Nine Parts of Desire Read Free

her brother, a future domestic life in which her husband could beat her if she disobeyed him, make her share his attentions with three more wives, divorce her at whim and get absolute custody of her children.
During those weeks of Ramadan, I spent hours talking to Sahar about her decision. In reply, Sahar mouthed the slogan of Islamic Jihad and the Muslim Brotherhood: “Islam Is the Answer.” The question, certainly, was clear enough: how was her desperately poor country going to continue to feed, educate and employ a population that increased by a million every nine months? Flirtations with socialism and capitalism had failed to arrest Egypt’s economic decline. The Islamic movement wanted to abandon these recently imported ideologies and follow the system set down so long ago in the Koran. If God had taken the trouble to reveal a complete code of laws, ethics and social organization, Sahar argued, why not follow that code?
Sahar had joined a women’s study group at a local mosque and had been influenced by the young, veiled, woman instructor. “I would sit there and read in the holy Koran that women should be covered, and then walk out into the street with bare arms,” she said. “It just seemed to me that I was dressing that way because it was Western. Why imitate everything Western? Why not try something of our own?”
That “something” took many forms. Extremists rampaged down the Pyramids road, torching tourist clubs that served alcohol. In rural Egypt a sheik urged a ban on the sale of zucchini and eggplants, because stuffing the long, fleshy vegetables might give women lewd thoughts. In Cairo a writer mocking that pronouncement was gunned down and killed outside his office. Yet, when an earthquake convulsed the city, fundamentalists set up tent camps and soup kitchens, caring for the afflicted with a speed and compassion that had eluded the government.
As the weeks passed, Sahar drifted deeper into her new identity. I began to adjust my secular life to accommodate her, giving up coffee on Ramadan mornings in case the aroma made it harder for her to get through her fast; treading softly as she made her midday devotions on a prayer mat spread out in our living room. There were minefields everywhere. “What is a maraschino cherry?” she asked, suspiciously eying the contents list on a box of chocolates. “I can’t eat anything with alcohol inside.” Slowly, I became familiar with the rhythms and taboos of her new life. The evocative names of her festivals started to make their way onto our calendar: the Night of Power; the Feast of Sacrifice, the Hajj.
Sahar seemed comfortable with her new self. “I was up most of the night sewing,” she said one morning when she’d arrived for work bleary-eyed. Now that she had adopted hijab, she’d given away most of her bright dresses. But she hadn’t wanted to abandon the entire contents of her wardrobe. “Everything had something wrong with it—a slit in the back, a tight waistband—it’s really a lot of work to salvage a few outfits.”
Hijab, she said, gave her security on Cairo’s bustling streets. “You never hear about veiled girls being raped,” she said. In fact, it was unusual to hear about anyone being raped in Cairo, where violent crimes of all kinds were rare by the standards of Western cities. But bottom-fondling and suggestive comments were a hazard, especially in crowded quarters, especially for women in Western dress.
Sahar felt hijab also gave her access to an unusual women’s network. Prying permits and appointments out of government departments became easier if she sought out other veiled women among the bureaucrats working there. Wanting to see an Islamic sister succeed in her job, they’d give her requests a preferential push. At the same time, she felt easier dealing with men. “They have to deal with my mind, not my body,” she said.
Dress was only the beginning, she said. The West’s soaring crime rate, one-parent families and