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Lyrics Alley by Leila Aboulela
It is a glimpse into another culture. Mahmoud Bey has two wifes. Mahmouds first wife is uneducated, superstitious and confined to her open air kitchen. While his second wife is a modern, educated Egyptian woman, but she is mainly occupied with trivial things like fashion and everything western she embraces wholeheartedly. She moved to the Sudan, but hates it there and would like to move back to cosmopolitan Cairo.
What's good for the goose is good for the gander, the meaning of it:
What is good for a man is equally good for a woman; or, what a man can have or do, so can a woman have or do
A culture who puts their women on the back burner looses.
I also think the custom of marrying first cousins is not healthy. Also marrying the girls off at an early age is not healthy and it is cruel.
Adolescent mothers face a higher risk of obstructed labour than women in their twenties. Without adequate emergency obstetric care, this can lead to uterine rupture and a high risk of death for both mother and infant. For those who survive, prolonged labour can cause obstetric fistula, which is a tear between the vagina and the bladder or the rectum, causing urine or faeces to leak. In Ethiopia and Nigeria, more than 25% of fistula patients had become pregnant before the age of 15 and more than 50% before the age of 18. Although the problem can be rectified with surgery, treatment is not widely available in most countries where fistula occurs and millions of women are left to suffer with a condition that leads to incontinence, bad odours and other side-effects including psychological problems and social isolation.
Also the circumcision of girls (I personally also think of boys) is a terrible, barbaric act still practiced by certain cultures and religions. It is an interference where the child has no say and is lumbered with a stupid, superstitious decision, as long as she or he lives dictated by a culture or religion.
I guess humanity has a long way to go to find Enlightenment.
©Titania; My opinion.
