Two Women

I loved watching this movie.  Seeing these two Middle Eastern women in a setting that is so common to us, a university, was something that I had been waiting to see in one of these films for a long time.  It seems that so far in the media we have encountered we saw women only mentioned in the background as being educated or uneducated, so seeing these women actively attending a university was refreshing.  It helped me make a deeper connection to these women.   The whole film was so powerful.  To see this beautiful and intelligent woman being brought to her knees by the cruelty of men was terrible, but it was interesting to think that the same things are being done in our own country.  Domestic violence here plays a similar role in demeaning women in the US.  

What I felt was the most shocking thing to observe in this film was the way that simple rights taken away from Fereshtah were what dehumanized her the most.  Not being able to use a telephone, attend school, answer the door when the doorbell rings, or even leave your property for a few moments is so damaging to the human spirit.  All of these little things add up to the horrible power that Fereshtah's husband had over her.

The end of the film was the most powerful part for me.  Seeing that Fereshtah been so strongly under the influence of her husband's control that once he had died she did not know how to move on with her freedom brought tears to my eyes.  It made me think, if I had relied so strongly on someone all that time, would I know what to do with my freedom?  I think I would be just as lost and terrified about moving on.  What else would I know to do?

Best film we have watched in this class, great pick group!

Year of the Elephant

I was exited to start this novel because I have really been enjoying our section on Middle Eastern women, but after I had finished the whole thing I just didn't feel that it was what I was hoping for.  I liked the main woman in the story; she had a good presence the novel.  In fact I admired all of the female characters of the novel for their dedication to their country and the strength that they showed protecting it.  I think that the novel had a lot to say politically and did a good job of doing this from a woman's point of view, but did not say enough to us about  Middle Eastern women in general, at least not things that we didn't already know.  

So the story that we experienced in this novel didn't particularly inspire me or make me ask any critical questions.  I think we've been experiencing this cycle in the class where we have different topics that we are supposed to be discussing but we always come back to the same things, and it makes it so that we exhaust the discussions of these books before we have even begun them.  This showed during our discussion of this book I think, we just seemed to fade out before the discussion could go anywhere.  I think the group did fine picking a novel that was interesting and a good portrayal of Middle Eastern women, I just don't think the novel was beneficial to out class at this point.  Had we read it earlier in the semester when much of this was still new information, we might have had a lot more to say about it.

  

Guest Speakers

I really enjoyed hearing from our guest speakers on Tuesday.  To get a firsthand account from women who practice Islam and can understand the way that Islam is applied to woman and Middle Eastern society is a treat, and I particularly enjoyed hearing from two different women of varying ages, from different regions and with different methods of practicing Islam.  I though that the presentation that was given yo us was very useful in helping us to understand the place that women have in Islam and that, much like our ideals in Christianity, women are to be treated with respect and it is acknowledged that woman are created from men and are to be considered equals with them.  I like how she made the distinction between what Islam says about female treatment and what is actually practiced.  There is a discrepancy there, but this is the kind of pattern that one would find in any society, under any religion.  We tend to associate violence against women with a problem concerning Islam, but she made it clear to us that this was not the case; rather it is caused by a problem with society not obeying the laws of Islam.  I found this presentation very helpful in understanding divisions between religious and societal standards in the Middle East.  

Hearing from two different speakers made the conversation much more interesting.  I wish we could have had some more time hearing from our second speaker because I enjoyed that she had a more modern take on Islamic life and applied some useful real life examples for us.  I was especially appreciative that she said she had many friends who were not religious at all, and yet she was accepted by them while practicing her faith.  This sort of made me wonder, if the people of Islam can accept all types of practices within their faith, why must Americans still generalize that all Islamic men look down on women and all Islamic women must veil themselves to be loved?  Again, it is misunderstanding between religion and culture. 

 

Memed, My Hawk

Okay, honesty time.  I haven't completed this novel yet.  There are a few factors playing into this, the biggest one being that I have been very crunched for time as our big Thanksgiving get together draws ever nearer.  What I have read of the novel I have loved, and I had kind of hoped to write a paper on it, but that might have to wait until our final paper.  It's sad to read about these Turkish people being so depressed in their own home, but I love the relationships that we are seeing building in this novel.  There is something beautiful about the way that the characters interact, and from what was said during our class discussion I am sure that it only gets better as the novel moves on.  

So I hope the have this novel done in time to (maybe) use it for my final paper, but for now I'm still plugging along through it.  I'll add to this post once I am finished.  

Turkish Films

 I knew I was behind in my blogging, but I kept having this nagging feeling that there was something else as well.  It finally hit me tonight, I missed the Turkish films blog.  Sincerest apologies.  

I really enjoyed seeing the clips about Turkey, but to be honest I didn't learn much that was new to me.  I was already aware of the headscarf debate and the issue of honor killing from research that I had done in another class.  It was a nice refresher course for these two topics, and I really think that they fit the purpose of the class, but it was just my own personal situation where I had already been exposed to the material and consequently spent the duration of the time thinking, "I know this already."  Even so I was able to appreciate the very powerful visuals that these two films presented.  

I was trying very hard to enjoy our discussion, but I am just greatly uncomfortable discussing honor killing.  I know it is an important topic of discussion for our class, but I was hesitant to get involved in our class conversation.  I made the discussion to talk about honor killing in my religion class, and was surprised at myself when I got so choked up over the topic that I had to pretend the presentation was over before I had shared all of my information.  I don't know, it just is one of those things that makes me go really quiet...

I did have an interesting thought when we were discussing the headscarf issue though.  I remember back in elementary school the girls in my class went through this obsession with wearing headscarves, not like the ones we saw in the film but those little triangular ones that only cover the top of the head.  I think I had about twenty of them, and I remember my friends and I being very proud of wearing them around school.  However, they were banned after about a month because the school was afraid that we might be hiding weapons under them.  We were outraged, but this was just a silly fashion statement.  The women in Turkey are being told not  to wear their headscarves which serve as a representation os themselves, their beliefs, their modesty, their devotion.  My own headscarf "problem" is nothing compared to the horrible humiliation and punishment that these woman face by attempting to wear theirs.  Making these connections helped me realize that I can try to sympathize with these woman, but I will never truly know what is going on there or what the woman in Turkey are up against.  Having your teacher ask "can you please take your headscarf off?" is very different from having it ripped from your head.

Turkish Short Stories and Dr. Mirzeler

I have to be honest, the short stories that were assigned to us to read for Tuesday made very little sense to me.  Maybe it was that I don't know much about Turkish culture yet, but the stories just came off as strange and confusing to me.  I don't have too much to say about them right now because I was waiting for our class discussion to see what everyone else thought about them and how they would be interpreted.  Hopefully we will be able to discuss them during our next class session, but we could not have had a better reason not to discuss on Tuesday.  Hearing from Doctor Mirzeler was wonderful.  

I really enjoyed our visit from Doctor Mirzeler, he is a truly interesting speaker!  I was very appreciative that he provided some background information for us while we read Memed, My Hawk, and he spoke so artfully of his homeland that as I went to continue reading the novel I felt like I could better envision the scenery of the story.  It was interesting to hear his opinions on the issues dealt with in the movies we watched, a lot of his own experiences with these issues backed up the ideas that we had discussed after watching the movies.

Of course the most powerful part of his visit was his account of his own family's experience with honor killing.  Even I, who have no siblings, could feel the choking horror of being told to kill a sister.  The thought is sad, and I am thankful that he was not forced to go through with the crime.  I was impressed that he was so willing to talk to us about it and was fascinated that he brought up the point that there is such extreme social pressure to commit an honor killing, something which we were also able to see in the films we viewed.  It was a great honor to have these accounts brought to our class, and I wish we could have had some more time with Doctor Mirzeler.

Paradise Now

When I watch a movie, I like to try to put myself into one of the character's shoes.  I think that this is the best way to understand the message of the film, to just put yourself in there and get the emotion of the characters into your own soul.  However, as I watched Paradise Now I was having trouble placing myself in the position of any of the characters because I simply could not imagine what I would be feeling in their place.  Would I be angry about giving up my life, or would I feel honored that I had been chosen to go forth and make a stand for my country?  Would I be able to keep this secret from my family?  Probably not.  The emotion in this film was so raw, it was difficult to understand the characters' true intentions.  It was very powerful for me just to realize that I did not have the capacity to understand what was going through the minds of these characters, and  to realize that they are representations of real people who sacrifice their lives.  The end of the film had me sitting in complete shock (I'm pretty sure my heart stopped beating for a minute)  as I took in everything that the story had to offer.  

I thought it was interesting to see a face given to the people who participate in these suicide bombings, and see just how dedicated and sincere about their actions they really are.  Although I don't believe I could ever be driven to something as drastic as killing myself and others to promote my cause, it does make me feel a little lame thinking that the things I am truly passionate about, many that have no significance to anyone other than me, I would not be willing to go to these lengths to defend.  It's an eye opener to just how passionate these suicide bombers are when it comes to their cause.  

This movie said a lot about not only the ongoing fights between Israel and Palestine, but about the people that live there and just how human they are; in many ways their way of life and their families are just like ours.  The modern scenery in the movie, much of which I found comparable to scenery here in the US, made me realize that the struggles of these people are just as possible for Americans should we meet the same pressure as was faced by the people portrayed in this film.

Short Stories

I enjoyed our class discussion about the Arabic short stories that I picked out for all of us.  I was a little afraid of how everyone would receive them, but it seemed that almost everyone found some kind of pleasure in them, whether it was for their content or not.  I chose the first story, "The Lawsuit", because I thought that for such a small story it spoke volumes about how relationships work in the Middle East, and I was happy to see that others were making these same connections.  I really wanted us to have a piece of literature that was not so direct in the way it presented Middle Eastern culture, that we could spend some time analyzing and making connections over, and I think this story really accomplished that.  I felt that this was the first time we had analyzed anything for its context in literature, and that really made my day.  I really liked the point that was made about the narrator being unreliable, it made me view the events of  the story and the emotions of the characters in a whole different light.

As for the second story, "A Long Term Plan", while I think that it had less merit to the class as far as furthering our purpose of learning about the Middle East, but I enjoyed seeing people's reactions to the character in this story.  Some of you were so angry at this character!  It was fun to discuss this story solely because I liked seeing the reactions people had to the protagonist.  I also think that this story had a lot do do not just with the Middle East but with all of humanity, and the eternal struggle that we all must overcome and that sometimes feels so fruitless.  Something about the last lines of this story is just so powerful, isn't it?  

"Why, then, had this miracle taken place?  It doesn't make sense.  It doesn't make sense, O Lord."