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Literary Review
GENDER
Too predictable
ZIYA US SALAM
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Selective in its reproduction of Islamic principles and personal laws, the book suffers from a perspective that has more passion than reason.
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My God is a Woman, Noor Zaheer, Vitasta, p.306, price not stated.
The worst thing for a reader is to be one step ahead of the author. And the worst thing for an author is to have an air of predictability, even foreboding, running across the book. Noor Zaheer’s My God is a Woman is that kind of book. Here she takes a step forward, painstakingly building the story of a girl who knew too much too soon. Alongside, the reader takes one-and-a-half. Who is to blame? The author, for, Noor gives away the house at the threshold itself, with feeble stabs at the system of selection of grooms in a patriarchal setup. Anybody who has followed feminist essays in recent times or has even an inkling of the infamous Shah Bano case will understand where and how the whole story is likely to evolve here. The very title is a giveaway that Noor takes a feminist interpretation. Incidentally, the book, the author claims, would not have been necessary had there been no politicking in the Shah Bano case!
Richly embellished with slices of Awadhi Muslim culture, the book is selective, even lopsided, in the reproduction of Islamic principles, personal laws and the like. Like the clerics it takes digs at, the book suffers from a blinkered view, a perspective that has more passion than reason. Noor makes predictable noises, easy compromises. Often steering clear of confronting the less than facile, Noor sets her story in Lucknow where young Safia Mehdi has entered into matrimony, settling down with a Marxist Nawab! That is an interesting, if short lived dichotomy: he has all the privileges, no power. He does not have to earn his living, words stand him in good stead. Untrained for a job, he identifies with the masses, yet has never mingled with them. At home, his luxuries are well attended to, his whims catered to. Outside, his principles have not yet come through the crucible.
Safia, we are told, was a nine-year-old author whose article in a magazine lands her in purdah; a veil that does not so much protect as inhibit. Noor starts promisingly though: little Safia is serving tea to her father’s friend even as they are discussing a possible matrimonial match. It is a moment that is to cast its shadow on her future, and the course of the book. The elaborate talk of a mehr amount fixed on the higher side undermines some of the detailing, some nice insights into the Nawabi culture, where a 35-year-old unmarried man is just a “boy”! And a girl much younger is virtually assigned the task of bringing him back to the fold of the faith. As Noor writes in chapter 15, “Victory for a woman, the most complete one, is to steady the faltering steps of her man, to show him the familiar path of truth, to egg him on to continue to walk on it…She might never be the flame, she would remain the calm, still bowl of oil, silently feeding the flame to light the road to progress.”
More conflicts
The mehr amount sorted out early, the author builds up more cases for uneasy conflicts, including the bride’s entry into her new home: will she wear the veil? Will she cover her head in front of her father-in-law? Will she get to stay in her husband’s home after he is gone? The uneasy queries follow like some rapid fire question-answer session in a quiz. For instance, within minutes of bringing the girl home, Noor’s lead male character Abbas tells his mother: “I have always believed that every individual is entitled to freedom. Given the choice and a little support, no woman in her right mind would want to wear the burqa.” Immediately, the bride is called upon to take a call: Support her liberal husband and face the wrath of a well entrenched mother-in-law or toe the traditional line? Soon enough, Safia walks into her new home, holding her 14-yard kalidar gharara “feeling strangely naked in-spite of the mounds of brocades enveloping her”. It is to be her training ground for the larger battles in a patriarchal society where religion is often used to further selfish ends. A place where she discovers everything is open to interpretation, even religion.
The author continues and finishes the book in the same feminist tenor: her story of a Muslim girl married into a traditional family has place for little jibes at mehr, at male imams and the like. But no place for Allah. Safia’s god is God — though she would rather have said Goddess or Goddesses — not Allah. Which is strange, considering the girl hails from a family that makes the burqa compulsory when she is a kid! Yet has no familiarity with the term Allah! Safia does not even speak in English to justify any community-neutral address to the Almighty. And she had penned a short story in an Urdu magazine “Ghuncha”. She speaks of doshala, dupatta and the like. But not Allah! It is an anomaly that stays with the reader all along as Noor continues with her tirade. Noor writes in Chapter 7, “Why have all the prophets been men? Why is the God forever male? Why did scholars like Maitreyi and Gargi follow their husbands in the search for knowledge?...Ali and Khadija were the first two people to come to the true faith, who recited the first namaaz and who stood by the Prophet…Why and how did Ali become an Imam and Khadija remained just Mrs Prophet?”
Noor does not help her own cause. She talks of the Prophet and Hazrat Ali in the book but addresses Hazrat Khadija as just the wife of the prophet. What happened to her accomplishments as a businesswoman? To her status as the most powerful woman of her generation? To the fact that she was 15 years elder to the Prophet but acquiesced to a matrimonial match with him? Wasn’t she a more open-minded, independent woman than many of the so-called feminists? Like men, who ignore the works of great women, Noor dishes out more of the same fare. Only the notes and the player’s gender changes here. The tune remains the same.
Similarly, she gets mired in the gender classifications of the Almighty without caring for the fact that a feminine of Allah is not possible. To further the cause, she turns god into a prisoner of a patriarchal society’s whims. As she writes, “When shall God decide that he no longer wanted to be used by men?” Even God is “he”, not “He”. Noor seems to have ignored Surah Nissa of the Holy Quran which specifically talks of women’s rights, including right to dissolve marriage and inherit property. She does not seem aware that men and women are always addressed together in the holy book. The book is not for men alone. And husband and wife are called as garbs unto each other. An oversight? Maybe. More likely, an omission, considering the verses do not further her argument of a male-centric faith.
Disappointing
It is all so sad and disappointing considering Noor talks with ease and elegance about symbols of Muslim culture: “…heavy brocade dupatta bordered with a six-inch champa kiran”. And is in her element talking of the famous tehzeeb. As she says in the second chapter, “While formality was dropped as acquaintance developed into friendship, politeness would stay on like the lingering fragrance of the Akbar Ali Mohammad Ali’s attar. No Lucknowite worth his salt would be caught without either of them.”
If only she had had a better grasp of Islamic tradition, and had not based her book on the predilections of some modern-day politicians, this book could have been an eye-opener. The way it works out, it is little more than sabre rattling. Not a dispassionate word of wisdom but just passing shots with no finality.
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