• Abstract and Figures
• Public Full-text

women's survival tactics during cur- vivid insight into a very difficult the state, religious establishments, fews which isolated their community moment in Palestinian historydif- nationalist movements and ideolo- for fXy-three days. ficult inasmuch as it risks turning gies, both in the West and in the East, While coping with the trauma of into a moment of lost opportunities and the deadly struggles that have occupation, Palestinian women must what had been the hope that kept all centred around these actors' control also cope with the socio/economic these women going. over the veil and the book that is over upheaval of their community. The In recognition ofthe heroic fight of the body and knowledge. resilience they show in negotiating Palestinian women, I would like to The Book and The Veil is con- the demands of a rigidly patriarchal have seen on the jacket of the book a structed upon the encounter that oc- society is amazing. As eighteen year collage of photographs of different curred almost a century ago between old Iman Jardallah says: "things are faces, and not just the face of Hanan two Turkish sisters Zeyneb and Melek changing, but there arc people who Ashrawi who figures very briefly Hanoums who fled Turkey and the tryto turn the wheel back." The more through two short essays in this col- harem for fear of persecution from militant feminist among them are lection. the sultan; the English feminist jour- aware that though they have and are nalist Grace Ellison who saw as her participating in the nationalist strug- duties to explain the East to her coun- gle, this in no way guarantees them a THE BOOK AND THE uy-people and enlight Eastern women role within the newly formed Pales- VEIL about self-emancipation; and Pierre tinian Authority. In fact as Ebba Loti, a French Turkophile homo- Augustin's essay demonstrates,it took sexual writer. To their voices, Ternar Yeshim Ternar. Montreal, Quebec: the United Leadership of the Upris- is adding her own, the one of "a post- Vehicule Press, 1994. ing more than a year to criticize the modern anthropologistn,"a novelist- vicious fundamentalistveil campaign ethnographer born in the East but in Gaza. It seems that like all govern- residing and writing in the West," ment in the region, the Palestinian creating something that sounds like a Authority will not go out ofits way to With the veil increasingly becoming dialogue (although it is never dear improve the status of women if this the object of intense struggles in whether all voices really listen to each means added conflict with the funda- France, Quebec, Algeria, to name but other) across space, time, and cul- mentalists. Furthermore, the Pales- a few, a symbol appropriated by the tures, in the (spurious) search for self- tinian Authority has not shown any media, states, religious movements, understanding and self-identification. keen desire to implement a demo- and women to signify either cultural/ For both the veil and the book are, cratic rule. If it acquiesces to the islamic resistance against Western im- here, used as "facilitators" to under- women's demands for equity, it will perialism or cultural/islamic oppres- take a research of the self. have to do the same for other groups. sion of the women, and finally the site In Ternar's, the veil is, of course, But Palestinian women are aware of the WestJEast divide and conflict, the East, the yashmak that Turkish of what happened to their Algerian Yeshim Ternar's work The Book and women wore in the presence of men; sisters after the end of their national- the Veil is, indeed, an important and it is oppression, sequestration, anni- ist struggle, and they are not about to timely one. However, one should not hilation, aUbarrierbetween thesexes;" accept the same fate. Their struggles expect Ternar to provide the reader but the veil is also the West: it is the to organize within women's groups with a definite or even a single analy- blank, expressionless face of Euro- and within trade unions are an at- sis or understanding of the veil or the pean women. The veil in the East is tempt to preempt such a fate. But book, for her workdeliberatelythrows also a symbol of beauty, feminity, only time will tell whether Palestin- a veil of fiction over reality, and it gender identity, for which the femi- ian women will achieve some of their ncircr completely unveils the faces, nist Grace falls: "For all her interest in goals through their own far- meanings, objectives behind the veil emancipation, Grace seems to enjoy sightedness, or because of the ulti- or the book. But it is because of its being hidden and made anonymous mate weakness of the Palestinian ambiguous representations, conver- by ayashm&...Grace remarkson how Authority, or even because the latter sations, subtle analysis of the orien- attractivea yashmak makes awoman;" would wish to project a progressive talist discourse and of feminism, that and the veil is ultimately facade to its Western donors. Time Yeshim Ternar's book is, indeed, an belongingness, for which the hero- will also tell whether they will not important one. One can only regret ines of The Book and The Vd along actually find themselves caught be- that her ethnographicfiction remains with the author, are striving: "Grace, tween the devil and the deep blue sea at the level of the "self" and of the you wore the veil in Turkey, whereas as they manoeuvre their way between construction and representation of I never did. You travelled incognito an unsympathetic patriarchal Author- the selfthrough the veil and the book, with your Turkish sisters, whereas I ity, and the repressive Hamas groups. and fails to ukilthe other actors of always stuck out. You felt like they The collection gives the reader a this (mis)representation, including were your sisters in more ways than CANADIAN WOMAN STUDIESlLES CAHIERS DE LA FEMME one." And again, "[west of the Dan- don the book and re-adopt the veil. otypes and at showing a more truth- ube], Zcyneb felt alienated. Grace, What she did not know was that once ful and realistic image ofMiddle East- on the other hand, at least in public, you identig with life through books, ern women. The book's strengths could don the veil and pass for a there is no turning back." come from the author's six-year resi- Turkish woman." What distinguished Grace and dence as Wall Street Journal Corre- The book is the West but it is also Mdek from Zcyneb was that they spondent in countries such as Saudi the Koran, it is emancipation, power were both able to understand the Arabia, Iran, Egypt, Jordan,The Gulf and the projection ofthe selfthrough complementarity of the veil and the States, Israel and Eritrea. It is this on- the voice of another; but it is also the book, whereas Zeyneb saw her choices the-field experience that allows her to individualisation of the self and dis- in opposition to each other -the show the reader the glaring differ- enchantment, as Zcyneb experiences. book or the veil. The Book and The ences that exist in the ways in which The Bbook is Grace's and Loty's Veil carries multiple messages and Islam is expressed and practised in orientalism but as well Zcyneb's rep- different layers of analysis, but one different societies. resentation of the Occident; it is tends to be recurrent in the text: it is Geraldine Brooks tell us that the Grace's attempt "to understand that both the East and the West are main reason for her going to the them ... just as today [the author is] indispensable to the other, but that Middle East was to look for risk and trying to understand one who wears such a recognition has to be learned; adventure but that after one year she the veil;" it is throwing a veil of it is "our common history, our com- came to realize that as a Western fiction over reality, but as well the mon desire to traverse the opposing journalist, and as a woman, she was in unveiling of reality. The book is fi- currents of the Bosphorus and make a better position to access the wealth nally Grace's works on Turkey, sense of the East and the West that ofinformation on Muslim women by Melek's and Zeyneb's fictions fol- brings us all together." As soft and directly speaking to them and then lowing their flight to Europe, Pierre naively idealistic and humanistic as writing about their everyday lives in Loti's novel, and it is The Book and the this message might sound, it is an Islamic context. The outcome is The Veil. Hence, while the reader one that should be reiterated, and positively encouraging for others might originally have thought of the written and spoken, across books and scholars in the field. book in total opposition with the across our veils, at a time when the She begins by acknowledging West- veil, shelhe is in faa confronted with West and the East are increasingly ern misunderstandings about Islam the book (including the one being constructed and constructing them- and Muslim women. In fact, shestates reviewed) carrying as many ambigu- selves as two diametrically opposed that she wrote the book for those ous, contradictoryand "veiled" mes- and conflictual systems of thinking, people who like her, before she vis- sages as does the veil itself. histories and Peoples. ited Islamic countries, would look at And the reader, submerged within a woman in a chador and burst in to all these contradictory messages, outrage or piety.

Load more

  2

Copy Link