Fatima and Iman
Okay, so that last entry was going to be the last entry before vacation – but I had such a good time at school today, I have to share. We met with Israeli Arab/Palestinian women who are studying to be teachers at a college in Baka el Gharbiyya, a town near Afula. (An Arab Israeli is someone who lives inside Israel and is considered to be a full citizen, unlike someone in the Gaza Strip). After a beginning lecture and a short getting-to-know you period, we split into groups to learn about the other. Four HUC students and myself walked around Jerusalem with Fatima and Iman, two women from a town near Nazareth. They wore the full coverings, from head veil to body-covering robe… and they managed to break all my stereotypes.
It started off with basic questions – what’s your name, where are you from, how many brothers and sisters do you have. Then it got into politics. We talked about how strange it was that the Israel/Palestinian conflict doesn’t personally enter into any of our lives, that we would expect more tension but really don’t experience any. We commented on how they travel easily to Jordan and Egypt, places we don’t go.
After everyone loosened up the conversation got even better: we discussed dating and engagement, how Islamic women, depending on how religious they are, can choose their partners or have arranged marriages, that usually marriage occurs at ages 20-22. Some families have 3 kids, others 10. That when you’re engaged, you’re allowed to kiss and hug the boy you’re with, so it isn’t new when you’re married. That PDA is shameful, so even married couples would never kiss in front of anyone else. They were surprised to hear that I grew up with two moms, since it was obviously not acceptable in their culture.
Then we got onto women’s rights. Fatima and Iman were amazed that Jonathan did the cooking in our home, but didn’t seem surprised that women make less money than men. We talked about how it relates to religion – they told us that whenever a woman is not allowed to leave the house without a man, it isn’t because of Islam, but because of tradition and custom. They wear jeans at home and dresses outside, and consider the separation of spheres and gender roles as fitting and right.
We bonded so much that we all exchanged emails, and at the end they offered to show us pictures of them without their head coverings from their camera phones! All in all, it was great fun, and extremely enlightening. Talk about giving voice to the unspoken Other.
Now off to bed, and tomorrow off to Greece! I just finished Saving Fish from Drowning, the new Amy Tan novel, so tomorrow on the plane I think I'll go for a radical change and start on The Historian.
It started off with basic questions – what’s your name, where are you from, how many brothers and sisters do you have. Then it got into politics. We talked about how strange it was that the Israel/Palestinian conflict doesn’t personally enter into any of our lives, that we would expect more tension but really don’t experience any. We commented on how they travel easily to Jordan and Egypt, places we don’t go.
After everyone loosened up the conversation got even better: we discussed dating and engagement, how Islamic women, depending on how religious they are, can choose their partners or have arranged marriages, that usually marriage occurs at ages 20-22. Some families have 3 kids, others 10. That when you’re engaged, you’re allowed to kiss and hug the boy you’re with, so it isn’t new when you’re married. That PDA is shameful, so even married couples would never kiss in front of anyone else. They were surprised to hear that I grew up with two moms, since it was obviously not acceptable in their culture.
Then we got onto women’s rights. Fatima and Iman were amazed that Jonathan did the cooking in our home, but didn’t seem surprised that women make less money than men. We talked about how it relates to religion – they told us that whenever a woman is not allowed to leave the house without a man, it isn’t because of Islam, but because of tradition and custom. They wear jeans at home and dresses outside, and consider the separation of spheres and gender roles as fitting and right.
We bonded so much that we all exchanged emails, and at the end they offered to show us pictures of them without their head coverings from their camera phones! All in all, it was great fun, and extremely enlightening. Talk about giving voice to the unspoken Other.
Now off to bed, and tomorrow off to Greece! I just finished Saving Fish from Drowning, the new Amy Tan novel, so tomorrow on the plane I think I'll go for a radical change and start on The Historian.
posted by Michal at 3:56 PM
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