2015: The Year of Reading Women discussion

Discussion and Group reads from Radwa Ashour

Wiki:


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radwa_As...

thanks for starting this, Kall.

فرج (Blue Lorries) sounds like a great book; I'd be interested in reading that, but it would probably be more toward the summer.

Proustitute wrote: "thanks for starting this, Kall.

فرج (Blue Lorries) sounds like a great book; I'd be interested in reading that, but it would probably be more toward the summer."

That looks good too.. I had a look at the beginning of The Woman from Tantoura and looks very inviting...

I think she is included in one of Granta's selections.

I am very interested in reading "The Woman from Tantoura". When are you thinking of starting?

Excellent Ce Ce and Kalli. How about a starting date of Feb 14th?

February 14th is perfect. My calendar marked.

Excellent and to accommodate your art classes, we can make this a 3-week read. I look forward to reading with you!

Week 1: Feb 14- 20: Pages 1-115, Chapters 1- 16
Week 2: Feb 21- 27 Pages 116-238, Chapters 17- 37
Week 3: Feb 28- March 7, Pages 239 to 363, Chapters 38-end

Mid Feb should be fine... for even beginning of Feb would have been too rushed for me, but I should have finished with Alice Munro and taken a bit of a break...

Kalliope wrote: "Mid Feb should be fine... for even beginning of Feb would have been too rushed for me, but I should have finished with Alice Munro and taken a bit of a break..."

Perfect! Let's see if we can get some more people to join us.

ReemK10 (Paper Pills) wrote: "Week 1: Feb 14- 20: Pages 1-115, Chapters 1- 16
Week 2: Feb 21- 27 Pages 116-238, Chapters 17- 37
Week 3: Feb 28- March 7, Pages 239 to 363, Chapters 38-end"

Thank you for accommodating my schedule Reem. I'm looking forward to this.

Ce Ce wrote: "ReemK10 (Paper Pills) wrote: "Week 1: Feb 14- 20: Pages 1-115, Chapters 1- 16
Week 2: Feb 21- 27 Pages 116-238, Chapters 17- 37
Week 3: Feb 28- March 7, Pages 239 to 363, Chapters 38-end"

Thank ..."

My pleasure Ce Ce. It's great to have you reading with us! :)

Just to leave some background. M. Lynx Qualey of the Arablit blog posted this:

Beloved Egyptian Novelist Radwa Ashour, 1946-2014


https://arablit.wordpress.com/2014/12...

Radwa Ashour's Palestinian husband wrote this:

Poet Mourid Barghouti on His Wife, Novelist Radwa Ashour (1946-2014)

https://arablit.wordpress.com/2014/12...

Snapshots from a Life: Egyptian Novelist Radwa Ashour, 1946-2014

https://arablit.wordpress.com/2014/12...

Radwa Ashour and Mourid Barghouti on the Responsibilities of Writers

Mourid Barghouti said that the first responsibility of writers is to master their trade. They have a responsibility not to be afraid, to be modest, and to put their individual and collective self in the position of constant questioning.

https://arablit.wordpress.com/2014/03...

Radwa Ashour's obituary in The Guardian

Radwa Ashour was a powerful voice among Egyptian writers of the postwar generation and a writer of exceptional integrity and courage. Her work consistently engages with her country’s history and reflects passionately upon it. “I am an Arab woman and a citizen of the third world,” she declared, in an essay for the anthology The View from Within (1994), “and my heritage in both cases is stifled ... I write in self-defence and in defence of countless others with whom I identify or who are like me.”

http://www.theguardian.com/books/2014...

Battle to preserve Palestine’s history rages in new novel

http://electronicintifada.net/content...

Ah...Valentine's Day! Perfect day to fall in love with a new novel.

Marcelita wrote: "Ah...Valentine's Day! Perfect day to fall in love with a new novel."

Welcome to our read Marcelita! It will be wonderful having you reading with us!!!

Feb would be good for me too.
I have this book downloaded on my kobo.

Laima wrote: "Feb would be good for me too.
I have this book downloaded on my kobo."

Fantastic! We're happy to have you reading with us Laima! :)

I'm going to try to join in with this if I can.

I may try as well -- will depend on how crazy the semester is at that point.

Superb! Great to have you both! Kris, you can easily squeeze this book in with your busy schedule. It has been spread out over 3 weeks.

February would be a wonderful time for me.

Laura wrote: "February would be a wonderful time for me."

Wonderful! Nice to meet you Laura and have you read with us!

Susan wrote: "So excited about this upcoming read. I peeked at the first couple of pages, and I have fallen love with the writing."

Couldn't be happier to have you read with us Susan! :)

anyone up for Blue Lorries, perhaps after you finish with Woman from Tantoura? for me, Blue Lorries seems much more interesting; I guess I'm a bit over the bildungsroman genre for the time being!

*sticks head in* hello! I have obtained a copy of The Woman from Tantoura and am primed to commence :-)

Zanna wrote: "*sticks head in* hello! I have obtained a copy of The Woman from Tantoura and am primed to commence :-)"

Wonderful Zanna. We're very happy to have you read with us! Yay! :)

I won't be able to read The Woman from Tantoura with you all, but do plan to read my copy of Ashour's Granada this year.

Sue wrote: "I won't be able to read The Woman from Tantoura with you all, but do plan to read my copy of Ashour's Granada this year."

That's okay Sue. Reading Joyce and Proust at the same time is quite a feat! Maybe we can read Granada together later on in the year. Happy reading!!

Sue wrote: "I won't be able to read The Woman from Tantoura with you all, but do plan to read my copy of Ashour's Granada this year."

I'd be up for Granada or Blue Lorries, as I said. The Woman from Tantoura doesn't appeal to me, personally. So let me know if/when any group reads of the other Ashour titles are scheduled!

Sounds good. I'm up for reading Granada a little later in the year. After things ease a bit.

We start tomorrow!!!

ReemK10 (Paper Pills) wrote: "We start tomorrow!!!"

Unless you, like me, started yesterday! ;-)

I started on 1st Feb by mistake, then broke off, and now I'm in the middle of I Capture the Castle and can't bear to put it down! But I'm sure I will get into the discussion soon haha

The beginning of TWFT, with her soon to be betrothed emerging primordially and mysteriously from the sea, was quite sensual. It seemed to embody the echoes of an ancient Eqyptian creation myth.

Oh so wonderful to see that Zanna and Ce Ce have already started.

I'm going to post this video to get you in the mood.

The singer is referring to the colors of the Palestinian flag and of course Palestine.

She starts off with "kan ya makan" which is how many folktales are told which translates as once upon a time...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7_w9J...

Started reading the very first sentence, "He came out of the sea. Yes, by God he came out of the sea as if he were of it, and the waves cast him out." This quickly reminds me of Emile Habiby's The Secret Life of Saeed the Pessoptimist which is a must read. http://www.amazon.com/The-Secret-Life...

Thirty: The Story of the Golden Fish, and it is based at the beach in Tantourah
http://books.google.com/books?id=WQVq...

Ashour writes of picking the fruit of Indian fig bushes. This would be cactus fruit or prickly pears. There were no walls or fences to separate neighbors, just borders of cactus between their homes.



The symbolism of the cactus: Cactus
The Cactus (Arabic: الصبار‎) has been a motif in Palestinian art since the birth of Israel. For Zionists, the indigenous plant became a national symbol of their attachment to the land, while Palestinians saw it as an incarnation of their national dispossession (see, for example, the Arabic version of Sahar Khalifa's Wild Thorns, the Arabic title of which translates literally as Cactus). The plant served the practical function to designate territorial borders in peasant villages. In summer, the prickly pear was a common fruit eaten by people in the region. During the 1920s, the thorny tree was incorporated as a symbol of Israeli identity.[10] Nicolas Saig painted the prickly pear as one of the pleasures of the era.[11] The cactus has also become a symbol of Palestinian defiance and sumud. Villagers incorporated it into a dance song protesting the 1917 Balfour Declaration with the phrase "Ya'ayn kuni subbara - O eye, be a cactus tree!"

And if you've never eaten prickly pears, you really must. They are delicious!

Dance the dabka (page 4)

‫دبكة فلسطينية جفرا وظريف الطول مع الدبكة الشعبية‬ Palestinian Dabke Song https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PE8eW...

His name is Yahya. ( don't think ya ya lol)

Yahya (Arabic: يحيى‎, Yaḥyā) is a common Arabic male given name, Yahya (John the Baptist) being a prophet of Islam, it is a common name in the Muslim world.

I will join you with this on from Monday onwards... I want to finish a couple of other books before... Looking forward to it, because I perused a couple of pages and like the writing.

Happy Valentine's Day to you all.

Love in Arabic calligraphy:


Truest love:

A poem by Mourid Barghouti, “Sleeping Woman,” which must refer to Radwa Ashour. Translated by Radwa Ashour.

Sleeping Woman
Her book,
open and overturned like a small tent,
her glasses, her ashtray,
her exhaustion hanging in the room
like the shadows of a lamp she had forgotten to switch off
before she went to bed,
her green aspirin strip
with four pills missing,
our late night argument,
which ended in confusion and compassion
still hanging in the obscurity of this dawn
that will now pass
from darkness to the sun,
everything
brought her so suddenly to mind
that I could hardly believe
she was still asleep.




Mourid lives in Cairo. He was married to the Egyptian novelist Radwa Ashour from 1970 until her death in 2014; writer M Lynx Qualey called their marriage ‘one of the twentieth century’s great love stories’. They have one son, the poet Tamim Albarghouti.

Mourid Barghouti is a highly regarded Palestinian poet and writer best known for his autobiographical novel I Saw Ramallah and its follow-up I Was Born There, I Was Born Here. Edward Said described I Saw Ramallah as ‘one of the finest existential accounts of Palestinian displacement we now have,’ while the Independent’s review of I Was Born There, I Was Born Here said ‘Barghouti renders the world with rare exactitude’ and asks the reader to ‘read this as it has been written: without blinkers’. I Saw Ramallah was awarded the Naguib Mahfouz Medal for Literature in 1997.

Mourid grew up in Ramallah but, studying at Cairo University, was prevented from returning home following the Six Day War of 1967. He began working as a teacher in Kuwait and at the same time began writing. His first book of poetry was published in 1972. To date he has published twelve books of poetry, with English translations collected inA Small Sun and Midnight; English translations of his poems have also been published in Banipal, Times Literary Supplement and Modern Poetry in Translation. In 2000, he was awarded the Palestine Award for Poetry.

“The Woman of Tantoura” gives new insight into the known and hidden chapters of Palestinian history. It is also a celebration of Palestinian popular culture, of unsung heroes, big and small acts of resistance, creativity and resilience in the face of overwhelming odds. Dedicated to her husband, Palestinian poet Mourid Barghouti, Ashour has written a compelling novel brimming with enchanting imagery. “The Woman from Tantoura” is a powerful tribute to all those Palestinians who have turned tragedy into an impetus for education, advancement, community development, empathy for others, and striving for justice and their right of return.

I think of Radwa Ashour as dying of cancer while writing this story for her husband.

Happy Valentine's Day! Thank you for "Sleeping Woman"...beautiful.

Thank you for that Reem.

Just leaving some posts that may help you to visualize the references in the novel.

p.11 stone-baked loaf

https://ingaza.files.wordpress.com/20...

p.14 murmur the Fatiha for her soul



In Islam, Sūrat al-Fātiḥah (Arabic: سورة الفاتحة‎), is the first chapter of the Quran. Its seven ayat (verses) are a prayer for God's guidance, and stress His Lordship and Mercy.[1] This chapter has an essential role in Salaat (daily prayer).

In the name of God, the infinitely Compassionate and Merciful.
Praise be to God, Lord of all the worlds.
The Compassionate, the Merciful. Ruler on the Day of Reckoning.
You alone do we worship, and You alone do we ask for help.
Guide us on the straight path,
the path of those who have received your grace;
not the path of those who have brought down wrath, nor of those who wander astray.
Amen.