2.1. Introduction
This chapter attempts to describe women of the Arab world and Muslim societies through the novel Forbidden Love by Norma Khouri. This will be done by first defining the writer providing her real life followed by revealing Khouri’s lies and her novel being one of Australia’s frauds, then, giving a summary of the novel. In addition to that; the light is shed on a brief study of Arab women’s state who took part of the novel reflecting their social life in Jordan. After that, this chapter deals with the issue of forbidden love in Muslim societies, this is done through the story and the main character, who is Muslim, falling in love with a Christian. As a result to that the causes behind such behaviour, and the behavior itself,
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Her 64-year-old mother keeps dozens of photos of the daughter who disappeared in 2000 and has not spoken to her since. (Knox, smh.com.au). During the same year Norma entered Jordan for one week to obtain identity papers. Later she moved to Australia, where she lives in a secret location in Queensland. As far as is known, John, Zoe and Christopher live with her. That is the time Khouri began to write her Forbidden Love. It was published in 2003, in Australia. She spent much of time of this year retelling the story and honour crime of her best friend Dalia. First suspicions arose when readers from Jordan posted on a website that what was written in the book was inaccurate, and unrepresentative of real life in Jordan.
2.3. Khouri’s Forbidden Lies
In a book, written by Rana Husseini where she revealed the main lies that the writer claimed to be existing in Jordan, she said that she visited the street in Jabal Hussein where the story claims that Dalia and Norma lived and run a hairdressing salon, and in the same place in which Dalia’s Honour killing took place. No one heard of the salon nor of the two women, and for over twenty years, there had been no murder for the family honour. Ref?
Khouri mentioned the Hairdressing Unisex Salon that belonged to Norma and Dalia. Husseini
In regards to the historiography of gender politics in the Victorian era, the social position of women and femininity had become a problematic issue. Similarly, the gender apartheid instilled prior to the civil war in Afghanistan. A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini, initially published in 2007, is set in Afghanistan from the early 1960s to the early 2000s. In this, it explores the story of Mariam and Laila as the protagonists, who teach the reader the reality of life as a woman in a backward Islamic country. The story covers three decades of anti-Soviet jihad, civil war and Taliban tyranny seen from the perspectives of these two women and observes how they become to create a bond, despite having come from previously living in very different backgrounds.
In A Thousand Splendid Suns, Hosseini’s use of cruelty reveals key aspects of both Rasheed and Mariam as well as essential ideas about the nature of cruelty itself. Rasheed’s cruelty towards Mariam reveals his values of male superiority as well as his thirst for dominance and control. In the Afghanistan society, men rule over women just as Rasheed rules over Mariam. The belief is
Ludacris, a famous male singer released a song featuring Mary J. Blige in 2007 called “Runaway Love.” This song speaks for itself and Ludacris does an excellent job of portraying his message about various struggles that some people are faced with in life. Runaway Love reperents the struggle of life through hip-hop and rap music. The song portrays a story of little girls who are for instance “stuck up in a world of their own.” The people around them strictly don’t care about them, which leads them having to own up and care for themselves.
Do we really love what we do? In the article “In the Name of Love,” Miya Tokumitsu covers the issue that doing what you love (DWYL) gives false hope to the working class. Tokumitsu reviews how those who are given jobs ultimately cannot truly love what they do because of the employers who make jobs possible. These same employers keep their employees overlooked.
The book “Princess” written by Jean Sasson tells the life of ‘Sultana’, (The name of the princess, Sultana is a substitute for her real name due to the dangers she could later face if traced) a Saudi princess bounded by a strict society that she says define women nothing more than a tool to fulfill their sexual desires and bearer of their children. “From an early age, the male child is taught that women are of little value: They exist only for his comfort and convenience” (chapter introduction, princess). This book depicts how even the royal woman are beaten, executed and enslaved by their fathers, sons and husbands. It paints a shady image of the Saudi society in our minds showing the different shadows of grays in a colorful pallet. For example the book tells about a Fillipino woman who had shifted to Saudi Arabia to work as a servant in one of the ‘reputed rich families’, later realizing that her duties also consisted of pleasing the employer and his two sons sexually.
Alan Watts once said, “Never pretend to a love which you do not actually feel, for love is not ours to command.” (brainyquotes.com). Watts is saying that we can't just say that we love someone, we have to feel our heart swell with the love we have for that person. In William Shakespeare's, The Tragedy of Romeo and Juliet, Romeo and Juliet are not truly in love because they automatically fall ‘in love’ after seeing each other once, they decide to get married a few hours after they meet and they are too immature to actually know what love is . One reason Romeo and Juliet are not truly in love is that they fell in love right after they meet (lust at first sight).
Equality of genders is a basic human right that all should posses. However, in the novel A Thousand Splendid Suns, by Khaled Hosseini, the reader explores Afghanistan’s true nature of extreme gender inequality towards women and how it affects all the characters within the novel. The novel explores how within a marriage, women have unequal rights, undergo major amounts of physical abuse, and are emotionally and mentally tormented by their very own supposedly beloved husbands. A marriage is defined as a union of two people as partners in a personal relationship.
Mahfouz, as well as Said, shared a direct contact with the Arabian lifestyle because they grow up in that society. Mahfouz’s novel depicts the real world with the touches of the supernatural and mystic, but as a form of evil in the world not as exotic and uncivilized as the Europeans did. Mahfouz’s Arabian Nights and Days “takes new depths and insights as it picks up from where the ancient story ends” (Fayez 229). Mahfouz uses the Arabian Nights tales and Shahryar’s and Scheherazade’s society to portray the contemporary social and political issues of his people. Mahfouz aims to show various thematic concerns of the people of the East than the early versions left out.
Heartbreak and vengeance make the perfect cocktail for any juicy story, but so does the concept of a twisted illusion of reality. Stories of passion such as, Evona Darling written by Silas House and My Ex-Husband written by Gabriel Spera, are both examples of stories that give the reader the equation of love and hate entwined together with the tainted sense of reality. House descriptively writes a story about the passion of a mother’s love whose heart has been taken away by her child’s father, who through suspicious friends got Evona’s custody stripped away from her. On the other hand, Spera creates her poem in her perspective of being married to a man that betrayed her and played his cards of deceit. Both stories were passionately written after love had partaken, but the fairy tale ends had come upon them.
In the story, the women are oppressed by the society. This is narrated through the delivery of the main antagonist’s id, the gender inequality in enforcing laws and the marginalization of women. As a result of Rasheed’s id, Mariam and Laila are consistently physically and emotionally
The Significance of Female Figures in Love in a Fallen City " In 1918, Lu Xun asserted that whenever the country seemed on the verge of collapse, Chinese men would thrust their women forward as sacrificial victims to obscure their own cowardice and helplessness in the face of the onslaught of aggressors and rebels" (Louie 15). Eileen Chang critiques the social status of females during the transitional period before the modern era in China throughout her novella Love in a Fallen City. Eileen Chang was influenced by the New Culture Movement in China, which promoted gender equality and education. Also, Eileen Chang 's mother who was a "self-possessed, westward-learning" (Zhang xi) female, enormously impacted her philosophy thoughts.
Fatima Mernissi’s works include: Dreams of trespass: Tales of a harem Girlhood, Islam and Democracy: Fear of the Modern World, and the well-known as well as her first Monograph, Beyond the Veil, which was published in 1975. It has become popular book in fields such as sociology and anthropology of the women in the Arab World. Summary The Monograph THE VEIL AND THE MALE ELITE tackled various issues and subjects in the Islamic religion, which were mostly based on the role of the women as well as their rights in it. Initially in the preface of the Monograph the Mernissi compares the Islamic society with Judeo-Christian societies in order to unravel the reason as to why
William Shakespeare is known for his tragic plays, which includes the highly talked about Romeo and Juliet. Romeo and Juliet follows two star crossed lovers who are forbidden to love one another, due to an ancient grudge between their families. The two families still have a strong hatred for each other due to stubbornness , which causes the love between Romeo and Juliet to be forbidden. This forbidden love between the two causes them to act impulsively and ultimately leads to their deaths. However, they are not to be held responsible for these impulsive actions, the obstinacy of the all the family members is.
In “Araby”, the narrator was a young man who fell in love with his friend, Mangan’s older sister. He would do just about anything to prove his love and to win her love; the unrequited love. He went to the bazaar to purchase anything he could find for his love, but he did not make it on time. The narrator actually thought that the bazaar was a fun and stimulating place, but later realized it was only a place where people went to buy just about anything; a market.
Ugly Love Ugly love is such a nice novel to read with somehow can happen in reality even if it’s a Fiction Novel. The book is a story more of the issues happening to our society such as love being hard to find and sex being easy to find. Ugly love like “ love that is ugly means lust is beyond happiness and lust is more spoken and active” Ugly love is a novel about love that is like no strings attached but more of like being friends with benefits and the trust, love and hope for a good future ahead. The Genre is more of Romance because of how they develop from strangers who Miles being drunk outside Tate’s room because he broke up with Rachel and then Tate became merciful to put a Drunk Miles