived under the Taliban regime: "And now I am in my home, which covers me like a turtle, living in the darkness of the houses, whether made of clay straw or bricks. They painted my glass windows with a dark color so I can't see the sky. When a man passes before my house he would think he is passing before a grave, and even a bird that flew next to my door would imagine night has fallen, though the sun is actually shining."

Al-Shaykh imagines herself forced to live the life of the Afghan women: "Were I to lift the veil a little bit over my nose and mouth to smell the scent of a basil, my hands would immediately be lashed; attempt to listen to Um Kulthoum, my ears would be punched; dare to move my head as a gesture to greet a childhood friend, I would be dragged into the Sporting City square to be punished."

Like many others, we at this magazine included, al-Shaykh resorts to literature, poetry in particular, seeking better understanding of the pain Afghan women suffered. She found the poetry and the songs of these women as possible explanations for man's fear of woman and his wish to keep her imprisoned. "Why he would wrap her in meters of cloth now and before. Man sees nothing in woman except her body, only a hotbed for his sexual desire, possessing neither soul nor reason. She is like a dessert in the refrigerator, and he takes it out whenever he has a sweet tooth. Despite that, he is troubled by her existence even when she remains in the refrigerator."

Reading the Arab press, an almost daily task for this editor, suggests that the individual most responsible for the terrorist attacks on Sept 11 is not Osama bin Laden but rather Samuel P. Huntington, the Harvard political scientist and author of the "Clash of Civilizations" thesis, among many other works. Perhaps Arab intellectuals spent as much time and paper analyzing the Huntington thesis as they did the terrorism of bin Laden. It is refreshing that al-Shaykh stays clear of the "clash of cultures" debates, as well as the analysis that attempts to blame bin Laden's terrorism on U.S. policies in the Middle East. Avoiding the double-talk of many Arab intellectuals, al-Shaykh leaves no room for ambiguity, asking why "some politicians denounce the slaughter of Muslims in Afghanistan without denouncing what happened in New York and Washington" and citing with dismay the demonstrators, men and women, raising the pictures of bin Laden and cheering him in many Arab countries.

Al-Shaykh admits that the events of Sept 11 liberated her from caution and enabled her to reveal what is deep in her heart, blasting the fundamentalists whose opinions are based not on religion but on pure political interests.

Her disappointment with some Muslim women who support bin Laden slips into her narrative: "Oppression is being silent about what I witness. I see Muslim women in some Arab countries demonstrating and raising the picture of bin Laden without realizing that they are raising their obituary statements. How much I would like to ask the following: 'Why would you demonstrate to defend bin Laden when he would deny you even the right to demonstrate, that you would be executed for just leaving your homes, not to mention that you are publicly expressing yourself as women? Aren't you aware that you are even deprived of sympathizing with the jailors imprisoning you? Are you demonstrating for your right to a better life? Frankly, I say your right in life is actually death."

The courageous statements of Hanan al-Shaykh derive their importance from time, and time in the Middle East gains special importance. Al-Shaykh's detractors may say it is not the time to talk about the plight of Muslim women, because the Muslim world is at war with the United States; this issue should be shelved until the guns fall silent, until a later appropriate time. The same was said about tackling women's issues during past political struggles, from the Maghreb to the Mashreq. But everything that has happened in the Arab world, particularly after the Algerian war for independence, the Lebanese civil war, and after the Palestinians had their own National authority in Palestine, shows that issues concerning women - some of which include even her right to life - have been forgotten as soon as the need for their assistance in war ceased. This is precisely why it is important to read al-Shaykh now, while the war still rages.

This article appeared in Vol. 7, no. 37 (Fall 2001).
Copyright © 2001 by Al Jadid