Violence Inflicted Upon Women in the Narratives of Sahar Khalifeh
Abstract:
Sahar Khalifeh works herald an era when there was a political turmoil in Palestine. Israeli forces had occupied many territories of Palestine, including the West Bank. Sahar Khalifeh has been the most outspoken writer of the genre. She has been able to depict the harsh realities of Palestinian’s life under the Israelites. Though most of her works are political in content, she focusses on issues of gender discrimination that is faced by the Arab women in various arenas. The main argument of this paper is the introspection into the different forms of physical violence that the women endured by being submissive and subjunctive in a male dominated society. This paper throws light on the way the writer has challenged the androcentric order which is the root cause of patriarchal domination. This hegemony had its severe repercussions on the women. This paper focuses on two Arabic novels of Sahar Khalifeh, which have been translated into English. The names of the novels are The Inheritance, The Image, the Icon and the Covenant.
Key Words: Patriarchy, Violence, Wife beating, Honor Killing, Domestic Violence.
Introduction:
Sahar Khalifeh is one of the most outspoken writers from the occupied Territories of Palestine. The two great wars of 1948 and1967 led to the occupation of Israeli military forces. The war of 1967 sealed the complete usurpation of Palestine, including the West Bank and Gaza Strip. The effects of alien power brought immense economic and political misery. The Palestinians had to grapple with their survival in their homeland. The narrator deals with political issues like exile, resistance, harassment and violence which is the core experience of contemporary Palestine’s predicament. Khalifeh’s narrative effectively gives voice to the challenges faced by the Palestinians. The women bear the double yoke of oppression of Israeli and Patriarchal domination in their own society. She has made a unique and major contribution to the Palestinian and women’s literature. She prefers to write in Arabic rather than in English. The Arabic that Khalifeh uses differs from that of the Arab writers writing from the Arab world. She uses the colloquial language to depict the sufferings of Palestinians. She rejects the hegemonic language and its influences on her writings (Sabbagh 140). The language she chooses is significant as English is encoded with the ideology of power and dominance. She articulates the issues of Palestine without using the language of the dominant. She continues the legacy of the Arabic writers who address the colonial question writing in classical Arabic in the late nineteenth century and early twentieth century as the most worthy weapon against colonialism. Her writing in Arabic runs against subordination to hegemony. It is also an attempt to preserve their mother tongue from the colonial language that may attempt to displace, rupture or perpetuate such a frame of knowledge on the other.
Literature Review
Sahar Khalifeh’s outstanding work Wild Thorns, written immediately after the war of 1967 deals with the effects of war, alien occupation, exile and everyday tussles of resistance very articulately. There has been a lot of research done on it. The later works of Sahar Khalifeh such as The Inheritance (2005), The Images, the Icon and the Covenant (2008), The End of Spring (2008), and Of Noble Origins (2012) are spanning more than three decades. These works illustrate the dual forms of oppression that was borne by the Arab populace. They had to put up with colonial and patriarchal forms of oppression.
In Beanne White (2013) “Gender & Resistance in the Resistance in the Israel- Palestine Conflict, the woman’s voice in the Literary Works of Sahar Khalifeh and David Grossman”. A study of analyzing the literary voices of Arabic and Hebrew language is made. This has enabled to narrate the Israeli-Palestine conflict in a broader vista. Multiplicity of experiences of the society has been emphasized in Sahar Khalifeh’s The Inheritance and David Grossman’s To the End of Land. The role of gender and politics in the society and their ways of encountering these issues is highlighted.
Kristen Nancy Angierski in her thesis (2014) “Reclaiming the motherland: (Eco) feminism in Sahar Khalifeh’s The Inheritance and The End of Spring”, points out that these two novels depict vividly the factor of feminism, especially (eco) feminism. They manifest the society that is ordained by patriarchal superiority. Such an order does not promote the well-being of a nation as it views women and nature below men and culture.
Hussein Alhawamdeh (2015) in his article “Honor Crimes in Sahar Khalifeh’s The Inheritance and Sean O’Casey’s Juno and the Paycock: A Comparative Study”. This paper effectively addresses the issue of honor crimes reflected in two novels The Inheritance and Juno and the Paycock. He points out that “[i]ironically, the discourse of honor is a gender-based mechanism which observes only the females’ morality and justifies the males’ violations to the cultural ethics” (Alhawamdeh 2015: 105). The paper argues the female characters Zaynab and Nahleh in Khalifeh’s The Inheritance and Mary in O’Casey’s Juno and the Paycock are victims of masculine cultural domination of honor crimes rather than religious outfit.
The present paper focuses on the two novels of Khalifeh, The Inheritance and The Image, the Icon and the Covenant. The second novel has been taken for research for the first time. The different types of afflictions perpetuated by men upon women is the subject for research. Women are subjected to a lot of turmoil in Arab society. They bear the brutal crime of honour killing and are victimized in their homes in the form of domestic violence. Such acts upon women are consequences of male hegemony.
Violence Against Women
The injustice meted to women across the societies around the globe has maimed the status of women. The feminist movement has given enough impetus to address this issue time and again, since 1970's. The consequences of gender based violence in marital relationships are seldom noticed. Similarly, the practice of wife abuse is one of the predominant signs of the power, a man wields over his female counterpart. The feminists have observed that violence against women include prenatal sex selection, infanticide, rape, sexual harassment, reproductive coercion, obstetric violence and mob violence. There are other forms of atrocities a female is made to bear in the name of customs dictated by the society. It may be the heinous act of honour killing, dowry violence, female genital mutilation, marriage by abduction and forced marriage. These are all the facets of a male dominated order that is prevalent in societies. These acts are interlinked and one cannot speculate upon each one separately. The official United Nations definition of domestic violence against women (DVAW) is, “[a]ny act of gender based violence that results in, or is likely to result in, physical, sexual or psychological harm or suffering to women, including threats of such acts, coercion or arbitrary deprivation of liberty, whether occurring in public or in private life” (United Nations).
Honour Killing
The World Health Organization defines honour killing, as an incident where a “girl or woman [is] being killed by a male or female family member for an actual or assumed sexual or behavioral transgression, including adultery, sexual intercourse or pregnancy outside marriage—or even for being raped” (World Health Organization 2). A girl who fails to preserve her virginity is severely punished with physical or moral death. The girl’s father or brother, cousin, maternal or paternal uncle decide to kill that girl. It upholds the patriarchal ideology that having sex or losing virginity before marriage is a crime or a sin. It ensures that the preservation or the protection of the honour of a girl is the responsibility of the family. If a girl loses her virginity, it brings shame or bad reputation to the family. So, it is the responsibility of the family members to ‘wipe’ the shame ‘out in blood’, a common Arab expression.
The honour killing creates fear among young girls and they do not dare to violate the sexual moral code imposed on them. According to the World Health Organization, the rates of honour killing have been steadily increasing: “there are an estimated 5,000 murders in the name of ‘honour’ each year worldwide. . . .These killings occur mainly in parts of the Middle East and South Asia, but also among some migrant communities” (ibid). Moreover, honour killings are crimes which are deeply rooted in societal traditions rather than in religions. None of the religions justify the killing of women in the name of honour. Korteweg observes, even though religion plays a crucial role whenever there is a discussion on honour killing, there is no significant relationship between religion and honour killing. He explains:
Religion plays a specific role as a source of meaning in discussions of honour-related violence. There is no direct link between religion and honour-related violence, and people of different faiths enact it. At the same time, individuals or families involved in committing crimes will at times cite their interpretations of religion as reinforcing their understandings of honour, regardless of their faith (144).
Korteweg observes that even though religion plays an important role whenever there is a discussion on honour killing, there is no significant binding between religion & honour killing. It may be seen that drawing inference from religious text to justify this act is a deliberate technique to reinforce this practice.
Furthermore, Korteweg points out that “[h]onour killing is often linked to Islam but there are no references in the Quran that justify these kinds of murders or other forms of violence in these types of circumstances” (ibid). Zuhur also expresses similar views that Islam is not responsible for the honour killings committed in its name: “numerous Muslim authorities have stated that honour crimes are ‘not Islamic’ or cannot be blamed on Islam”(6). However, majority of the people use Islam in order to justify the honour killings they have committed.
In the Arab society, a woman’s virtue has been determined by her sexual practices and interests. Safeguarding her virtue was her utmost priority. This strict rule was enforced for girls only. Abu-Odeh explains that the moral sexual behaviour of the Arab women have been controlled and supervised by the males: “to be a man is to engage in daily practices, an important part of which is to assure the virginity of the women in your family. In Arab culture, a man is that person whose sister’s virginity is a social question for him” (13). This granted the power to men over the life of a woman who transgressed the sexual boundary. This is predominantly due to the cultural ethos.
The novel The Inheritance begins with the story of Zayna, the protagonist, who was born in New York to an American mother and a Palestinian father. She is torn between two different cultures. Chastity and virginity are considered essential for a woman, whereas men can enjoy sexual freedom. Zayna along with one more character Hoda are able to survive the attempts of honour killings. For Zayna, things were difficult on American soil. Hoda, a Palestinian girl, becomes pregnant during her teenage years. She flees from home to escape from the wrath of her father. Her father had conservative ideals and as a typical man from that cultural ethos, he is in a rage at this act of his daughter. The novelist depicts this scene of horror through the eyes of Zayna, “. . . we all saw her father run after her in the street like a raging bull, carrying his longest knife. My father tried to stop him, but couldn’t. Finally, with the help of two neighbours they were able to prevent him from killing her” (Khalifeh 6). Hoda, however escapes from this attempt of honour killing and finds her haven at her grandmother’s house. Hoda’s father is blamed for not being a man enough who fails to cleanse “. . . his honour in her blood” (ibid). As he was not successful in his trial of punishing his daughter. Muhammad Hamdan regrets the act of saving Hoda. He retorts, “[h]e should have killed her, she sullied his name, stained his honour, and humiliated him among his people. Had I been in his place I would have gone after her to hell” (ibid). Zayna had very well understood the nature of her father, but she fell into the same predicament of Hoda. She becomes pregnant at the age of fifteen. To be away from her father’s ire, she too runs to her American grandmother’s house at Washington D.C. This leaves Mohammed Hamdan fuming in utter fury. Earlier he had been vocal at the incident of Hoda. He storms at his mother-in-law, Deborah for offering refuge to his ‘sinned’ daughter. He loses his control over his mind and shouts at Deborah not to interfere in the affairs of his daughter. He says, “Zaynab has committed a blunder; so it is a moral responsibility to wash away my shame and hers'' (ibid 13). The ordeal that Zayna faced in the hands of her father is gruesome. Zayna says “[h]e dragged me into the kitchen, my body covered with pieces of glass, jam, and blood. He pulled my hair and shouted at the top of his voice, “[d]aughter of a dog, by God I will suck your blood!” (ibid 14). He constantly attacks her. She says, “I closed my eyes tightly and felt his kicks to my chest, while waiting for his knife to fall” (ibid). Deborah rescues Zayna from an impending death in the hands of her father. She successfully prevents the father from stabbing Zayna by threatening to shoot him by the “hunting rifle” (ibid). Deborah who is aware of the cultural ethos Arab society tells Muhammad Hamdan “[y]ou can go to your people and tell them that you acted like a man and killed her '' (ibid 15). He is unable to counter the warnings of Deborah, and decides to depart away from his daughter. Hamdan, a victim of tradition, leaves Zayna under the custody of her grandmother. These two incidents speak volumes about the choice of priorities of men. They were keen in protecting the virginity of the women, without manifesting the humane qualities.
Domestic Violence
Domestic violence is the patriarchal violence against women like wife beating, verbal abuse, etc. It is not narrowed down to male violence against women; it also includes same sex violence, and adult violence against children. Unfortunately, patriarchal violence committed inside the home is sanctioned and accepted by the inner circle and usually not known outside. Women are beaten and murdered within the four walls rather than outside. Wife-beating is inextricably linked to attempts to dominate and control women. The issue of domestic violence is generally considered a private matter and viewed as a matter to be settled within the families. In patriarchal societies, men believe that a husband has the right to beat his wife if she disobeyed him. This violence has been explicitly decriminalized, largely ignored and treated as common. Consequently, women justify wife beating as a way of correcting the misconduct of a woman by a man. In the family system, due to economic dependency on men, threats related to divorce make women suffer silently many a time. Astbury and Cabral define domestic violence as a, “chronic syndrome characterized not only by episodes of violence but by the emotional and psychological abuse used by men to control their female partners” (67). The World Health Organization defines domestic violence as “the intentional use of physical force or power, threatened or actual, against oneself, another person, or against a group or community, that either results in or has a high likelihood of resulting in injury, death, psychological harm, maldevelopment, or deprivation”(World Health Organisation 38).
The women’s subordination and subjection differs from society to society. Culture and religious views play majorly in shaping the gender roles of the society. The patriarchy as a system of values is one of the major causes for domestic violence against women in society. Domestic violence and wife beating are often normalised in Arab societies as a common phenomenon. If a wife disobeys to fulfil the traditional roles of wife and mother, the husband could beat her and sometimes, beat mercilessly. If a wife fails to give birth to a boy she could be beaten. There are mainly two types of abuse – physical and psychological. Beating is one of the physical forms of abuse which has been considered as a family issue rather than a social and legal problem. These hideous practices have caused distress in the core of heart, mind & emotional being of women.
The novel The Image, the Icon and the Covenant, concerns the theme of domestic violence. We have the characters Miriam and Ibrahim. They belong to different religions. They are in love, but unable to solemnize their marriage. Differences in political and religious grounds stand as an impediment. Miriam gives birth to a son, Michael. Ibrahim is unable to get a firm footing as he keeps wandering across different shores. Ibrahim’s son Michael practices reiki. Sakineh is a client of Michael’s. She reveals her agonies of domestic violence perpetrated by her husband. She lives with her husband and mother-in-law. Submissive and deeply obedient, Sakineh bears the ordeals of running her home. She fulfils expectations of a wife’s role. Yet, Sakineh’s mother-in-law complains about her daughter-in-law as soon as Sakineh’s husband returns from work. Her mother-in-law complains that Sakineh neglects her household responsibilities and occupies herself in talking to the neighbours. She provokes his son endlessly blaming Sakineh for everything she does. She says about her husband that he “. . . holds me by my hair and beats me with his leather belt. He kicks me everywhere until I am about to die” (Khalifeh 137). Sakineh is passive about the aggression of her husband; she never questions it. Being the victim of domestic violence, she searches for a realistic solution. On the other hand, Michael uses the techniques of healing to convince her that she is joyful in her life. He says, “[y]ou are calm and without problems, you are happy” (ibid). Sakineh is an innocent victim of double oppression. Her husband physically abuses her frequently though she fulfils the traditional expectations of a wife’s role. She is unable to revolt against physical domination because of her economic dependency on her husband. On the other hand, Michael takes the advantage of innocent, illiterate Sakineh by assuring a false hope of happiness. Thus, she becomes the victim of both physical and psychological violence.
Conclusion
Sahar Khalifeh's works analyses the social order of male hegemony that brings the disparity between the sexes. The roots of patriarchal society lay deeply embedded in the cultural ethos of the Arab society. Though it is not validated in any religious text, it is practiced. The male members hold the reins in determining the sexual behavior of their women. Issues like chastity, virginity, premarital sex, extra marital liaisons of a woman are punishable. While men are allowed to enjoy their sexual freedom. Such norms are made to confine women in many parts of the world. The women grapple with the trauma of bearing physical, mental and emotional scars. Khalifeh’s works are set to question this dualistic pattern of society.
Work Cited