Panicking...

Ok, so I've been sick as a dog all weekend and that's made it really difficult to stay caught up on all of the work for this class, but I have been doing some thinking about my Aunt Safiyya paper and I've managed to get some reading done in Anubis.  Here's the deal... I'm not sure this novel is any good for our class.  The way I see it, we are supposed to be studying the people of the Middle East, their culture, religion and general lifestyle.  Well, Anubis started out well, but now that I've moved on to the second part of the book, the main character is full into his spiritual journey in the desert, and his only companions have been gazelle and and mountain goats.  Yeah... 

I still love the book, but I don't think we are supposed to be studying the lives of goats and gazelle.  So I plan on starting my other book, which I know is more character driven, while working my way through the rest of Anubis.  Our group is currently looking for a movie we can use, so that gives us some more material to work with, but I'm a little bit panicked about what we  will be accomplishing within the next three weeks.  

Anubis, A Desert Novel

Yesterday my books that I am reading outside of class finally arrived, much to my relief.  I know I probably could have found them in the campus library but I have a sort of OCD need to own the books I read, so I made the decision to get my own copies.  I delved into the shorter one first, a book titled Anubis, A Desert Novel.  I've gotta admit it... at first I did not understand what was happening.  The first couple of chapters are written very poetically, to the point that you have to abandon what the text is telling you and come up with your own interpretation.  As I kept reading I finally came to understand though.  The book begins at the narrators birth... no, it really does.  The narrator describes it as the sun rising, and for a moment the sky, or the unknown, and the desert, or the known are connected.  For a moment, you know everything, and  then you know nothing and must be taught the names of all you see.  See, just describing it is very poetic, isn't it?  And OK, I admit, I really figured this out because the book is split into three sections, the first of which is titled "Cradle Talk."

Throughout the rest of this first section of the book, we follow the narrator through his days of youth.  We watch as he grows and develops a  sense of curiosity.  The main plot becomes his search for his father, who he remembers only as a shadow of memory from when he was still a baby.  His mother tells him that fathers are not supposed to be known as anything but a memory, and his close friend advises him that fathers know all, that they are prophecy, and prophecy is not to be discovered.  Still, the narrator sets out on a journey to look for his true father, all the while being plagued by strange visions from the spirit world.  At the end of the first section, the narrator returns home having not found his father, and discovers that his mother gave her life for the sake of pulling her son from the spirit world he had been lost in while stranded in the desert.  Time goes by and the truth comes out, it is the local priest who sacrificed the narrators mother for the narrators sake.  Upon meeting the priest again, the narrator stabs him in the neck.  It  is later revealed to him that the priest was his father, the one who knew the prophecies, as the narrator had been told all along.  

 What??

Yeah, this is where I am right now, and I'm not too sure if I should be taking any of the revelations in this book seriously or not.  It really is so poetic, and it's difficult to understand if what they say is true or if it is a metaphor for something else.  So at this point I think I need to keep reading to find out what is really  going on.  I will say this, it took me only one night to get one-third of the way through the book, so even with as confusing as the plot is it draws my attention very easily.  I'm quite exited to keep reading.  

Finishing Aunt Safiyya and the Monastery

Last night, I finished the final chapter of Aunt Safiyya. It far surpassed my expectations in its rich detail and emotionally moving scenes, but I have to say that it left me feeling a little confused in a number of ways. This was mostly because I had trouble putting any sort of theme to this book. Was it about family and the bonds they share? Was it about betrayal? Revenge?

Let me share my initial thoughts upon finishing the book. I found the story to be very well written, giving a clear, sometimes frightening and oftentimes beautiful of life in Egypt. The main character was one that I could appreciate as I watched him grow and learn and, eventually, become a man. And as I believe any good novel should have, there were eccentric background characters whose lives we got a glimpse of. The story kept me going through a cycle of happiness, shock, horror, resolution and wonderment, in short it was great stuff. My favorite scene? The main character driving the cart toward the monastery in the early morning, careening out of control and wondering what punishment his father would administer to him. I found this scene insanely funny among the other more tense scenes, and I believe I scared a few of my co-workers by laughing at this while reading in the break room. Another part of this novel that I enjoyed immensely was the character of Aunt Safiyya. Her sudden transition from beautiful woman with a happy family, to bitter old woman with a vendetta against Harbi is one that both shocked and amazed me. As horrific as she could sometimes be, I found her ability to cut even the most powerful of men down to her level an astounding one in a culture where that is not usually excepted.

Ah, culture. This is where I get lost. I suppose I still do not understand a lot about Middle Eastern culture and lifestyle, but what I had hoped this novel might accomplish was to break down some of the stereotypes and misconceptions I have about the area. However... I'm not sure that happened. In this novel we were introduced to some very good people, people much like ourselves in their family structures and social and religious interactions. The good guys were never portrayed as the stupid Arab with the big mean looking face as we so often see in Hollywood movies. But I honestly never expected them to be portrayed that way. Aunt Safiyya seemed to take a sort of woman's version of that role, and I would not disagree if someone said that she was a cruel woman in her later years, but who am I to say that the death of her husband was not a good enough instigator for her actions? I am no one, because I know so little about the societal and ethical norms of these people. Is what I am seeing such a horrible thing? The little voice in my head says "of course it is you idiot. She wants her own son to be a murderer!" But my reason interjects and tells me "wait, what do you know about the culture and societal norms of these people? Maybe to them this mindset, this need for revenge, is the norm." It makes it so difficult to understand.

And there are other stereotypical actions that occur in this book and get my head spinning. The mother being physically violent toward her girls when they make mistakes. The girls worrying that they would not find a husband because they are educated. I am trying to break down these stereotypes that have taken root in my head, but many portions of this novel seem to support them. I think in this case I need to step back and take a look from Taher's point of view. He wrote his novel for those familiar with the culture, to have specific meaning to them. We look at it from the perspective of another culture, and see it differently. It makes it difficult to pick a theme when we are so caught up in the culture shock.

And so we have come full circle, back to the theme of the book. Earlier I mentioned the themes family, betrayal and revenge. Honestly, I believe Taher intended for all of these to become small messages as part of a bigger theme. His message: The bonds of family and love are strong, and when betrayed, there are horrific consequences. This encompasses Middle Eastern belief and culture and I believe would send a powerful message to Middle Eastern people. Aunt Safiyya, Harbi, everyone in this novel are simply playing a role that represents the reality of the Middle East, and by reading this we have also caught a small glimpse of what it is like to live there.

Aunt Safiyya- Chapters One and Two

I found the first two chapters of Aunt Safiyya very intriguing.  The first thing that really struck me was that the author chose to mesh two religions into the story, something which I found brilliant in the English translation, although I am not sure it was intended to be that way.  The way that Christianity was always in the background of the main story gave me, as a reader familiar with Christianity, a comparison point for the religious and ethic differences in standard between America and the Middle East.  Possibly the most striking thing to me in the story thus far is the detail of Middle Eastern daily life and the similarities that I am able to see to my own lifestyle.  The education process described by the main character, and the family interactions described within the book are strikingly similar to American cultural standards. Already I can feel my preconceptions of what it means to be Middle Eastern shattering and being reformed into something more sensible and less frightening.  

I'm not yet sure what to make of the violent acts described in the second chapter.  I keep trying to tell myself that it is a cultural or religious difference that helps to justify these acts, but the events that took place just seem so universally cruel... I think I will have to finish the story before I can form an opinion about this.  

Reel Bad Arabs

As a communications major, I am intensely interested in how media effects relationships between people and what cultural and social standards it helps to set.  This in mind, as I watched Reel Bad Arabs, I was, to say the least, shocked at what was being brought to my attention.  My knowledge about the Middle East is very limited, but this I know- the place that comes into my imagination is not the place as it really exists.  I was taken aback to realize that all of the misconceptions that appear in American film- the harem if barely clad women, the Arabian man with an angry face and a blood red turban, and the general incivility- are things that I have been picturing all of my life when I think of the words Middle East.  I can't fully blame myself, apparently it has been ingrained into me through media since I was small.  Case in point, Aladdin.  I haven't seen the actual movie in years, but the clips shown in the film gave me flashbacks of men acting savagely, stuffing knives down their throats and sleeping on beds of nails.  The shock only grew from there as a realized that my jaded image of the Middle East was aided by other Hollywood movies, including one of my absolute favorites, True Lies.  As a student very interested in the cultural effects of media, this left me feeling that these films create a sort of cultural brick wall, upon which Hollywood has written graffiti which condemns the Middle East, and we cannot see the real place on the other side of the wall- a place of religion, rich background and most importantly, people just like us.  

Okay, here we go! The first post on this blog, and I warn you now, this is certainly going to be an experiment. I have to admit that even though I came into this course aware of the focus on middle eastern literature, I was not prepared for the amount of involvement that cultural study would have in this course. My first thought: "I'm so confused...". After some thinking: "This could be kinda fun." Now: "How awesome is this class?!" I realize now that I have always been interested in world literature and the culture it introduces, but that there has always been a gap when I think of the middle east. It's like the world is a puzzle and the middle east is that piece that got dropped on the floor, rolled under the table, and will never quite be reached by the broom, so that there is always a gaping hole in the picture. I know so little about this region and its people, and I find myself eager to learn more. As Tamaki Suoh of Ouran High School Host Club would say, "Experiences of all kinds!" May my classmates and I have many of them in this intriguing course.