First Person: Why I Cover continued...

Understanding the Veil (and More!)

KT: What is it about, then, if not submission?
LA: It depends what country we're talking about because its meaning clearly changes by country. If you are a minority and you wear the veil, you're making a statement about being willing to take a stand for your beliefs against the current of the majority. And that's a very courageous thing to do. If I were living in Saudi Arabia, where it is mandatory, and I put on a headscarf, it would mean something completely different if I were in Egypt, where there's probably a lot of social pressure even among the majority, to wear it. So I think we need to analyze this question in relation to where the person is living at the time. Now, one of the things I think I should not leave out is that some people are wearing it because they believe God wants them to. But I don't know how one gauges that exactly.

KT: You have a chapter in your memoir which you call "Harem." You know, that's another word that kind of comes down to us through literature and fairy tales, and it's kind of an image of what we think might have always been wrong with women in, you know, Middle Eastern Arabic societies.
LA: Yes, you're right.

A lot of people have these memories of extended families and of people, you know, dividing up by sex to talk about whatever their interests were.

KT: Your “Harem” chapter then is really about the closeness of women in the circles in which you grew up. I'd love to know more about what a harem is really like.
LA: As I describe it in my memoir, it actually is a very warm and wonderful environment because it was about being with all the women of the family and the children very comfortably. There was usually, you know, at least half a dozen aunts and Grandmother and so on. Let me tell you how people have responded to me on this subject. They have said, “That's what it was like when I was a kid in Vermont” or in Minnesota, or wherever it was. “Because we did gather; it was the women who gathered. We'd gather in the kitchen.” And they would describe that atmosphere of free discussion like ours in a women's community in Cairo, where I grew up, or Alexandria. This was actually a common experience of many societies before we became nuclear families, each in our little box. A lot of people have these memories of extended families and of people, you know, dividing up by sex to talk about whatever their interests were.

KT: What does the word harem really mean?
LA: It means women's quarters.

KT: So it doesn't necessarily mean the concubines' room.
LA: No, it certainly doesn't. That was a Western male fantasy. Men invented what harems meant. All the Western men who traveled to the Muslim world who were unable to get into a harem, had fantasies as to what was going on in there. So this is where our American idea of the word comes from.

KT: Correct me if I'm wrong, but you say every Muslim country is different, every culture is different, but in Muslim cultures there is a greater separation between men and women now than there is here.
LA: Yes, that's probably true.

KT: That's something that American feminists will consider a problem. Is that a problem in your mind?
LA: No, it isn't. American feminists would probably say it's a problem. On the other hand, what was striking to me when I first came to this country, was that people kept telling me about their wonderful consciousness-raising groups, and I said, “Well, what are they?” And they said, “You know, women get together and talk about their experiences.” So apparently it was a very powerful thing in the American feminist movement for women to get together without men and talk.

KT: As you watch the American presence in Iraq, what would you like Americans to be thinking about and watching for in terms of women?
LA: If we focus on women, what's happening there seems to be heading towards disaster. You know, the Iraqi women have been among those in the lead of liberated Muslim women. And I guess one of the difficulties here is that I don't think of the Middle East as Muslim. It's been for thousands of years, a mixture of religions. It's not the case now.

What I call ethical Islam is actually an ethical mixed heritage. It's about how people of different religions have lived together for millennia, and that is what I cherish. And it has been destroyed, I hope not irretrievably. I don't quite know how we're going to come back, but I think it's latently present. It's living in the people, but I do think that the average Iraqi woman is concerned more at the moment with what they all want most-safety, peace, clean water, electricity.

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