My
life, my choice
June 16, 2006
Whether
it's drug dealers and backslang from estates around Paris
or a Melbourne schoolgirl wondering how much eyeliner to
wear with her hijab, Victoria Neumark is riveted by two
novels written from the perspectives of young Muslim
women
She's a thoroughly modern woman. She works as a lawyer, and
has an adoring husband and small daughter, with whom she
travels the world publicising her novel. She is as
forthright as any citizen of her native Australia, dresses
with style and care, is an entertaining and eloquent
conversationalist.
Only one thing is unusual: as a teenager, Randa
Abdel-Fattah chose to wear the veil, the Islamic hijab.
Her novel, Does My Head Look Big In This? (Marion Lloyd
£5.99), is sure to ring bells of all kinds in the heads of
non-Muslim readers. There will be those who sigh in
despair: how subjugated Muslim women are! There will be
those who stare in fascination: how strange these Muslim
women seem! And there will be those - the majority, if they
read the book with unblinkered eyes - who come away with
new understanding and respect for her decision and that of
many thousands like her.
And, of course, there will also be many young Muslim women
who read the book, aimed chiefly at teenagers, with
recognition and enjoyment. At last, a novel which shows the
real everyday dilemmas, relationships, joys and fears of
someone like them, someone from a traditional background
(Abdel-Fattah's parents are from Palestine and Egypt)
growing up in a modern society (she was born and educated
in Australia) who wants to find her own path between
competing sets of values.
Does My Head Look Big In This? follows the first year in
which its Melbourne heroine, Amal, aged 15, decides to wear
the hijab full-time. As the book explains, the hijab is
more than just a scarf. In clothing terms, it ought to mean
fully concealing the hair and neck and covering the rest of
the body except for hands and feet with loose clothing in
the presence of anyone of the opposite sex who is not close
family. In behaviour terms, it means not kissing or
relating sexually or provocatively to anyone. In spiritual
terms, it means trying to live according to the dictates of
the Koran, including praying, fasting in Ramadan, giving to
charity, obeying one's parents, being honest.
It's not a fashion statement, although, as Abdel-Fattah
herself makes clear, "there's no reason to look awful just
because you're wearing hijab".
Hence, during a visit last month to Brampton Manor school,
in London's multicultural East Ham, she met plenty of girls
who spoke of their mums'
"seven", "whole tray-full" and "whole shelf-full" stacks of
scarves, all in colours and fabrics to match their
overgarments.
Girls such as Nadia,14, happy to wear the hijab to school
(in a navy blue that matches her uniform), understand the
fictional Amal's life. "My mum said to me when I was 13,
'why don't you wear this now?'" says Nadia, who wants to be
"a businesswoman. I like power". At first she didn't want
to, but her mum said, "You choose. Are you proud to be a
Muslim?" So, as it was her own choice, and as her mum,
"who's my best friend, she would never ask me to do
something that was wrong for me", suggested it, Nadia did
so and feels comfortable. So comfortable, in fact, that her
friends Maniola, 13, and Ning, 14, who are from Jamaican
and Chinese families, seem slightly to envy her. "It can
make people respect you," says Maniola. "It can help if you
don't want boys to look at you," agrees Ning.
All the pupils in the reading group fostered by English
teacher and photographer Prodeepta Das agree on one thing.
"The book tells you Muslims are not just terrorists," says
Joseph, 14. It's an important message for young people in
London as the anniversary of the bombings of 7/7
approaches.
Abdel-Fattah says: "I wanted readers to be able to explore
the world of a Muslim teenage girl and realise that she has
the same issues as them and also has to face being seen as
a stereotype." Much of the book is straight teen "does he
like me, does he not?" comedy, with added doses of friends
being bullied, running away from home to escape arranged
marriages, and extra zing from Arab family dynamics (a bit
like My Big Fat Greek Wedding with added kebabs and minus
the alcohol).
Like her creator, Amal is a feisty female who gives as good
as she gets when people call her "nappy head", but who also
extends kindness to her elderly Greek neighbour, winning
her friendship. More controversially, Amal flirts with
romance with one of her classmates, in a relationship that
ends abruptly when she rejects physical contact at his
birthday party.
Abdel-Fattah, 26, is unabashed on the subject of sex.
"Physical intimacy is only for one's marriage partner," she
declares. And that includes kissing or hand-holding... one
thing leads to another, after all. In her own life, her
husband Ibrahim was introduced by a friend of the family
and "I knew, within a day I knew, I was one of the lucky
ones". There followed a year's courtship, "mostly by
computer and telephone, which takes the lust out of it.
That can cloud your judgment when you are trying to see if
this is a person you can spend your life with."
Interestingly, in her novel many enjoyably dramatic
exchanges between characters take place via text or email.
Thoroughly modern, yet timeless.
Like the young people at Brampton Manor, Abdel-Fattah is
close to her parents.She remains fully involved in family
life, as well as highly independent in earning her own
living, campaigning for Palestinian human rights. She sees
her own journey into wearing the hijab and out again (she
wore it for four years, giving it up only reluctantly as an
obstacle to her legal career) as deeply spiritual. "I
remember the day I walked out without it. I felt I was
compromising my beliefs," she says. "I see it as an
indictment of our society that, just like Amal in the book,
I would find it hard even to get a job at a fast-food
outlet, let alone in a law firm, just because of a private
decision that I saw as making me nearer to God."
God may not feature overtly for many teens in our secular
society, but issues such as boys getting away with more
than girls ("It's really unfair," chorus the students at
Brampton Manor) and gossip about sex ("It's all over the
school about some girls") are universal. "My girls are not
asexual," says Abdel-Fattah of the book she spent 10 years
writing. "They are full of raging hormones, too; they have
temptations. But I wanted to question the assumption that
you have to have a boyfriend. It's more important to feel
good about yourself, from inside."
Another young Muslim author has created a slightly more
streetwise heroine in her new novel. "It's not my life,
it's not my facts, but, yes, she has some of my
personality, some of my way of seeing the world," says
Faiza Gu ne, a stunningly pretty, elegant 20-year-old
Parisian, with a chic way of lighting a cigarette, a husky,
charming voice and a no-nonsense take on life.
She has taken fashionable Paris by storm with her pacy
novel of teenage life in the tough estates (banlieues)
around Paris. Her heroine, 15-year-old Doria, is the only
child of a depressed Moroccan woman, abandoned by her
husband and making a precarious living working as a cleaner
for less than the minimum wage. Harassed by social workers,
yearning hopelessly for the love of the local drug dealer,
unengaged by school and excluded from the mainstream
culture of France, Doria is full of energy and compassion.
Like her creator.
Kif Kif Demain, translated here as Just Like Tomorrow
(Definitions Pounds 5.99), marks the emergence of a
distinctive voice: the young Muslim woman who is neither a
political activist nor a devout daughter of the mosque, but
rather a questioning voice of power and panache. A young
woman, too, who acts one way in traditional settings such
as the home, and another on the streets, in the workplace.
An existence which could be seen as hypocritical and drab;
or as rich and many-nuanced, like the title of Gu ne's
book.
"Kif" is an Arab word meaning "well-being". It's used in
France as a synonym for "hashish" and "kiffer" means "to
get high" or to fancy someone.
There is another meaning, though: "C'est du kif" means
"more of the same".
So Guene's title, as translated by Sarah Adams, means both
"tomorrow the same as today" and "tomorrow will be great",
which rather encapsulates her own attitude.
Faiza Guene lives with her family (her parents are from
Algeria) in a flat on the third floor of a tower block in
the big housing estate at Courtilli res, north of Paris.
It's an area which she loves for its liveliness, its
multicultural shops and faces, its close-knit camaraderie.
She is anxious to dispel the myths which surround life in
such areas, like the stark black-and-white drama of Mathieu
Kassovitz's film La Haine (1995). "Sure, violence exists
and it is important that such a film exists," she says,
"but everyday it is not people being shot and battles on
rooftops."
When Guene was 13, she became involved in a local film
project run by the principal of her school, and wrote and
directed three short films. In the breaks between shooting
she used to scribble her novel in notebooks, "It's what I
do - I write," she says. "Since I was little, it's pleasure
and pastime, but it was just for myself."
When Boris Seguin, who ran the film club, picked up the
notebook and read it, he was so impressed that he showed it
to his sister, an editor at the literary publishing house
Hachette. Sensing a new phenomenon - and a new market -
Hachette published it in 2004, when its author was 19. It
has sold 200,000 copies.
The narrative is both moving and comic and works on two
levels: a deadbeat girl finds happiness in her humdrum life
by being nice to her mother, giving up unrealistic romantic
dreams and kissing the nice nerdy boy who helps her with
her homework, without losing any of her sharp-eyed realism
about the difficulties of inner (or, in France, outer) city
life. I particularly liked the detail about the reformed
drug dealer and his single mother bride zooming happily off
in the social worker's stolen car. It's not unlike The
Catcher in the Rye, a book which Gu ne says is the first
she read that was not "chiant" (shitty, boring).
More than this, though, it's a bold, compelling exercise in
the language of the streets, a million kilometres away from
the exquisite formal language of the Academie Francaise.
"Verlan", or backslang, like many argots, began as tricks
which the underdogs played with language to confuse their
oppressors (mostly police and state employees). Now,
though, it permeates everyday usage, from rap to newspapers
to advertising, even clothing labels. Guene's talent is to
mix just enough of it into her narrative to spice it, but
not so much that it is obscure.
Interestingly, Guene does not see herself as a spokesperson
for anything. The recent riots and the reaction to them
("It's what you would expect, it's the same thing as has
been happening for 30 years," she shrugs); whether Muslim
women should wear the hijab ("In the end, it is a piece of
material"); religion ("Yes, of course I pray, when I can");
the position of women ("Women should choose for themselves,
to come out into public life"). "I don't want to pronounce
on these matters without knowing what I say," she explains.
She lights another cigarette and shakes her head. "All I
have done is write a story and find out what is a girl's
relationship to this hard language, the language of men, of
rappers, of today." She blows out smoke. Now she is reading
Zola and finishing her second novel. "I'm trying to go
deeper.
Things are changing."
Prodeepta Das
has edited Children's Voices: poems by Newham secondary
school children, £3.50 (inc p&p) from Brampton Manor
school, Roman Road, London E6 3SQ
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