Nine Parts of Desire: The Hidden World of Islamic Women

“‘They must think I’m dangerous,’ I muttered. The bellman didn’t smile. ‘They think all women are dangerous,’ he replied, dropping my bag just inside the door and retreating under the guard’s watchful gaze.”

Geraldine Brooks recounts being denied a hotel room in Saudi Arabia as an unaccompanied women. Her reflections about how supposedly “dangerous” lone women might be reflects The Impact of Politics and Society on Women’s Rights, as in Saudi Arabia, women are expected to travel only in the presence of a male guardian.

“The reason for my sleepless night lay in that desert town. I couldn’t check myself into a Saudi hotel room in the 1990s because thirteen hundred years earlier a Meccan named Muhammad had trouble with his wives.”

The juxtaposition of the speaker’s immediate discomfort (“my sleepless night”) with the distant past (“thirteen hundred years earlier a Meccan named Muhammad had trouble with his wives”) underscores the somewhat ironic connection between the two. This contrast amplifies the notion that the actions and teachings of historical figures, particularly those with religious significance, continue to shape the lives and choices of women in the modern Muslim world.

“I learned that one of the words for woman, hormah, comes from the same root as the words for both ‘holy, sacrosanct,’ and ‘sinful, forbidden.’ The word for mother, umm, is the root of the words for ‘source, nation, mercy, first principle, rich harvest; stupid, illiterate, parasite, weak of character, without opinion.’ In the beginning was the word, and the word, in Arabic, was magnificently ambiguous.”

The word “hormah” is symbolic of the dual nature of societal perception towards women, oscillating between reverence and restriction, sacredness and prohibition. This linguistic ambiguity reflects the societal ambiguity, where women are venerated in certain roles, such as motherhood or purity, yet constrained by numerous social and religious norms. Similarly, the word “umm,” while denoting “mother,” a term typically associated with nurturing and respect, also shares its root with words that carry significantly negative connotations.