reality check
I went from reading a fairy tale to a grim reminder of just how miserable many women’s lives really are. I “met” Rukhsana Khan last year during the Writers Against Racism series; she tried to explain then how she wrote stories with messages that are implied rather than made glaringly apparent. Now that I’ve read Wanting Mor, I *think* I understand what she meant. I think. In this novel we have a girl who’s got a few things in common with the Cinderella-esque protagonist of Ash; Jameela loses her beloved mother and is left in the care of her father–a trifling kind of man who has a bad temper that’s made worse by his drug and alcohol use. Jameela already knows better than to get in his way, and has learned to meet his needs before her own; any kindness from her father is welcome but rare, and so it’s no surprise that he embarks on a journey from the countryside to big city Kabul that in no way improves Jameela’s circumstances. Like Ash, Jameela often finds herself sleeping on the kitchen floor after laboring all day as a servant in her father’s friends’ home. When they’re thrown out after he drunkenly makes improper advances on his friend’s wife (who’s also drunk), Jameela finds herself in a worse situation—with an actual stepmother who mistreats her and ultimately harasses her father into a desperate act: after telling Jameela to pack her things, her father leads her into the crowded marketplace and abandons her. Though she finds temporary comfort with a friendly family, Jameela is ultimately deposited at the local orphanage where, at last, things start to look up. Though the orphanage is crowded and in ill repair, Jameela finally receives the education she craves and soon becomes a teacher’s aide. She also has her cleft lip restored by a US army surgeon, and so gains some self-confidence. What makes this novel tricky for me is the challenge of separating Jameela’s religion from her culture—specifically, her “home training”; throughout the book she’s an undoubtedly pitiable character, but that doesn’t automatically make her likable. She admits that she looks down her nose at women who don’t dress or act as modestly as she believes they should; Jameela has been taught—by her mother—how to conduct herself as a Muslim woman, and those are lessons she holds dear. This novel seems to save its harshest critique for the women in Jameela’s community who fail to show modesty, religious devotion, compassion, and deference to men. When a kind butcher considers taking Jameela in, it is his wife who refuses his plan; the head of the girls’ orphanage is a woman who wears a loose, sheer head covering (porani) and sucks up to foreigners in order to get much-needed aid for the children. Her stepmother’s a heartless, selfish witch who wears revealing clothes, and the first woman Jameela stays with in Kabul wears too much make-up and “tight, short” Western dresses. The only truly kind woman in the book is a teacher, Khalaa Kareema, who wears a chadri (burka); she demonstrates true modesty and kindness, and Jameela ends up modeling herself after this woman. Jameela notes that on the way to the market, men go out of their way to avoid her since she’s fully covered, and she triumphs when her uncovered friend (“The Taliban’s gone, you know”) is groped in the street. At the end of the novel, Jameela’s strong enough to reject her father’s efforts to reclaim her, but she’s still likely to be exploited by the orphanage headmistress who claims they might be able to pay her for teaching “someday.” Jameela’s closest friend marries INTO her stepmother’s dysfunctional family (after seeing Jameela’s stepbrother ONCE), and Jameela takes charge of an orphan girl desperate for love—but by teaching her the lessons she once learned from her mother: “If you can’t be beautiful, you should at least be good. People will appreciate that.” Hmm. This novel definitely shows a perspective we don’t often see in YA literature, and I’d be interested to know how teenage girls in the US respond to a character like Jameela. Will they see her as empowered? Or brainwashed? In some ways this novel reminded me of So Long a Letter by Mariama Ba; that story follows the friendship of two Muslim women in Senegal who both find themselves betrayed by their husbands (who acquire younger second wives after decades of marriage). I always make sure to point out that Rama rejects the hypocrisy of her husband, but *not* her religion—he is to blame, not Islam. Yet it’s very difficult to distinguish between religious beliefs/interpretations and the cultural practices they inspire. I’ve been reading up on Rastafarian culture, specifically the role of women, and I’ve come across some things that make me uncomfortable. Why would women choose to adopt practices that seem designed to limit their personal power? Am I betraying my own feminist principles by condoning their right to make whatever choice they want—even if I disagree? I became a feminist in large part b/c I realized my mother was a woman who subscribed to patriarchy. But women transmit culture—what if I hadn’t figured that out, and instead modeled myself after her? Yikes! Wanting Mor is an unsettling story, but one definitely worth sharing with any teen readers you know.
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