“What is it like for you to be an Arab Woman?” “How are you treated?” These are the random, yet consistent questions I have been asked for as long as I can remember.
‘Arab Woman’ as though I had some choice in the matter. Some from-the-womb influence over my gene pool and the perceptions, misconceptions and societal parameters therein. I did not.
Yet, these seem to be the burning questions searing their way through the western consciousness and its heightened interest in all things east of the water. Admittedly I do not represent the Arab woman in her totality, in her complexity, in her being.
I merely offer a representation of an alternative, a choice, an outcome, if you will, of what happens when east meets west, or rather more aptly in my case, when east and west have a complete and total wipe out.
The imposition of the western template or blueprint of freedom is certainly not mine, yet I humbly thank the west for the choice. The freedoms I fought for as a child, a young woman, and now as a mother are not imposed upon me by some notion of what I have read in Cosmopolitan or seen on the Style network. My fights have been an instinctive and guttural defence against all things that offended my sensibilities and will continue to be.
They did not take the form of an argument over the length of my hemline or the hours to which I was allowed to stay out. They were to protect everything I knew to be true, even if that truth changed, it was my truth and I had to, and have to, protect it.
I considered becoming a ‘Canadian woman’ once (I was young, a student and foolish), at which time it was suggested to me that if I were to denounce the treatment of women in my country it would somehow make the procedure more straightforward.
The person who asked me to do this was a ‘Canadian’ man from India. My burning question to him was “What is it like to be no one?” No one by virtue of the fact that where you come from and where you are have become so utterly unrelated that life resembles the Empty Quarter without the mystery or the beauty. I didn’t ask him anything, instead walked out and called home.
How is it that the qualities, challenges, frustrations and victories of just existing are not posed more universally? Why am I by definition an ‘Arab Woman’ and not simply ‘A Woman’? The colour of my hair, my eyes perhaps? No.
It is because by definition the contradictions and crippling hypocrisies of combining tradition with education, perception with facts, east with west are overwhelming when I open my mouth.
‘I’ being the ‘Arab Woman’ navigating between multiple worlds. The worlds of geography, history, family, religion, expectation and perception that today supercede all attempts to be, by definition, just one thing – an ‘Arab Woman’.
In this the Information Age it is interesting that information does not so easily provide definition. On the contrary, it blurs it, confuses it and mistrusts it much as, sadly yet necessarily, we mistrust each other.
What is it really, truly that fascinates any one culture or person, for that matter, with another? The promise of an untold truth perhaps? The discovery of an unknown horror we can be thankful we do not endure? For the western woman, the veil? For the Arab woman, what? Freedom itself? The truth? For every woman something individual? Yes, I hope so. Something unique, recognisably mine.
I cannot presume to know what the fears, desires, aspirations and disappointments are of the collective Arab Woman. How can I know such things when my experiences and outcomes shape my life and no one else’s? Is that not what we should all be striving to understand and to know? In a world of so many lost souls how dare anyone ask me the question “How are you treated?” My response; how do you treat yourself?
By definition being an Arab Woman is fraught with as much power and weakness, knowledge and ignorance, love and hate, identity and anonymity as I, as an individual, am prepared to put into it on any given day.
The battles of women over the centuries across every body of water, every mountain range and every inhospitable piece of land are the bedrock of every woman.
The fibrous thread that connects Alice with Aliya, Magdalena with Mildred, Zeina with Zoe. The collective conscience of Albert and Ahmad, Michael and Mohammad, Rupert and Ra’ad these are the retributions we should be seeking.
Ask me about art, ask me about God, ask me about science, ask me about politics, for goodness sake ask me the time, but I implore you stop asking me what it is like for me to be an Arab Woman. What is it like to be you? Ask yourself that.
Follow us on
