Al-Ani, Shuja’a Muslim: Al-Mera’e fi Al-qissa Al-Iraqiyya (Women in Iraqi Fiction) Ministry of Media, Department of Culture, Baghdad 1972.
In the last two decades the situation of women in Iraq has become a controversy that is craving for historiography, theorising and investigating. Many Iraqi women both home and in exile have taken this mission to heart, and produced a considerable body of criticism to deal with this question in law, sociology, art and literature. Such as the works of Eman Ahmed Khammas, Haifa Zangana, Nadije Al-Ali, Zahra Ali and Noga Efrati. In that direction, a historical perspective to look at critical studies about women in Iraq makes itself urgent in order to trace women’s journey in such a conflictive political and social conjunction named Iraq. One of these studies is the book before us, Women in Iraqi Fiction by Dr. Shuja’a Muslim Al-Ani.
The book is divided into two sections: I – Women in Public life, which consists of three chapters: Society’s Look towards Women, Social Impact on Women’s Sexual Behaviour, and The Impact of the City on the Conceptual Development of Sex and Women. As titles indicate this section provides examination of a considerable amount of texts that show the situation of Iraqi women and society after both World Wars. The author seems to think that Iraqi fiction of that period, when it comes to women’s rights, only focused on how society sees women as sex objects and how they are deprived from sexual rights. He also concentrated on women’s sexual deviation and homosexuality as a result of general social frustration.
Section II- Women in their Private Life is also of three chapters: Marriage and Love, Prostitution, and Women and Illegal relations. According to the author, these topics were of a special concern to authors after WWI because they were the safest to discuss women publically. Whereas, women sexuality, in the first section, were a taboo matter up to almost mid-fifties. Certainly the author’s ambition to cover literary production of fifty years charged with political and socio-demographic turmoil makes his suggestion unfit, since the battle for women’s rights in education, work and marriage had been already a public debate since early thirties of the twentieth century. Nevertheless the question of sexuality being a taboo up to the second half of the twentieth century is agreed upon.
On the whole, the book offers an excellent research that would lead scholars to shortcuts and brief analysis to many topics concerning Iraqi women, Iraqi fiction and Iraqi authors. It is undoubtedly one of the first and very few works concerning criticism of representation of women in Iraqi fiction. However, it provides none but an introductory and a galloping survey to the subject matter. Furthermore, strikingly, it hardly mentions Iraqi fiction by female authors, it mentions only one to be precise; a short story by Safirah Jameel Hafiz. It even never mentions Iraqi women’s political movement towards gender equality and political representation, which though simple, but achieved a considerable advance for women’s condition in Iraqi cities and countryside in late sixties and seventies.
The research seems to focus on proving that women in Iraqi fiction is “a toy that man play with and an instrument to satisfy his sexual urges.” (19) Or “Woman in the city is nothing but a body, writhing of desire, nothing but a whore…” (57) And “scientific and technological advancement influenced women’s lives in assuring her body and its constant presence, since this advancement gave women a plenty of free time” (144). Not to discard the truth behind such statements but to rule out Iraqi women’s achievement and literary production as if they never took place is a damaging oversight to the study’s coherence and adequacy. Moreover, the analysis seems to be unnecessarily extensive and detailed on some works rather than others, as, for instance, Jebra Ibrahim Jebra’s novel Surakh fi Leil Taweel (Screeming in Long Nights-1955).
Nevertheless, one can consider this study an invaluable document and source of information for two reasons; the first, for the amount of names and tittles of texts where the representation of women is central. Second, it is an indicator to trace the development of feminist theory in Iraq, as this text clearly shows a desperate need for one.
Eman Ahmed Khammas. ha dit
Thank you Hanan for writing about this very important book. The representation of Iraqi women in fiction tells a lot about her situation in life, a situation that is still very far away from justice. I think that human hypocricy is demonstrated in its worst forms here.
Eman Ahmed Khammas.
BRUCE WALLACE ha dit
This is an enlightening review. I wish it was longer because you seem to have a great deal of knowledge about the subject and I, a male Westerner illiterate in Arabic, have to rely on the insights of scholars such as yourself.
Gabriel ha dit
El macabro panorama de las mujeres en Irak 🙁