The Good Muslim Faced by the Bengalis Receive Counseling and Abortions (Although These Are Never Publicly by Tahmima Anam Mentioned)

sustainable communities. This appealing long-term husbands or partners—and when disaster policies Enarson provides a lengthy a nd specific list of goal stands in stark contrast to many disaster and managers are insensitive to these gendered recommendations, which may make more sense to managers’ short-term goal of simply removing issues. In short, when disaster policies ignore social disaster planners than to gender scholars. In brief, people from harm’s way. problems, those problems compound. she recommends “mainstreaming gender” through Enarson’s review of the literature on how women Although Enarson advocates an intersectional ap - employing more women in disaster management fare in disasters makes a persuasive case for why proach that considers how gender, age, race, ethnic - agencies and as first responders. Further, she gender and disaster scholars and activists should ity, class, ability, and sexuality contribute to both argues that women’s own organizations provide learn from each other. In disasters, women typically vulnerability and resilience, most research on gender women with material and political resources, both suffer higher mortality rates than men, which focuses on the vulnerabilities of heterosexual mar - of which contribute to disaster resilience. By Enarson usefully points out is due only in part to ried women and mothers. For these women, the building partnerships between women emergency their physical differences; more relevant are their double shift of home and paid work expands after a managers, women’s community organizations, and roles and relationships. While women may be less disaster and creates conflict in both arenas. Women politicians, Enarson asserts, communities will able to swim, run, or otherwise escape from threats, who are already disadvantaged economically and become more resilient. As transformative events, they also, as caregivers, tend to prioritize the safety occupationally often suffer the greatest losses. Enar - disasters can present opportunities to create of their children or others over their own. After the son points out that “the large [gender] gaps in pre - inclusive participatory democracies, but only when immediate danger has passed, women’s caregiving disaster or ‘normal’ times become gaping holes we can get beyond the dramatic scenes of heroic imposes additional stresses—which may explain during disasters.” These holes in the system open up rescues and tragic victims, and into the hard work their greater rates of post-traumatic stress syndrome because social safety nets as well as everyday social of rebuilding community. compared to men. But the greater social support institutions have failed to consider how to respond women experience through their care networks is to women’s specific needs during and after disasters. Elizabeth Fussell is an associate professor in the also protective, in that women are alerted to risk Enarson is banking on women’s organizing to Sociology department at Washington State sooner and receive help faster and assistance longer build resilience to disasters. She cites several University. Since Hurricane Katrina she has been than men, who are generally more socially isolated. examples of women’s groups that have pushed studying postdisaster population change in New One of the surprises for readers will be the rise back against disaster managers’ plans when they Orleans, including the arrival of the Latino in domestic violence and rape after disasters that see them as inequitable. However, these groups are immigrants who participated in the city’s recovery, scholars have documented in the US, using data usually initiated by more advantaged women and and the differential displacement and return of pre- from shelters and police reports. The usual those who are less overwhelmed by the demands of Katrina New Orleanians. She is currently writing a explanation that disasters cause stress, and that recovery. Furthermore, they are often focused on book titled Katrina Stirs the Gumbo Pot: The men relieve stress by abusing women, is inadequate returning to normal rather than on achieving Arrival and Reception of Latino Migrants in Post- and highlights a need for more research. Enarson greater gender equality or otherwise transforming Katrina New Orleans , and has contributed a suggests that disasters amplify women’s society. The stories of resilience in The Women of chapter to Displaced: Life in the Katrina Disaspora vulnerability to such violence when they are Katrina provide some understanding of the (2012), edited by Lori Peek and Lynn Weber. displaced from their homes, housed in shelters, or possibilities and limits of women’s postdisaster must share custody of children with abusive ex- activism. has changed them and created distances not easily bridged. Rehana and Maya, who has returned home, welcome the victory and try to pick up their The Pure and the Impure old lives. They work with the Center for the Rehabilitation of Women, where women who were raped and mutilated during the near-genocide The Good Muslim faced by the Bengalis receive counseling and abortions (although these are never publicly By Tahmima Anam mentioned). Maya wants a war crimes tribunal. She New York: Harper, 2011, 304 pp., 25.99, cannot accept what Bangabandu (the friend of the Bengalis) Mujibur Rahman, the revered leader of hardcover the revolt, who has returned as prime minister, has offered: the nation’s reverence toward the raped women as birangonas , heroines, who have paid with Reviewed by Mandira Sen their bodies, just as dead male soldiers have, for liberation. Maya believes this erases what the Sohail, her son, who joined the rebel forces, the women were forced to endure and wholly ignores a Mukti Bahini; and Maya, her daughter, who social reality in which rape ruins a woman’s life. worked with refugees in India and the Sohail returns from the war so deeply disturbed government-in-exile. In this novel, Anam that his mother puts the Book (the Qu’ran), into his revisits the Haques during the early years of hands, thinking this will lessen the turmoil that independence. Not surprisingly, these turn out overwhelms him: to be traumatic in a different way from the war, and she crafts her story with now-familiar He sits and reads the words ... refusing to see delicacy and understatement, showing a world his friends or celebrate the victory. Dimly he n her second novel, which explores the turned upside down, with no easy answers or hears them: time to go back to the university; emergence of Bangladesh in December 1971, solutions. The devastation is inward, too—in stop worrying your mother... be happy.... Tahmima Anam captures the aftermath of people’s hearts and minds. Most of all he is afraid to talk. Maya is always independence. Her first novel, A Golden Age The story is told through the point of view of regarding him hungrily, eager for small (2007) focused on the ferocious civil war Maya, still restless, outwardly tough, and scraps of detail ... he wants her to be quiet so Ibetween the two wings of Pakistan, when the unconventional. Her narrative slides back and forth that she can hear that roar, the roar of Bengali Muslims of East Pakistan rose up against in time, from the victory of 1971 to its aftermath, uncertainty and the roar of death. their perceived oppressors, the Urdu-speaking West mirroring Maya’s confusion and preoccupations. Pakistanis, also Muslim. In that first book, Anam During the war, the three family members had Sohail turns his back on modernity and seeks to wrote about the Haque family: Rehana, the mother, counted the days when they would be together make himself over into a better Muslim. A young who found herself in the heart of the struggle; again. However, they soon discover that the war man who had a kind of charismatic power over his 30 Wome n’s Review of Books Vol. 29, No. 5, September/October 2012 contemporaries at the university, he rejects his I find this particular plot development he endured during the war—why Maya, a doctor, education and takes up the austere life of a unconvincing. In Bangladesh, as elsewhere in the or Rehana, never suggests this is unclear. At one religious leader. Maya is horrified. She tries to region, women keep rape hidden as something point, Maya tells Sohail that his feelings are the encourage Sohail to return to everyday life, but in shameful; the prime minister’s wish to honor them consequences of his wartime experiences of killing response, he burns all the books he had lovingly would not have assuaged their trauma. Some may people—and indeed, much of what he does is to collected over the years. Rehana remonstrates with have wanted to give birth, but felt they did not expiate his feelings of guilt. Rehana believes that Maya that religion can never be harmful and tells have the option. Anam falters on a few other the death of Sohail’s father, when Sohail was just Maya she should not have provoked Sohail. Maya occasions. When Rehana is suffering from cancer, eight, had an enormous impact on his sense of self. leaves home to work as an itinerant doctor in small for example, her son visits her and has her drink But Sohail himself feels that towns and rural areas, staying away for seven water from the Zamzama well in the Muslim holy years. city of Mecca. Rehana is miraculously—but not the Book spoke to his every sorrow, to every credibly—cured. bruise of his life ... it spoke to the day his outh Asian Islam has always had its own The Haques’ neighbor Silvi had turned to father died, ... it spoke to the machine-gun character. The great Sufis, or saints, who fundamentalist Islam before Sohail. Silvi had sound that echoed in his chest, night after Sproselytized Islam did so by persuasion and married an army officer, who defected and joined night ..

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