Middle East/North African Lit discussion
This topic is about
The Open Door
2018
>
The Open Door by Latifa Zayyat
Mod
Hello forum! My Arabic Literature class just happens to have watched the film and started reading The Open Door this week, and I hope many will join in the discussion. In prep for class, I was trying to find the kolenalaila blog, which appears to have gone offline. Anyone know if it was archived anywhere?
There is a twitter account and facebook page, but the only writing I can find is an interview with the author:
https://blogs.harvard.edu/genderandte...
Mod
I've ordered this as an interlibrary loan because my library doesn't have it.Hopefully it will arrive in time for me to join in!
Lila wrote: "I've ordered this as an interlibrary loan because my library doesn't have it.Hopefully it will arrive in time for me to join in!"
I hope so, Lila.
Mod
Hopefully it will arrive in time for me to join in!"
Ohh! Does your library have a way to suggest new acquisitions? They definitely need this one.
Also maybe Melanie already mentioned, but there is an excerpt available at the Hoopoe website to start with: http://hoopoefiction.com/wp-content/u...
I found that it is available on my Kindle so I snapped it up. I'm looking forward to reading this book.
Marcia wrote: "Lila wrote: "I've ordered this as an interlibrary loan because my library doesn't have it.Hopefully it will arrive in time for me to join in!"
Ohh! Does your library have a way to suggest new acquisitions? They definitely need this one. ..."
They only buy new books. Open door came out in the 60s, I think and was rereleased in 2002.
Mod
@Lila - not beating a dead horse, please know. My library has not purchased any of my 3 dozen or so (in the last year) requested acquisitions except for brand-new translated Scandinavian noir, so if that's the case, understood. If they are open to it, though, the version to request is this one:Published March 1st 2017 by Hoopoe Fiction
ISBN 9774168275
It's the orange cover.
Carol wrote: "@Lila - not beating a dead horse, please know. My library has not purchased any of my 3 dozen or so (in the last year) requested acquisitions except for brand-new translated Scandinavian noir, so i..."Oh, I think the one I requested came out in 2006!
My library is actually pretty good!
In 2017 it ended up purchasing all 3 books I requested, including, 3 months after I suggested it, and too late for the group read: Iraq + 100: stories from a century after the invasion.
I received 10 from the 11 books I requested as inter-library loans. The book I did not get was Iraq + 100: stories from a century after the invasion because it had came too out recently. I complained a lot about it in this group, so I might have the impression otherwise.
Lila wrote: "Carol wrote: "@Lila - not beating a dead horse, please know. My library has not purchased any of my 3 dozen or so (in the last year) requested acquisitions except for brand-new translated Scandinav..."3 for 3 is an awesome record. You are magic, my friend :)
I just started the book and am really enjoying it. Layla is an interesting girl! thank you for picking this book.
Mod
I just started reading this book. Actually I’m still reading the translators introduction which helps give a broader context to the story. I have read other books translated by Marilyn Booth and consider her work important.Nan
Mod
I'm now 24% through and wish i had more reading time.
I finished the book on a flight to see my dad, now will go back and read the introduction. Am still at my dad's so it will be a few days until I get some comments organized.
Mod
Last night I enjoyed a scene in which a brother and sister bond over imitating their parents and their proverbs of wisdom.
Looking forward to all your thoughts :)
Looking forward to reading this. My copy arrived over the weekend :)
My copy finally got delivered too :). Thank you for all the resources Melanie.Only just started reading but I found her way of presenting Layla's entrance into "womanhood" (pp. 20-21 of the Hoopoe edition) very pithy and powerful. Definitely resonated with my own experience as well.
Mod
Thought I'd offer it:
https://www.thenation.com/article/wha...
Marcia wrote: "Hi, I read this piece by Yasmine El-Rifae in *The Nation* & thought it rhymed in interesting ways with what I felt THE OPEN DOOR taught me about feminism that I never learned from "Western" feminis..."Great article of a powerful movement in Egypt. Thank you for posting it.
Unfortunately, I can't access the link to Yasmine El-Rifae's article- it shows me the headline & wants me to set up an account. I'm having trouble finding it in my library's database, MasterFile at EBSCO, although it says it includes The Nation through the Jan. 29 issue this year.Anyone have a link to an article behind the firewall?
Ardene wrote: "Unfortunately, I can't access the link to Yasmine El-Rifae's article- it shows me the headline & wants me to set up an account. I'm having trouble finding it in my library's database, MasterFile at..."I didn't encounter a firewall, Ardene. Bummer. Perhaps if you reach out to the author via her Twitter account she can send you a .pdf or grant you access?
Mod
We could email Yasmine, but I could also send it; here's the first bit.
wonder how many women were slow to engage with the Weinstein story and the #MeToo campaign that followed. I was. I’ve been writing about sexual violence for years, but I ignored the Weinstein story for several days. I didn’t even bookmark it to read later. I didn’t want to be sucked into performing shock at the exposure of another powerful man as a sexual criminal, another story that’s been buried for years, a half-open secret finally in print.
When my Facebook feed flooded with #MeToo in English and in Arabic, I noticed that the posts by my Egyptian friends were longer, angrier, but also more questioning than the rest. Friends in Europe and America posted lots of statements: “Sadly, unsurprisingly, #metoo.” Right away, Egyptians wanted to talk about what this hashtag could do; who its audience was; the value of seeking male allies in the fight; the complicated dynamics of a movement pressuring women to “tell” when they might not want to, might not be able to. I appreciate that this snapshot analysis of my algorithmically curated Facebook feed is not scientific ground for a cross-national analysis of discourse. Perhaps my Egyptian friends are just more expressive on Facebook; perhaps I simply know more feminists from Cairo than anywhere else.
This article was supported by a Media Fellowship through the initiative on Religion and the Global Framing of Gender Violence, Center for the Study of Social Difference at Columbia University.
But I think there’s something important about the place from which we speak. In Egypt we do not have the pretense of a society that is equal or one in which women’s rights are protected. While the Trump presidency may have stripped America of this veneer, it’s still widely understood that things are “better” in America for women than they are in Egypt. In fact, news outlets recently reported on a study that found Cairo to be the “most dangerous” megacity for women. The study was based on the subjective input of unnamed “experts” from the 19 megacities on the list. Like so many sensationalist headlines about women in Arab societies, it was thrown into the world as evidence of some long-suspected sickness.
Stories about sexual violence in Arab countries almost always quarantine these problems as specific to Islam or Arab culture. This is how they are often reported on, and how analysts who make a living speaking on the topic often pitch it. Patriarchy is global, until it comes to the Arab world. Men everywhere hurt women because of interconnected systems of power that privilege them—but when we talk about Arabs or Muslims, we cut all of that away and make it simply about religion.
The first and most obvious problem with this is that it is patronizing, essentialist, and simplistic. It’s not helpful to women—suggesting that we must shed our entire culture and religion in order to save ourselves—and this attitude is easily weaponized against whole societies, and Arab men in particular. Arguments about the fundamental misogyny of Islam were used to justify the 2001 US-led war on Afghanistan, and, more recently, to demonize migrants following mob sexual assaults in Germany.
The second problem, the one that is talked about less, is that by separating out the struggles and experiences of Arab women we exclude them from the wider conversation and, in doing so, make their experiences less available and less useful to the rest of the world—most importantly, to women elsewhere who are thinking about similar problems.
Five years ago I stood on a street corner in Tahrir and watched, feeling useless, as dozens of men sexually attacked a woman—or perhaps multiple women. It was dark and it was difficult to make out what was going on right in front of me. The crowd was rotating around a central point that I could not see. Reports of mob attacks of this kind against female protesters had spread in recent weeks. In these mobs of dozens, sometimes hundreds of people, women were encircled, stripped, beaten, groped, and raped.
I was there with a group called Operation Anti-Sexual Harassment and Assault (OpAntiSH), which for the past few weeks had been intervening in mob attacks to rescue women. I was carrying a backpack containing an abaya (a full-length robe), a pair of medium-sized underwear, flip-flops, painkillers, gauze, and disinfectant—all the stuff we’d learned women might need after surviving these kinds of assaults. Although I could no longer see them, I knew that a team of OpAntiSH volunteers was physically fighting its way through the mob to reach the woman being attacked. I was part of a “safety unit” that was supposed to remain nearby but not get caught in the crowd so that we could get to the survivor afterwards and coordinate getting her home, or to one of the safe houses OpAntiSH had arranged, or, if necessary, to the hospital.
That night, our team’s plan had fallen apart. There were too few of us, too many of them; we weren’t prepared for a level of violence that involved knives and tasers; we hadn’t yet comprehended the overwhelming power of a crowd that size. I don’t know—or I can’t recall—what happened to the woman or women who were in the middle of that attack.
These attacks continued for months, plaguing political rallies in Tahrir, the square that symbolized a revolution. Now women were being attacked simply for being there, for being women. For OpAntiSH, things would get worse before they got better. The group had formed out of a network of friends, allies, and comrades in the revolution. It started out with about a dozen volunteers. We would face increased levels of violence—there was more than one gun. Many volunteers were physically and sexually attacked in the course of this work.
But over the months that followed, we learned, reorganized, and grew. We developed tactics for efficiently entering the mob, reaching and surrounding the woman or women being attacked, and getting them to safety.
During the week of June 30, 2013, protests drove the unseating of President Mohamed Morsi, who had succeeded Hosni Mubarak after his resignation during the first wave of protest, bringing the current regime of Abdel Fattah el-Sisi to power. By this point, OpAntiSH was a sophisticated operation, deploying hundreds of volunteers, a central operations room, and getaway cars, and coordinating access to networks of safe houses, lawyers, and doctors. OpAntiSH was one of at least three civilian groups combating assaults on the ground during that summer week of protests, during which the groups documented 186 cases of mob attacks.
OpAntiSH was women-led, feminist, and revolutionary. Most of the organizers were women, and female volunteers engaged in all kinds of work—from physically intervening on the ground to manning hotlines to overseeing the complicated logistics of the operation. In the press, we exposed the government’s complicity in sexual violence against women, called out activists and political groups for ignoring or even denying the attacks (this isn’t the time for women’s issues, they said), and organized ourselves around an unapologetic feminism dedicated to protecting women and their place within Egypt’s revolution.
Many of us spoke out about our personal experiences with attacks, propelling a national conversation about violence against women which some believe is still having an impact on the work that feminist and women’s groups are doing now. All rights advocacy is currently beleaguered in Egypt, but gender- and women’s-rights advocates say that the media work done at the time broke social taboos in speaking out about sexual violence, pushed the discourse to a more progressive standard and triggered multiple ongoing campaigns and civil-society initiatives on the issue.
I remember, during quiet weeks, looking for examples of women doing the sort of work we were doing: using direct action to save themselves and each other from sexual violence. The closest model I found was the Pink Gang of India, which formed in response to domestic violence and government corruption. There are probably other stories, elsewhere. Perhaps I just haven’t found them. We’ve seen how quickly our own history, after a few moments of media attention, has been forgotten. People remember the mob attacks, but they mostly do not know about the women who resisted them.
Even as it was happening, I knew that I would want to share the story of OpAntiSH. I knew that it carried a trove of insights and experiences that women in other parts of the world might draw from: about organizing and resisting in emergencies; about fear; about dealing with men who wanted to help—those who were real allies and those who were there for the wrong reasons; about calling out political movements (in this case, certain supposedly progressive allies in the Egyptian revolution) for their sexism, without betraying the larger cause.
I started trying to write about it almost as soon as it was over. Trauma and a paralyzing sense of defeat got in the way—the end of OpAntiSH came at the same time as the end of any hope for Egypt’s revolution and the beginning of the bloody repression we are still living with today. The task also felt enormous—how to write about a history so recent, that involved so many people, many that I still know and care about, about something so sensitive and personal—that was also so public and political?
I began by interviewing other OpAntiSH organizers. As I listened to the recordings months later, I had the realization, sudden and obvious, that the story is not about violence and trauma and rape. It is about fighting back.
The women and men I spoke with didn’t shy away from the dark terror of those nights, of the violence that happened to them or that they witnessed. But they also said they were grateful that, in the face of such darkness, they were able to do something. “I think if there hadn’t been something that I could do, if I’d had to stay home and keep hearing about the attacks night after night, I would have lost my mind,” one organizer said.
I wonder how many women who’ve been sharing their stories using #MeToo are looking to take more direct, offensive action on any of the different battlegrounds we face—at work, at home, on the streets.
SUBSCRIBE TO THE NATION FOR $2 A MONTH.
Get unlimited digital access to the best independent news and analysis.
Many of the women in OpAntiSH were survivors of those specific mob assaults themselves. The whole movement was built on women’s shifting roles from victim/survivor to organizer/actor, or perhaps more accurately, occupying both at the same time. This was not a neat or perfect experience—no matter how much the group tried to fight it, there was still a pressure, both internal and implied, to be “brave.” We felt a need to keep going, even when sometimes we weren’t able to.
There are great differences between the fight waged by OpAntiSH and the one happening now in the aftermath of Weinstein. With OpAntiSH, women sidestepped the state and took matters into their own hands. Circumstances demanded and allowed for that kind of resistance: it was a time of revolution; people were in the habit of coming together quickly and taking direct action.
The Weinstein exposé and the flood of cases which followed have largely led women to pursue change through institutions—the courts, the media, professional syndicates. And to some degree it’s working.
Mod
2/2
There have been consequences for several powerful men, and the country has been consumed with discussions of sexual harassment and assault.
But both movements began when women exposed the crimes committed against them, at risk to their reputations and even their personal safety. When narrative is grabbed by the voiceless, it has the ability to grow with a pace and breadth that is startling and exciting and unknowable. Didn’t the Arab revolutions themselves show us that?
The importance of the story of OpAntiSH and others like it—stories of extreme female agency—isn’t simply its utility as a model to be replicated or copied. Nor is it only about offering inspiration for women looking to take radical action—although that can be crucial.
What we lose when we don’t know these histories is the opportunity and the ability to move toward feminist thinking and practice aimed at real global and systemic change and to shake the systems that disadvantage us all. We’re more likely to repeat old mistakes and patterns of exclusion, ones that are set by the same neocolonial and racist power dynamics that we’re ultimately aiming to dismantle. We end up with movements that are more easily divided and coopted, and we limit our imaginations.
What is happening because women spoke out against Weinstein and the powerful, silencing machinery behind him is extraordinary, and its potential is endless. Now we need to talk not only about the ways in which we are in danger, but also about the ways in which we resist, alone or together.
Marcia, thanks so much for including this. I think I can get a hard copy as well from a branch of the library that subscribes to the Nation. I want to share this with friends.
Just wanted to say that I'm waiting for my copy of "The Open Door" from my library. Am following the discussion.
I've got the 2017 edition and I'm still confused by the cover. Why are there pyramids? I can't remember them going anywhere near them or even mentioning them. It feels as if the graphic designers tried to restrict the novel to "exotic love story in pharaoh-land", despite the fact that the strength of Zayyat's writing is that it probably reflected global concerns in 1960. The themes of society's expectations, "respecting the fundamentals", political engagement, emotional blackmail, the differentiated discourses around male vs. female sexuality, toxic masculinity, marriage as the be-all-and-end-all, activism and political hope, are still incredibly relevant today wherever you are in the world... But maybe I'm just over-reacting to these pyramids ;)I read (devoured) the second half of this novel in one sitting. I found Layla's inner monologues very powerful, hypnotic even. Incredible work by both Zayyat and Booth! I think I'm going to need a few days to digest it though...
Mod
After you've had time to digest, feel free to share more thoughts!
She grew to the realization that to reach womanhood was to enter a prison where the confines of ones life were clearly and decisively fixed. . . . Prison life, she discovered is painful for both the warden and the woman he imprisons.These sentences are in the 2002 translation that begins on page 24.
And there we are. Some things never change whether you are in Cairo or Iowa City.
Yes, Nan, I remember my dad locking the house after dark after we had moved into town, and, in college, Dad wanting my brother to walk home with me one night in our small town - even though I'm three years older.One question I've been mulling over: In spite of their parents' wanting them to pursue conventional paths, both Layla and her brother make choices their parents don't approve of, while their cousins both follow societal norms.
Any ideas about what enables them to choose differently? Or what restricts their cousins? I've wondered how pressured Layla's cousin feels financially to accept the marriage proposal.
I enjoyed this novel. I also had to keep reminding myself that it's from a different time period when I struggled with Layla's responses to some of the men in her life.I especially appreciated the depiction of her first menses and her parents' various responses, as well as the contrast of their expectations of Layla & her brother.
Mod
In answer to your question about choices, Ardene, my read is that the author is depicting diversity of people. I don't see significantly different pressures at work on Gamila vs. Layla for example - their different behaviors show how people make different choices. There are all different kinds of people in a society. To each their own. That's my thought for now, but I haven't finished the book yet this time around, so I might have to change my answer later!
Mod
I especially appreciated th..."
That's interesting, I felt no time differential (and very little of a cultural one) between Layla's concerns about women's autonomy & my own, and I found her "third way" forward continues to be an relevant answer.
I'd be curious what felt dated to you.
I'm a little behind on the book and the discussion. I like the book so far. I agree that despite there being a difference in time and culture from right now, it doesn't seem too different. It's relatable yet enlightening on a different culture. I just read the part where she's starting to see her brother and Isam differently, and I'm curious to see how all that unfolds.
Hi Arden thanks for your question. I have been thinking about it. What I come up with is this is there is a diversity of people who make different decisions. So for me what I likeed best when reading was finding parts that clearly to me described what a person was thinking.Especially descriptions of the slow way people get drawn into certain ways of thinking and behaving.
It is interesting to see how everyone is responding to the political tension as well as personal tension in their lives. Perhaps the way people get raised as well as their personalities play into how easily they accept the way things are and how much they want to create their own paths for what they want. I know it's hard to differ when it goes against norms, especially in the family.
Mod
I found this book a great, informative read. Just finished reading it. It was interesting to see how Layla had to keep all the balls in the air as a young woman who experienced a transitional political period in her country. On the one hand she had her mother's teachings, and on the other Prof. Fuad Ramzi's philosophical orations. One expected her to conform to strict traditions and the other expected her to become emotionally sterile to fit into the new intellectualism of the Marxist feminism, which was part of the Communist Party of Egypt's revolution to overthrow British rule.Her final decision was a happy ending for both the reader and her. :-)
My only gripe with the book was the true ambiance of Egyptian culture at the time getting lost in translation. This was an 'English' voice telling an Egyptian story. Otherwise, it was a great read. Eye-opening, I think. It demonstrated brilliantly that Middle-Eastern culture was never monochrome.
Mod
Melanie wrote: "Margitte, thanks so much for your reflection. I'm reading the Arabic text, and I work as an Arabic to English translator, so I would be particularly interested in any details or examples you feel l..."Perhaps you can tell us more, Melanie. How wonderful!! The book did not have that 'feel' of books such as Khaled Hosseini's 1) A Thousand Splendid Suns 2) The Kiterunner, 3) Nadia Hashimi's The Pearl That Broke Its Shell and 4) In the Country of Men by Hisham Matar .
I think it was Khaled's book And The Mountains Echoed, if I remembered correctly which also brought that American feeling into the latter half of the book (the story shifted location, the ambiance changed completely), where the narrative changed. But I can't remember which of his books it was.
A bit more modernized English was used in The Open Door? (not sure when it was translated for the 2017 English edition).
Off topic perhaps. The Murder mystery British author Martin Walker embeds his books in rural France, where he has lived for many years now. But he captures the French lifestyle perfectly and brings it alive in his English novels. Everything about the books is French, except the author. The books have that magic authenticity.
I can help myself in Dutch, French and German, won't ever claim excellence, but I often find a difference in the original feel of a book and how it is translated into other languages. Even famous books have different translations, with different interpretations. One of my best reads ever was An Unnecessary Woman by Rabih Alameddine. The novel deals with the translations of books. An absolute must read for those who have not discovered it yet. It also has a feminist theme.
A Man Called Ove by Fredrik Backman was written for a Swedish audience and then later translated for an English audience, but the Swedish feel was preserved in the translation. His later book, Beartown was aimed at an American audience and it had a totally different 'feel' to it. The story still played out in Sweden, but the culture was 'Americanized' for a much broader audience. It worked of course.
I don't know if this website have been mentioned before, but I found it very interesting for those who would like to read similar books as this one.
10 MUST READ FEMALE WRITERS OF THE MIDDLE EAST
https://theculturetrip.com/middle-eas...
PS. I quickly checked, it was And The Mountains Echoed. I just love his books, but this one took the magic away when the rest of the world was added in the last half or so. But that's just me. I simply adore his other books.
I joined this group to learn more about Middle-Eastern literature and to find more books and enjoy the discussions. You are all doing such a great job. Thank you for that. It is clear from the discussion that you are all fundis on your subject. I will happily retreat to spot on the wall again.
Melanie and Nan (#38 &40), I think you're right, different people make different decisions. Since we don't hear any of Layla's cousins internal dialog, I was speculating about what made her conform to her mother's marriage arrangement.Marcia (#38), I think what I found most problematic was the expectation that marriage and family was the end game for a woman. That expectation was clearer in the 1950s, whether in Egypt or the US. It is less explicit today in the US, and it is more acceptable in many middle-class or upper middle-class cultures for a woman to be educated beyond secondary school and to be employed.
I, personally, had trouble understanding why/how Layla came to be so under the sway of her professor that she would agree to marry him.
I can't remember the name of her friend right now, one of her girlfriend's explicitly told her he was going to marry her. And perhaps that's a cultural or psychological misunderstanding on my part, but he was such a martinet, I could tell marrying him would be awful, but Layla seemed to think everything would be fine. I was so glad when she finally broke away!
Mod
Any thoughts about what Layla’s friend refers to as walking through the open door. Also was the author telling a story about the struggle for different people to give up individualism and become part of something bigger than themselves?
I have finally started the book and am having a hard time putting it down. It reads like other Arab (I know, Egyptian) novels, the repressive life of women, the stifling social pressures are stories I've heard but I'm still sucked into the story. Your comments are making me aware of things to look for such as the contrasts among characters, the culture, and especially the American voice in the translation - 'though I can't read Arabic so that will have to be something I sense. I am having to remember that this is set in the 1950s, it is not really contemporary and it sounds contemporary in some ways but so much remains unchanged.
I'll get back to my reading now.
I'll get back to my reading now.
Mod
I think -- among other stylistic & aesthetic projects -- Latifa al-Zayyat was presenting the Scylla of traditionalism & the Charybdis "lean in" Western/individualist feminism, and trying to thread a third way through the rocks. Something like other African & Asian intellectuals of her time (at least the ones in colonized nations) were doing, although really it has a resonance for feminist thought that has probably never been fully explored.
Middle East/North African Lit
Books mentioned in this topic
The Open Door (other topics)الباب المفتوح (other topics)
I have a complementary post with some resources here on my website. Finally, if you speak Arabic and you'd like to join in a one-time online meeting to discuss this book, send me an email: melaniemagidow [at] gmail [dot] com. I hope to arrange the meeting for late February / early March, and to record it so that everyone who expresses interest will have a copy for later listening (even if they get too busy to participate live).