Politics of The Body and Its Representation: An Analysis of The Body Politics and Western Representation of Muslim Women in Pillars of Salt and My Name Is Salma by Fadia Faqir

UNIVERSITAS INDONESIA
POLITICS OF THE BODY AND ITS REPRESENTATION:

AN ANALYSIS OF BODY POLITICS AND
WESTERN REPRESENTATION OF MUSLIM WOMEN
IN PILLARS OF SALT AND MY NAME IS SALMA
BY FADIA FAQIR
SKRIPSI
SHAFFIRA DIRAPRANA GAYATRI

0906528373
FAKULTAS ILMU PENGETAHUAN BUDAYA

PROGRAM STUDI INGGRIS
DEPOK
JANUARI 2014
UNIVERSITAS INDONESIA
POLITICS OF THE BODY AND ITS REPRESENTATION:

AN ANALYSIS OF BODY POLITICS AND
WESTERN REPRESENTATION OF MUSLIM WOMEN
IN PILLARS OF SALT AND MY NAME IS SALMA
BY FADIA FAQIR
SKRIPSI
Diajukan sebagai salah satu syarat untuk memperoleh gelar Sarjana

Humaniora
SHAFFIRA DIRAPRANA GAYATRI

0906528373
FAKULTAS ILMU PENGETAHUAN BUDAYA

PROGRAM STUDI INGGRIS
DEPOK
JANUARI 2014
SURAT PERNYATAAN BEBAS PLAGIARISME

Saya yang bertanda tangan di bawah ini dengan sebenarnya menyatakan bahwa
skripsi ini saya susun tanpa tindakan plagiarisme sesuai dengan peraturan yang
berlaku di Universitas Indonesia.
Jika kemudian hari ternyata saya melakukan tindakan Plagiarisme, saya akan
bertanggung jawab sepenuhnya dan menerima sanksi yang dijatuhkan oleh
Universitas Indonesia kepada saya.
Jakarta, 9 Januari 2014
Shaffira Diraprana Gayatri
ii
HALAMAN PERNYATAAN ORISINALITAS

Skripsi ini adalah hasil karya sendiri,
dan semua sumber baik yang dikutip maupun dirujuk
telah saya nyatakan dengan benar.
Nama
NPM
Tanda Tangan
: Shaffira Diraprana Gayatri

: 0906528373
:
Tanggal
: 9 Januari 2014
iii
HALAMAN PENGESAHAN
iv
Dedicated to my late grandfather,

who had loved me unconditionally for 21 years
and had bestowed upon me the name of
the Majapahit princess and the goddess of education.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
This undergraduate thesis is one of the prerequisites of attaining the Bachelor in

Humanities (S.Hum) degree from the English Department, Faculty of Humanities,
the University of Indonesia. I fully realise that the completion of this
undergraduate thesis will not be possible without the assistance, support and
inspiration from a number of people. Therefore, I would like to express my
sincere gratitude to the following:
1. Allah SWT, the Most Beneficent and Gracious. Which of Your favours
can I deny?
2. Prof. Joni Hermana and Dra. Devi Prasasti my loving father and mother
for their endless encouragement, insightful advices and perennial
patience. I would also like to thank my younger siblings Indiraprana
Katnia Amani, M. Fakhri Budhimuzzhafar and M. Budhi Salmanjanna,the
reasons I incessantly long for home.
3. Mr. Manneke Budiman, Ph.D., my thesis supervisor, for being
tremendously helpfuland patient in the whole process of the thesis writing.
I am honoured and grateful to be under the supervision of one of the very
best in our field. Thanks for the abundant lessons, Sir.
4. Lecturers of the English Department, particularly Mrs. Asri Saraswati, M.
Hum, Mrs. Teraya Paramehta, M.A., Prof. Melani Budianta, and Dr. Grace
Wiradisastra for all their help throughout this challenging journey. Special
credits to Mrs. Retno S. Mamoto, Ph.D. for recommending the book that I
later used as a corpus of my thesis and Sister Park Jeong Mi for her
valuable classes and inputs during my consultations.
5. The dedicated educators that have been of great inspiration for my
personal academic development and aspirations, especially Ibu Ari
Anggari Harapan, M.Hum. and Pak Arif Budiman, M.A. of the French
Department University of Indonesia, and Prof. Daphne Pan, whom I
encountered during my short exchange in the National University of
vi
Singapore. For not only teaching but also educating, and from whom I not
just studied but learnt, I thank them with all my heart.
6. Fellow dream-catchers: Venny Indri Christiyanti, Civita Patriana, Putri
Mandara, Wina Aprilia and Malik Ganis Ilman, I am grateful that fate has
brought us together (and higher) through all the ups and downs. Friends of
English Department and family of Sosmas BEM UI 2010 especially Kun
Rizki, my best brother thank you for the many laughs and lessons.
Rangers: Ahmad Ezat, Rahma, Reni and Wahyu, whose backpacking plans
every other month or sohave provided me with both a perfect way of
exploring this beautiful country and a sweet escape. Thesis-writing
companions: Iqbal Pirzada, Thanthowy Syamsuddin, Hasyry Agustin and
Ninis Fauzati for the friendship and nights of conversation over coffee.
My girlfriends Nurjannah Bestaria, Lailatul M. Zubaidah, Ardhanti
Nurwidya,Alfianida Rahmahwati, Wina Indra Lavina in particular and
good friends over the years, Prahesa Kusuma and Yulistiyan W. The best
boss, M. Reza Syah. Thank you for being there for me one way or another.
7. My person, partner and best friend: Hassan Majeed. For being
unbelievably patient, supportive and caring, for volunteering as my
personal proof-reader, for erasing my fears, for loving my dreams and
sharing with me yours, thank you.
Jakarta, January 2014
vii
HALAMAN PERNYATAAN PERSETUJUAN PUBLIKASI TUGAS

AKHIR UNTUK KEPENTINGAN AKADEMIS
Sebagai sivitas akademik Universitas Indonesia, saya yang bertanda tangan di
bawah ini
Nama
NPM
: 0906528373
Program Studi
: Inggris
Departemen
: Sastra
Fakultas
: Ilmu Pengetahuan Budaya
Jenis Kerja
: Skripsi
demi pengembangan ilmu pengetahuan, menyetujui untuk memberikan kepada

Universitas Indonesia Hak Bebas Royalti Noneksklusif (Non-exclusive Royalty
Free Right) atas karya saya yang berjudul: Politik Tubuh dan Representasi:
Analisis Terhadap Konstruksi Politik Tubuh dan Representasi Barat Mengenai
Perempuan Muslim dalam Novel Pillars of Salt dan My Name is Salma Karya
Fadia Faqir
beserta perangkat yang ada (jika diperlukan). Dengan Hak Bebas Royalti Non
Eksklusif ini Universitas Indonesia berhak menyimpan, mengalihmediakan/
formatkan, mengelola dalam bentuk pangkalan data (database), merawat dan
memublikasikan tugas akhir saya tanpa meminta izin dari saya selama tetap
mencantumkan nama saya sebagai penulis/pencipta dan sebagai pemilik Hak
Cipta.
Demikian pernyataan ini saya buat dengan sebenarnya.
Dibuat di: Depok, Indonesia
Pada Tanggal: 9 Januari 2014
Yang menyatakan,
viii
ABSTRAK
Nama
Program Studi : Inggris
Judul
: Politik Tubuh dan Representasi: Analisis Terhadap Konstruksi
Politik Tubuh dan Representasi Barat Mengenai Perempuan
Muslim dalam Novel Pillars of Salt dan My Name is Salma
Karya Fadia Faqir
Penelitian ini bertujuan untuk menganalisis konstruksi politik tubuh dalam tokohtokoh perempuan utama dalam novel Pillars of Salt dan My Name is Salma karya
Fadia Faqir, serta menyimpulkan apakah ilustrasi perjuangan para tokoh tersebut
dalam melawan manifestasi politik tubuh yang opresif mendobrak atau justru
menguatkan representasi Barat mengenai perempuan Muslim. Menggunakan
metodologi kualitatif-deskriptif dengan pendekatan close reading sebagai metode
analisis, penelitian ini berangkat dari stereotipe perempuan Muslim dari sudut
pandang Barat yang cenderung negatif dan asumsi bahwa novel-novel penulis
perempuan Arab umumnya bertujuan untuk mendobrak stereotipe tersebut.
Penemuan penelitian ini adalah: pertama, tokoh-tokoh protagonis dalam kedua
novel menjadi obyek dari berbagai bentuk politik tubuh yang dikenakan para
tokoh laki-laki Timur maupun Barat, dan kedua, meskipun kedua teks tersebut
terlihat menguatkan representasi Barat bahwa perempuan Muslim mengalami
opresi, namun sesungguhnya mendobrak anggapan Barat bahwa perempuan
Muslim cenderung pasif dan patuh. Penelitian ini menyimpulkan bahwa patriarki
dan kolonialisme merupakan dua sistem yang membatasi resistensi dan
menguatkan marjinalisasi perempuan, dan media operasi kedua sistem tersebut
adalah tubuh.
Kata kunci: patriarki, perempuan Muslim, politik tubuh, poskolonial feminisme,

representasi Barat
ix
Universitas Indonesia
ABSTRACT
Name
Study Program: English
Title
: Politics of the Body and its Representation: An Analysis of
Body Politics and Western Representation of Muslim Women in
Pillars of Salt and My Name is Salma by Fadia Faqir
This research aims to analyse the construction of body politics in the female
protagonists in Pillars of Salt and My Name is Salma by Fadia Faqir, and to draw
a conclusion on whether the illustration of the female characters struggles against
the oppressive manifestation of body politics succeed to challenge, or conversely
to strengthen, western representation of Muslim women. Using a qualitative
methodology with a close reading approach as a method of analysis, this research
builds on the western stereotype of Muslim women that tends to be negative and
the assumption that Anglophone Arab female writers commonly intends to
challenge such stereotype. The findings of this research are: first, the female
protagonists in the novels of Pillars of Salt and My Name Is Salma underwent
several forms of body politics that were imposed by both eastern and western
men, and second, although these texts seem to strengthen western representations
of Muslim women as oppressed, but it actually challenge the western portrayals of
Muslim women as passive and obedient. This research concludes that it is both
patriarchy and colonialism that overturn their resistance and strengthen female
marginalisation, and that both systems take place first and foremost through the
body.
Keywords: body politics, Muslim women, patriarchy, postcolonial feminism,

Western representation
x
TABLE OF CONTENTS
SURAT PERNYATAAN BEBAS PLAGIARISME .......................................... ii
HALAMAN PERNYATAAN ORISINALITAS ............................................... iii
HALAMAN PENGESAHAN .............................................................................. iv
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT ................................................................................... vi
HALAMAN PERNYATAAN PERSETUJUAN PUBLIKASI TUGAS
AKHIR UNTUK KEPENTINGAN AKADEMIS ........................................... viii
ABSTRAK ............................................................................................................ ix
ABSTRACT ........................................................................................................... x
TABLE OF CONTENTS.xi
CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION ......................................................................... 1

1.1
Background .......................................................................................................... 1
1.2
Research Questions ........................................................................................... 10
1.3
Aim ................................................................................................................... 10
1.4
Significance of Research................................................................................... 11
1.5
Scope of Research ............................................................................................. 11
1.6
Thesis Organisation .......................................................................................... 11
1.7
Methodology ..................................................................................................... 12
CHAPTER 2 THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK ............................................ 13

2.1.
Politics of the Body........................................................................................... 13
2.1.1.
Sexual Politics and Body Politics ............................................................. 13
2.1.2
The Veiled Body ....................................................................................... 15
2.2.
Post-colonial Feminism .................................................................................... 18
2.2.1.
Decolonising Feminism ............................................................................ 18
CHAPTER 3 THE CONSTRUCTION OF BODY POLITICS IN PILLARS

OF SALT .............................................................................................................. 24
3.1.
Pillars of Salt as a Post-colonial Novel ............................................................ 24
3.2.
Construction of Body Politics on the Character of Maha ................................. 27
3.2.1.
Maha and the Construction of the Body ................................................... 27

xi
3.2.2.
3.3.
Challenging the Construction of Body Politics......................................... 40
Construction of Body Politics on the Character of Um Saad ........................... 47
3.3.1.
Um Saad and the Construction of the Body.............................................. 48
3.3.2.
3.4. Pillars of Salt: Challenging or Perpetuating the Representation of Muslim

Women .......................................................................................................................... 63
CHAPTER 4 THE CONSTRUCTION OF BODY POLITICS IN MY NAME

IS SALMA ............................................................................................................ 67
4.1.
My Name is Salma as a Post-colonial Novel..................................................... 67
4.2.
Construction of Body Politics on the Character of Salma ................................ 68
4.2.1.
Salma and the Construction of the Body .................................................. 68
4.2.2.
4.3. My Name is Salma: Challenging or Perpetuating the Representation of Muslim

Women .......................................................................................................................... 89
CHAPTER 5 CONCLUSION ............................................................................ 93
WORKS CITED.................................................................................................. 98
xii
CHAPTER I
INTRODUCTION
1.1 Background
Islam is predominantly sexist and pre-Enlightenment Thus, the West has to
object to Islamic sexism whether arranged marriage, headscarves, limiting
career options or the more extreme manifestations, female circumcision and
stoning women for adultery. (Will Hutton, 2011)
The quote above, stated by the famous British columnist Will Hutton, largely
expresses the predominant stereotype that westerners hold of Islam. Islam, the
monotheistic and Abrahamic religion which is often associated with the Arabs and
violence1, is often viewed with suspicion and distaste. This erroneous
understanding of Islam is visible in Renan's first treatise: in order best to be
understood, Islam had to be reduced to tent and tribe (cited in Said, 1978).
Islam thus is arbitrarily reduced into a cultural custom of a specific ethnicity,
while its distinctive religious teachings, economic principles and political history
are ignored and dismissed. This state of backwardness which is commonly used to
describe current Muslims is an example of the colonialism-based bias, which in
Edward Saids term is referred to as Orientalism.
Saids
monumental
work,
Orientalism,largely
focuses
on
Europes
representation of the Orient by dividing the east and west2, and subsequently
confirming Western superiority and enabling [] European domination of those
negatively portrayed regions known as East (Abu-Lughod, 2001). The division
of these two unequal arbitrary geographical boundaries is followed by a
Asma Barlas (2001) put forth the customaryy tendency to designate Christianity and Judaism into the
category of western religions while co-opting Islam to the category of eastern or the Other. She argues
2
I realise that the simplistic demarcation of the terms east and west as well as the interchangeable usage
of Arabs, Muslims, and the east in this thesis is problematic. However, I continue to use these terms due
to the lack of better terms, as well as to highlight Abu-Lughods (2001) argument that the division between
the east and west is not geographic or cultural, but rather a product of the political and historical encounter of
imperialism (p. 106).
relationship of power, of domination, [and] of varying degrees of complex

hegemonies (Said, 1978). After Orientalism was released to enormous acclaim in
1978, numerous other studies on the Oriental world and Islam emerged. While
Orientalism does not specifically address issues of the Oriental women,
undoubtedly it has impacted feminist studies as well, as pointed out by Lila AbuLughod (2001, p. 101), [Orientalism] has engendered feminist scholarship and
debate in Middle East studies as well as far beyond the field. Furthermore, AbuLughod outlined several impacts of Orientalism on feminist and Middle East
studies. Not only did Orientalism open the path for a more thorough study of
gender in the Orientalist discourse, but it also stimulated the recovering feminism
and gender studies in the Middle East to explore the East/West politics and
highlight the peculiar ways that feminist critique is situated in a global context
(p. 101). Such feminist and localised readings of Orientalism and other related
studiesgave birth to a number of challenges for Middle East feminists, due to the
different political contexts in their countries both internally and externally as
well as new findings, including the concept of Islamic feminism3. This research
based a number of its findings and analysis in adherence to the concept that
representations of Islam as oppressive is based on misleading patriarchal readings.
The rapid development in the academic field subsequently and widely
influenced the literary world, particularly in terms of Anglophone postcolonial
writings by Third-World women. In the last few decades, an emergence of
creative writing in English written by Oriental authors has made its way in the
Anglophone literature. South Asian women writers such as Anita Desai,
Arundhati Roy and Jhumpa Lahiri, to name a few, have contributed largely in
dispelling colonialism-induced stereotypes about the South Asian world through
their post-colonial writings. In addition, a significant Anglophone Arab literary
revival has been ongoing for the last decades, playing a crucial role in
3
While the definition of Islamic feminism is still debatable, it could be understood asmore or less
a form of feminism that is concerned with the roles of women, womens rights and other womenrelated issues in Islam. In her 2004 lecture on The Quran, Sexual Equality, and Feminism,Asma
Barlas claims that, different to its antithesis, Muslim feminism, which commonly deems that
Islamic teachings are generally patriarchal and subordinates women because God (Allah in Arabic)
Himself is misogynistic, Islamic feminism believes that patriarchal (mis)readings of the Quran
are erroneous. Therefore, it studies the roles and rights of women as well as other issues regarding
gender equality and social justice for all human beings, both at the public and private spheres, and
derives its tenets from the Holy Scripture, Quran (Barlas, 2004).
disseminating through the wider world their images of hyphenated Arabs and of
the Arab people (Al Maleh, 2009). Through creative writing, they promote and
foster a better understanding of the commonly misinterpreted Arab and Islam
worlds, however far from interchangeable these two terms are. These women
writers, whose writings address issues ranging from women, Islam, to their
indigenous cultures, include Ahdaf Soueif, Leila Aboulela, Leila Ahmed and
Fadia Faqir, to name a few.
Fadia Faqir is a Jordanian British writer, one of the many emerging British
Arab female writers in the 21st century. Faqir was born in Amman, Jordan, in
1956 to a conservative Jordanian Muslim family of nine children. Faqir described
her father as a reluctant tyrant who strictly imposed Islamic teachings to his
children, such as praying five times a day and obeying a 7 p.m. curfew. Although
he believed in the importance of education for all of his children, he desired them
to be pious, chaste and upright Muslims. Several of his children felt that they were
treated as cadets, resulting in a feeling of confinement. His daughters, including
Faqir, were forced to wear veils and cover their bodies according to the Islamic
tradition. This resulted in Faqirs opposition to institutional religion later on in life
and became a major influence in her writings. Faqirs mother, on the other hand,
was more liberal. Faqir described her as the most liberal woman in her own
unique way and one of her greatest supporters in her academic career. Against
the common stereotypes of Arab women, her mother strongly advised her to leave
Jordan in order to flourish and achieve her ambitions, which would be impossible
in the restrictive environment of their home country (Moore, 2011).
Education was one of Faqirs fathers greatest concerns for his children. In a
way, he also wanted to realise his dreams through them. This was the reason he
sent his children to the west to be educated. Being a leading member of the Hizbut
Tahrir (Bower, 2011), he had the expectation that they would come back to Jordan
and continue on his political battles. Conversely, all his children chose other paths
for themselves. In Faqirs case, she was awarded a scholarship to study creative
writing at Lancaster University. However, her father only agreed to let her leave
Jordan on the condition that she observe the veil at all times and be accompanied
by her younger brother as a guardian (Faqir, 2007). Faqirs keenness in her
education and her passion for writing forced her to agree. When Faqir arrived in
Britain at the age of 28, she was a divorcee of a failed arranged marriage and had
lost custody of her son as a result of her divorce. This miserable state, in addition
to the bewilderment she felt of arriving in a foreign country with her young
dependent brother, became another important influence in her writings (Faqir,
2007).
Faqir earned her undergraduate degree at the University of Jordan, Amman.
She subsequently worked as a journalist before coming to Britain to obtain her
masters degree in the University of Lancaster and a doctoral degree in Creative
and Critical Writing in the University of East Anglia. She was a lecturer and
coordinator for the Project of Middle Eastern Women's Studies at the Centre for
Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies, the University of Durham, and is currently a
Writing Fellow at Saint Aidans College in the same university.
Faqir has written a number of novels, short stories, plays, academic papers and
scholarships on literature and Arab women. Her novels include Nisanit
(Viking/Penguin, 1988/1990), Pillars of Salt (Quartet Books, 1996), My Name is
Salma (Doubleday, 2007, published in the US as The Cry of the Dove by Grove
Atlantic) and At the Midnight Kitchen. She was also featured in a compilation of
essays, In the House of Silence: Autobiographical Essays by Arab Women Writers
(1998) and her short story The Separation Wall was reprinted in the ArabAmerican and Arab Anglophone Literature (edited by Nathalie Handal). In
addition, she has also written academic essays on intra-family femicide, womens
rights and democracy in the Arab and Islamic contexts, become the general editor
of the award-winning Arab Women Writers series and translated novels by Arab
writers, such as Huda Barakat, Liana Badr and Salwa Bakr (Moore, 2011).
Although she writes in her second language, English, Faqir largely speaks of
the issues of women in the culturally patriarchal Arab landscape. The oppression
of women is the central issue of the majority of her works, which is distinctive for
their stylistic invention. Her works become a subject of ongoing academic
research because they literally translate aspects of the Middle Eastern culture and
issues of Third World women to a wider range of audience, particularly the
western Anglophone readers. Faqirs prose is defined as sensual, fully alive to
colours, tastes, smells and bodily sensations (Tarbush, 2007). She is also praised
by critics as an astute observer of the English society and behaviour as well as an
author with a gift for creating authentic characters. As described by Layla Al
Maleh in her book, Arab Voices in Diaspora, Faqirs writing has been a constant
attempt to diagnose and understand the problems and issues she had left behind in
her country of origin: womens rights, human rights, democracy, and reform (Al
Maleh, 2009).
Nisanit and Pillars of Salt, her first and second novels respectively, were
acclaimed by critics and propelled her to a prominent position among British Arab
writers (Tarbush, 2007). Pillars of Salt is said by a critic to stand between East
and West, and combines Arabic traditional storytelling with postmodern narrative
tricks (Suyoufie, 2008). Another critic described Faqir as a skilled writer
striving for an ambitious synthesis of Arabic and English style, Islamic and
Western sensibility (May, 1996). Her third book, My Name is Salma, was
published in sixteen countries and thirteen languages, whereas its Danish
translation won the ALOA literary award.
I focus on these two prominent novels by Fadia Faqir as the corpus of this
research. The reason for the selection of Pillars of Salt and My Name is Salma is
in order to understand more clearly the construction of body politics that took
place in different place settings, i.e. the Arab and western worlds, and the
legacy of colonialism in different time settings, i.e. during the colonial and postcolonial eras. Both are post-colonial novels4, the majority of whose setting being
in Levantine countries, and both of their protagonists being Arab Muslim women
oppressed by male figures. However, this thesis focuses on the difference of
strategies by which the female characters try to liberate themselves from the
masculine repression. The difference of the western and the Oriental males
constructions of the body politics during the different time settings is also
analysed.
4
Post-colonial literature can generally be defined as writings that are affected by the imperial
process from the moment of colonization to the present day (Ashfcroft et al, 1989, p. 2). Such
writings are characterised by detailed descriptions of the indigenous culture to counteract
inaccurate representations of the colonists, appropriation of the colonisers language, and
reworking of colonial art-forms to incorporate indigenous modes of creative expression (Harrison,
2012).
In Pillars of Salt, the plot mainly focuses on two female protagonists,

Maha and Um Saad, who are confined together in a mental hospital in Jordan.
Both women were sent into exile by their families as punishment for their
unwomanly behaviour. Inside the hospital, both recounted their stories, although
it is Mahas voice that retells them and shapes the narrative of the novel. Another
narrator in the novel is Sami al-Adjnabi, the Storyteller, who tells Mahas story
from a wholly opposite point of view. Throughout their lives, Maha and Um Saad
were constantly oppressed by their society, particularly by strong male figures.
Ironically, it was through their imprisonment within the hospital walls that they
began to find liberation.
My Name is Salma follows the story of a young Bedouin woman, Salma,
whose pre-marital pregnancy made her flee from her home country in Levantine
to Lebanon, and then to Exeter, England, in order to avoid the honour-killing
practice of her tribe. In Exeter, Salma transformed into Sally Asher and underwent
cultural adaptations to blend with her new environment. However, she
continuously felt misplaced and alienated, even from herself. The freedom offered
by this new country ironically failed to liberate Salma despite her efforts to blend
in, and she was incessantly haunted by her past.
In this thesis, I aim to focus on the politics of the body which is
constructed on the female protagonists in the novels. The body, as a discourse, is a
vital site for the exercise of power which involves political decisions and actions.
Power relations concerning the body are obvious in a patriarchal society where,
traditionally, men are the lawmakers and dominant power holders, and women
often find their bodies an object of social construction. Subsequently, it results in
issues which were all in one way or the other connected with the female body
(Mies, 1998), giving birth to the concept of body politics. The definition of body
politics has become a large source of debate in feminist and gender studies.
Generally, body politics is conceptualised as the negotiation of power via the
body, processes that may operate either directly or symbolically. The construction
of the body as a discourse, however, does not reduce the body in its materiality.
On the contrary, the written word becomes [] voice to a body whose vocal
chords have been excised (Cariello, 2009). Taking these concepts into account,
body politics can loosely refer to the political practice of signifying, demeaning,
exploiting and controlling the womens body; by taking the womens body into
surveillance and depriving them from their rights.
In the process of this research, I took heed of earlier works on the same
source texts and with different approaches and methods. Suyofie and Hammad
(2009) in their essay Women in Exile: The Unhomely in Fadia Faqirs Pillars
of Salt studied the sense of the relocation of home as well as manifestations of
the unhomely of the confined female protagonists in Pillars of Salt. Suyofie and
Hammad illustrated the concept of unhomeliness through the invasion and
depersonalisation of spaces such as domestic spaces and the female body. They
claimed that unlike classic postcolonial women writers, Faqir did not attempt to
romanticise her native culture nor challenge the western stereotype of colonised
women as oppressed, in order to fit the agenda of postcolonial writing. This
paper did not, however, proceed to clarify what agenda of postcolonial writing
Faqir aimed to achieve. Suyofie and Hammad concluded this paper by posing the
question of which readership was this text initially addressed to; the western
readers or the Arab-speaking ones?
Attempts to address this question were made by Abdo (2009) and
Elhajibrahim (2007). In her essay entitled How to Be a Successful Double
Agent: (Dis)placement as Strategy in Fadia Faqirs Pillars of Salt, Diya M. Abdo
(2009) points out how Faqir manipulated language to create a third language that
critiques both the Anglophone and Arab cultures, by (dis)placing literally
translated Arabic words, phrases, expressions, and proverbs as well as culturally
specific moments, and actions in her English text. Abdo argues that Faqir and her
text became double agents by alienating English-speaking readers from their
own language and causing the Arab-speaking readers to view their patriarchalcentred language from a new light. Abdo concludes that despite her ultimate
target readers being the English-speaking Arabs, Faqir attempts to bring both the
western and Arab readers face-to-face with their oppressive and/or orientalist
discourses and achieve self-criticism from both parties. In this essay, Abdo also
hints at how the female body becomes the template upon which womens
emotional and psychological pain is written. However, she did not elucidate to
what extent were the influences of the Arab society and/or the western colonists in
the perpetration of the female bodies.
On the other hand, Samah S. Elhajibrahim (2007), using Pillars of Salt as
one of the corpuses of her thesis, concludes that by addressing the western
audience, Faqir presented them with the opportunity to make a place in their
mind for a foreign other, in align with Edward Saids notion of worldly
humanism. Elhajibrahim also examines orientalism and colonialism in the Arab
world, to prove Saids thesis of Orientalism and his notion that literary production
provides the raw material of politics. It juxtaposes the Arab perspectives with that
of the western orientalist one in order to prove the thesis that orientalism and
colonialism are still existent, in the form of neo-orientalism and neo-colonialism,
disrupting the current relations between the Arab and western worlds.
Elhajibrahims study is an extensive work that demonstrates how contemporary
literature serves to address socio-political issues in particular societies whereby
the characters represent individuals as well as relationships between groups and
societies.
In her thesis, Jean Conwell (2011) explores, among others, how tropes of
silence, voice and self-representation in Pillars of Salt are present in the attempt to
challenge patriarchy, although the same voices were ultimately silenced and
punished by the high powers of their oppressors. Conwell concluded her analysis
by stating that despite the characters being silenced, Faqir, the transnational
woman author delivering the story, is not. On the other hand, Tara Sinclair
(2012) studies how Maha and Um Saad were disempowered through patriarchy,
religion, power through sexuality and colonisation. She concluded her paper by
demonstrating how Maha and Um Saad in Pillars of Salt aimed to fight
oppression and reach liberation through nature and each other. Sinclairs work on
female disempowerment, however, is a broad overview of a number of novels and
thus lapses into the impression that most women in the Middle East and North
America are hopelessly oppressed without actively working towards a solution or
empowerment.
Several researches also explored the themes of identity and ethic
discourses in My Name is Salma. Through a linguistic approach, Fatima Felemban
(2012) analysed the linguistic strategies used by Salma to construct her identity(s)
as an Arab living in Britain, who had to adapt in a new environment and conduct
particular strategies in order to fit in with her new environment. Karine Ancellin
(2009) discusses the newly coined concept of Muslim literature or literary
writing by female Muslim authors which highlights notions of identity, uniformity
and conformity of Muslim characters in the post-9/11 era. Furthermore, she
analyses how a constant transition from one self to the other occurred within the
character of Salma, which was demonstrated through how she grappled with the
constant shift of her names: Salma, Sally, and Sal. Ancellin claimed that both
identities, i.e. Salmas Muslim and British ones, are simultaneously victimised
and soothed by the perpetrators.
Yousef Awad (2011) in his dissertation attempts to delineate the
commonalities, as well as the cleavages, of Arab British and Arab American
diasporic literature by comparing the works of contemporary female Arab British
and Arab American writers. He argues that Arab British authors tend to advocate
transcultural dialogue and cross-identification strategies through their characters,
where non-white people are given a larger proportion in the novels and Arab
British characters are illustrated to interact more with multicultural people to
ensure their future in Britain. On the other hand, Arab American novelists attempt
to oppose misconceptions and stereotypes about Arab communities through a
more subtle approach. My Name is Salma is used as one of the corpuses to show
how itpictures Arabness in ethnic and racial discourses in Britain. Awad cited a
number of researches (e.g. Spivak, El-Solh) to explain how the representation of
refugees and unprivileged migrants in Arab British fiction can enhance our
understanding of the diversity and heterogeneity of Arab communities in Britain,
which caused them a sense of displacement in the racial and social
categorisations.
Despite the number of critical works on novels by Fadia Faqir with themes
of identity, disempowerment and target readerships as their objects of enquiry, indepth comparative studies on novels by Fadia Faqir are still lacking. Most
researches still place a strong emphasis on the author herself and the messages she
tried to deliver.Furthermore, there have not been any studies on the relation
10
between how body politics is used to construct vertical power relations between
the oppressor and the oppressed and/or the colonisers and the colonists, and how
struggles against them serve to either strengthen or challenge postcolonial
discourses of Muslim women. In the effort to build up the previous researches, the
difference between this research and the earlier works is that I particularly focus
on the construction of body politics in specific time frames. I also conclude on
whether the fight towards liberation by the female characters strengthens, or
conversely deconstructs, western representations of Muslim women. In the
following chapters, I analyse how the female bodies are constantly politicised
through various means in order to perpetuate male superiority. Furthermore, I
explain that body politics are also used to obstruct attempts of resistance by
controlling and punishing the female bodies as well as impeding self-expressions.
Finally, I draw a conclusion on the significance of female resistance and the
causes that perpetuate suppression.
1.2
Research Questions
1. What are the applications of body politics in Pillars of Salt and My Name
is Salma as implemented by western and Arab/Muslim males when
associated with the colonial and post-colonial contexts?
2. Does the corpus, through its illustration of the female characters struggle
towards liberation, strengthen or deconstruct western representations of
Muslim women?
1.3
Aim
This research aims to analyse the construction of body politics on the female
protagonists in Pillars of Salt and My Name is Salma. It also aims to make a
comparison on the differences of the construction produced by western and
eastern males and study their relation with the respective timeframes: colonial and
post-colonial contexts. I also intend to draw a conclusion on whether the texts,
through the illustrations of how the female characters carried out ways of
11
struggle towards liberation, succeed to strengthen, or conversely to challenge,

western representations of Muslim women.
1.4
Significance of Research
This thesis is expected to enhance the knowledge regarding the thematic criticism
of gender construction in general and body politics in particular. Additionally, the
research is expected to build an awareness of the literary significance of the
emerging Anglophone Third-World female writers. It is also expected to
contribute to the field of literary criticism while building up on previous research
about the similar subject.
The completion of this thesis is part of the attempt to debunk the notion of
western and/or mainstream feminists representation of Muslim women as
helplessly oppressed solely due to their religion, culture and gender.
1.5
Scope of Research
In accordance with the objective of this thesis, the scope of the research is the
analysis of the western and eastern constructions of body politics on the female
protagonists in Pillars of Salt and My Name is Salma by Fadia Faqir, taking the
colonial and post-colonial contexts into account.
1.6
Thesis Organisation
The thesis is divided into five chapters. The first chapter is the introduction, which
consists of the following subchapters: background, research questions, aim,
significance of the research, scope of the research, thesis organisation and
methodology. The second chapter explains the conceptual and theoretical bases
which are used in the research. Its subchapters include an explanation of body
politics, post-colonial theory and a take on western representations of Arab
Muslim (or in Edward Saids term, the Orient) women. The third chapter
consists of an analysis of the construction of body politics on Maha and Um Saad
in Pillars of Salt in the colonial context, whereas the fourth chapter presents an
analysis of the construction of body politics on Salma in My Name is Salma in the
12
post-colonial context. The fifth chapter concludes the primary findings and
analyses of the thesis.
1.7
Methodology
The method used in this research is based on the qualitative - descriptive method.
The writing of the thesis is constructed in several technical stages. The first stage
is the collection of the data, followed by a literature review of relevant literatures,
journals and articles. The next stage is an observation of the research key ideas
through a close reading of the source texts, Pillars of Salt and My Name is Salma
by Fadia Faqir. The subsequent stage is an analysis of the data using the relevant
approaches, namely gender studies and post-colonial theory. To end the thesis, the
last stage is the conclusion. The conclusion is drawn in accordance to the research
questions and aims of the research, which is to compare the construction of body
politics in different contexts by western and eastern males. The final stage
concludes on whether the texts strengthen or disrupt the western representations
of the oppressed Orient women.
CHAPTER 2
THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK
2.1.
Politics of the Body
2.1.1. Sexual Politics and Body Politics

In defining the theory of sexual politics in her published dissertation, Sexual
Politics (1969), Kate Millet initially pointed to the question of whether
relationship between the sexes can be viewed in a political light at all. In
answering this question, Millet presented a brief definition of how politics is
defined in this particular context. According to the American Heritage Dictionary,
politics could be defined as the methods or tactics involved in managing a state
or government, which Millet developed further into a set of stratagems designed
to maintain a system. As an institution which is maintained by techniques of
control, patriarchy could also be inferred as a form of political entity. Thus, Millet
(1969, p. 23) defined the term politics as the power-structured relationships,
arrangements whereby one group of persons is controlled by another. Taking this
definition into account, it could be concluded that relationships between,
regarding, and relating to the sexes are in fact important aspects to be considered
from the political point of view.
The significance of outlining sexual politics in this thesis is to present a
background theory of politics regarding the body, which stemmed from the theory
of sexual politics. According to Millet (1969, p. 24), sex, which had largely been
taken for granted as something purely biological, is actually a status category with
political implications. Thus, the term politics is necessary to bear in mind when
speaking of the relationship of the sexes and its implications in order to reveal the
real nature of their relative status, historically and at the present (Millet, 1969).
Sexual politics becomes an alternative way of viewing power relationships
between systematic groups in the society, such as classes and races, and within
personal spheres, such as the sexes and the body. Millet pointed out that the
heavier musculature of the male is indeed biological in origin but is also
culturally encouraged further through external and internal influences, such as
13
14
diet, exercise and breeding. Thus, it can be seen how a sphere as private as the
body is subjected to the social and cultural construction. Such a construction will
also relate to politics and power, although the creeds that influence them are not
limited to the male physical supremacy per se.
It is through that understanding that the new women's movement began
focusing on issues which were all in one way or the other connected with the
female body (Mies, 1998). In the capitalist patriarchal society, it is common for
women to be relegated to this private sphere, which is widely and commonly
dismissed from the scope of politics. According to Maria Mies (1998, p. 24),
[] by speaking openly about their most intimate relations with men,
their sexuality, their relationship to their own bodies, the lack of
knowledge about their own bodies, their problems with contraception, etc.,
the women began to socialize and thus politicize their most intimate,
individualized and atomized experiences. [...] By defining this privatized,
segregated sphere of the man-woman relation as a political one, by coining
the slogan the personal is political, the structural division of bourgeois
society between private and public was challenged.
It is from this light that the body became an arena for womens struggle. The body
is, as Mies (1998, p. 29) revealed, the sphere where womens oppression and
exploitation was most intimately and concretely experienced. In fact, the most
intimate sexual relationship between women and men was experienced by many
women as characterised by violence, humiliation and coercion. This is emphasised
by the fact that violence and coercion seemed to be the main mechanisms that
controlled the power relation that took place within the context of body politics
(1998, p. 25). Furthermore, the female body often becomes nothing more than the
males occupied territory, alienating women from their own bodies, and serving
as the tool to keep them in their place.
Womens confinement and restriction in regards to their bodies were
studied in the early feminist works, where it is revealed that the female subject
constantly and self-consciously conforms to the constructed limits. The way
women sit, walk, or present themselves, thus were manifestations of how the
female body was limited into an object and how the female subject disallows
herself to transcend such limits (Young, cited in Mills 1996). Wex (cited in Mills
1996) further pointed out that women attempt to take up as little space as possible
15
by positioning their bodies in a restricted and confining fashion. The female body
thus becomes the most vulnerable part of women, both in the private and public
spheres.
The slogan the personal is political altered womens point of view that
politics was restricted to the state-sanctioned politics of parliamentary democracy.
As a result, feminists began to shift their focus from the political struggle in the
public sphere, which is largely dominated by men, to a concept of politics in the
first person (Mies, 1998). Politics in the first person means that issues that were
normally regarded as private, simultaneously issues that are the closest to one, are
seen from a political point of view. The control that men have over womens
bodies, both in the most private sphere of the family and the public sphere of the
state, resulted in a state-sanctioned male dominance, as regulated by the
patriarchal system. It is important to note Mies (1998, p. 27) argument that the
line dividing the private from the public is necessarily the same line that
divides private unregulated male violence (rule of might) from regulated state
violence (rule of right). This was relevant in the context that the patriarchal state
regulations often fail to protect women in their private sphere, which is the family,
and the public sphere of the state. Thus, political struggles on issues dealing with
the female body such as abortion, rape, wife-beating, sexism and harassment,
which in time expanded into sartorial regulations, female circumcision and other
cultural practices seen as oppressive to women, took place in the concept of body
politics.
2.1.2
The Veiled Body
In her book, The Claims of Culture (2002), Seyla Benhabib stated that women
and their bodies are the symbolic-cultural site upon which human societies
inscript their moral order (p. 84). Discourses on the female body, which at first
largely focused on the western feminists issues regarding the body, gradually
shifted its focus to the female Orient. The western fascination with the veil, harem
and purdah, concepts that are largely associated with Orientalism, is explained by
Meyda Yeenolu (1998, p. 544):
If the Oriental is feminine and if the feminine is Oriental, we can claim
that the nature of femininity and the nature of the Orient are figured as one
16
and the same thing in these representations. This equivalence positions the
Orientalist/Western colonial subject as masculine: the other culture is
always like the other sex. This is why the Western subject, whether male
or female, is always fascinated by the veil or harem, the truth of culture in
the space of woman, in the body of woman.
It can be concluded from Yeenolus analysis that the othering process of the
Orient by the west is parallel to that of women by men. This equivalence places
the Orient as feminine, as both are othered by their superior counterpart, which
describes the reason why the veil or harem attracts the west so much. In all their
symbolism and complexity, the veil, harem and purdah hold the truth of culture,
or the culture that takes place in a given society. As such, the entirety of the
exotic Oriental culture is embodied in the body of a (veiled/secluded) woman,
the exact space where westerners believe they have power over.
Ironically, despite the fact that the veiled woman already undergoes a
threefold othering process, namely from her own culture, her gender, and her
sartorial choices, she is Other to the western subject in a distinctive way
altogether. The presence of the veiled woman serves as a threat to the west, both
to its logical reason and its colonial perspectives. As Yeenolu (1998, p. 546)
explained further, the problem with veil basically lies in the complete reversal of
positions. The colonial subjects desire to pursue power and domination
interrelates with his scopic desire. His desire for power translates into a desire to
penetrate the interiority of the veil, through an exercise of surveillance. As the veil
or purdah ensures a sense of invisibility and hinders the observing stranger from
an access to what is behind the veil, this loss of sight challenges the omnipotent
male gaze. Women observing purdah thus may see without being seen,
completely disrupting western mens exercise of power. Simultaneously, the veil
signals a boundary that western observers cannot trespass, and it restricts their
colonial power (1998, p. 557). The western subject fears that the Oriental women,
by not yielding to western constructions of the gaze, hold a certain power over
them. This fear manifests in the anxiety that these women may be hiding
something behind their veils, reinforcing their position as an unsolved enigma
(1998, pp. 546-547). Lacking the complete understanding of the dynamics
working behind the veil or purdah and lacking the ability to strictly identify where
17
they stand, the western subject thus attempts to demean the veiled woman by
subjugating her to the other Oriental elements, i.e. their exoticism and their
oppressed state.
The perception of the veil, a practice of covering the whole body except
the face and hands for Muslim women, interconnects with the belief that Muslim
women are (and should be) constantly corrected, supervised and excluded. The
veil is, more often than not, believed to be a symbol of Islams oppression on
women, especially in the eyes of westerners5 (Bullock, 2002). Veiling is also
perceived by the western eye to mark the backwardness of Islam, therefore
causing it to be an open target of colonial attack and assault on Muslim
societies (Ahmed, 1994, p. 152). This is based on the notion of coercion (forced
veiling) or false consciousness, wherein the veiled women are believed to not
have chosen this sartorial practice willingly or consciously (Bracke & Fadil,
2012), dismissing those who argue otherwise. Their distaste on this secluding
practice relates with the deep hostility borrowing Gayatri Spivak and Karl
Marxs term (cited in Yeenolu, 1998) which is deeply ingrained within their
nature. As Yeenolu(1998, p. 555) stated, this principle regulates that they
should remain different, because I should remain the same: they are not/should
not be a possibility within my own world, which will thus be different. Therefore,
the veiled woman and the secluding culture should always remain different and
foreign for no other reason than the deeply-rooted assumption that they are
constantly and absolutely different.
This demarcation of difference is thus a result of a reckless categorisation
issued solely based on the aspects of gender as well as colonisation. Specific
gender patterns operate as a line that is functional in the process of othering the
concerned group, in this case the veiled woman (Bracke & Fadil, 2012, p. 46).
The issue that has sparked of the veil, or purdah, in the western world thus
highlights how gendered-based it is, and how it used gender to address, construct
and present the female body, especially of the Others. The issue of the female
5
Many scholars have argued against this. For instance, Abu-Lughod (2002) pointed out that the
practice of veiling should not be confused with lack of agency because the meaning of such
coverings differ in each community they are used. See Lila Abu-Lughod, Do Muslim women
really need saving? Anthropological reflections on cultural relativism and its others. American
Anthropologist, Vol. 104, No. 3. September 2002.
18
body is actually still within the lines of the problematised gender-based fights
among western feminists; however, it is interesting to note how their view on
purdah or the veil largely resembles their male counterparts. Not only does the
problematising of the veil renew the gendered and sexual boundaries in the
culture, but it also reinforces typical colonial judgement such as the construction
of the practice of seclusion (such as the veil) as an essential attribute of Muslim
identity, which is actually argued as a colonial legacy6 (Bracken & Fadil, 2012, p.
50). Such representation simply attributes practices of seclusion to religion, which
clearly fails to acknowledge the specific cultural and political situations of those
women that also come into play, e.g. colonised status or cultural practices. It
should be always taken into account that the meaning of the headscarf is actually a
matter of context, which consists of interpretative frameworks, including the
complex interplay of the background and material conditions of the agent herself
(2012, p. 52). Therefore, the far too hasty conclusion does nothing more but
reveals the colonial and gender-biased nature of the western representation of the
seclusion practices something that is also apparent in mainstream western
feminism, which is one of the issues that the postcolonial feminist scholarship is
concerned in.
2.2.
Post-colonial Feminism
2.2.1. Decolonising Feminism

In her book, Under Western Eyes, CT Mohanty (2003) eloquently presented the
argument that feminism, in all its western understanding, is flawed in terms of
how it views and places its stance on the issues of the Third World Woman7.
Mohanty pointed out that western feminism is strongly influenced by colonialist
Refer to Leila Ahmeds Women and Gender in Islam (1998) on the colonial influence in
constructing the veil as an essential symbol of Muslim identity and how colonial legacies in
othering Muslims as the religious Other are constitutive of one another. Furthermore, Bracke &
Fadil argued that signifying the veil as a religious practice supports the continued colonial
framing of Islam and how it is perpetuated by the issues of gender (2001, p. 50).
7
Mohanty (2003) highlighted the difference between Woman, a construction of the cultural and
ideological complex Other through various discourses and representations, and women, the real,
material subjects with their own collective histories. The concept of Third World Woman thus
betrays the authorizing signature of western humanist discourse (pp. 334-335).
19
thinking, resulting in a biased judgement on erroneous struggles that do not

represent nor benefit the Third World women whose voices they claim to
represent. Arguments of western feminists largely made on behalf of the Third
World women, albeit true in a number of specific contexts, still fall into the
erroneous tendency of overgeneralisation, overlooking important aspects that are
intertwined in a particular context. A number of her findings is summarised and
elaborated as follows:
1. Arab and Muslim women are defined by the single entity, their
gender, and all Arab and/or Muslim women are oppressed by men
and Islam.
In introducing this argument, Mohanty presented western feminists illustrations
of patriarchy, the view on women and the practice of seclusion in Arab and
Muslim societies. Minces (1980) cites the patriarchal family as the basis for an
almost identical vision of women that Arab and Muslim societies have, while
Modares notes that the Islamic Theology is imposed on a given entity called
women. Deardon (1975, pp. 4-5) pointed out that the greater the number of
women who wear the veil, the more universal is the sexual segregation and
control of women). As Muslim women in countries such as Saudi Arabia, Iran,
and Egypt adopt the secluding practice and all wear some kind of headscarf, the
sexual control of women is a universal fact in those countries (1975, pp. 7 10).
Thus, in Islamic societies, an oppressing vision of women is upheld by the
patriarchal family, endorsed further by the practice of seclusion and executed
through the sexual control that is maintained by both the state and its people.
The basic problem with such claims is its clumsy overgeneralisation in
overlooking several important aspects that come into play. It is clearly erroneous
to state that Arab and Muslim societies, which include more than twenty
countries, share an identical vision of women without firstly addressing the
particular historical, material and ideological power structures that shaped such
a vision (Under Western Eyes, p. 28). Mohanty argued that to speak of the
patriarchal family as the origin of womens socioeconomic status is to assume that
women are sexual-political subjects prior to their entry into the family. Thus, on
20
the one hand, women obtain a status within their family, but on the other hand the
assumption of a singular patriarchal family in the Arab and Muslim societies is
what structures women as an oppressed group in these societies. This assumption
thus results in another misperception. Such representation of the patriarchal
family is depicted to influence a separate and given entity called women.
Women, regardless of their class, race and cultural differences, are seen as an
entity united by their status quo as a homogeneous oppressed group. All women
are affected and oppressed by the patriarchal system. However, there are no
studies on the specific practices within an Arab/Muslim family. Instead, Arabs
and Muslims are illustrated as unchanging, and their patriarchal practice is carried
down from the time of Prophet Muhammad. This is to claim, in Mohantys words,
that they [Arabs and Muslims] exist outside history (2003, p. 28). Such a
depiction deprives them from their historical development and any finding based
on this creed would thus be inaccurate.
Feminist discourses on Arab and Muslim women share the established
sentiment that religion is the cause of gender inequality, which results in their own
interpretation of women in Islam. Marnia Lazreg (1988) pointed out that this
paradigm subsequently deprives women of self-presence and being. Women are
considered solely as part of a certain religion, in its entire fundamentalism, thus
deprived of their personal history. Possibilities of any analysis of change are
foreclosed (Lazreg cited in Mohanty 2003, p. 20). A further conclusion is reached:
all women, regardless of their differing positions within societies, are either
affected or not affected by Islam (p. 29). All secluded or veiled women in the
Third-World countries are oppressed and sexually controlled, as mirrored in
Deardons notion (cited in Mohanty 2002, p. 33), which argued that the greater
the number of veiled women in a given country, the more widespread is the
(sexual) control of women. However, such an oversimplified deduction fails to
take into account that the secluding practice of women, which to the Western eyes
is a source of oppression, is regarded by many Muslim women as a source of
pride (Mernissi, p. 493). The veil was historically observed only by the wives of
the Prophet, and after his death, it was taken on by the upper class to imitate the
Prophets wives as well as a signifier of wealth or raised status (Ahmed, 1994, p.
21
56). This is also true in specific cultures where only women of the upper class
can afford to be secluded or covered. For instance, the burqa (a local covering
custom of Pashtun women) is locally associated with good respectable women
from strong families who are not forced to make a living selling on the street
(Abu-Lughod, 2002, p. 786). It is only by taking these various notions into
account that a feminist cross-cultural study on Third World women can be
accurate and informed.
2. Women are consistently defined as the victims of mens sexual
oppression, without being analysed within specific historical, cultural
and political contexts.
A point that Mohanty strongly argues in Under Western Eyes is how western
feminism often presents women as the constant victims of mens sexual
oppression and physical violence. This is illustrated in the following statement:
Physical violence against women (rape, sexual assault, excision, infibulation,
etc.) is thus carried out with an astonishing consensus among men in the world
(Hosken, cited in Mohanty 2003). Such an illustration is problematic in its very
nature. Although Mohanty acknowledged that women are often subject to male
violence, hence regulates womens position to a certain extent, she argued that the
constant representation of women as victims solidifies their position as objects of
oppression and men as subjects who perpetrate oppression.
Mohanty further pointed out that such claims indicate that every society is
divided into two groups: the powerful (i.e. men) and the powerless (i.e. women).
The problem with this indication is that it emphasises the lesser role of women in
society and stresses on womens vulnerability. It is this marginalised status of
women that is made as a basis for the unification of western feminist struggles, or
in their term, sisterhood. However, Mohanty argued that sisterhood cannot be
assumed on the basis of gender; it must be forged in concrete historical and
political practice and analysis (Under Western Eyes, p. 24). It is problematic to
build a notion of sisterhood solely based on gender and the marginalisation that
comes with it, without taking into account the historical, cultural and political
factors that come into play.
22
3. (Third-world) Women are defined as a group solely based on their

shared dependencies.
Dependency relationships, based upon race, sex, and class, are being perpetuated
through social, educational, and economic institutions. These are the linkages
among Third World Women, concluded Beverly Lindsay in Comparative
Perspectives of Third World Women: The Impact of Race, Sex, and Class (1983).
In her essay, Mohanty (Under Western Eyes, pp. 24-25) strongly criticised
Lindsays statement that implies that Third World Women constitute a group that
is purely based on shared dependency relationships. Consequently, Third World
women are seen as an apolitical group with no subject status, and as a group
they are positioned within a given structure, bind together by their struggle against
class, race, gender and imperialist hierarchies. This inferiority, a characteristic
commonly attached to Third World women, leads to another issue that will be
discussed below.
4. The representation of Third World women as the object of
oppression is contradictory to and used to strengthen the selfrepresentation of western feminists as a subject.
The common assumption in western feminism is that women are categorised as a
homogenous oppressed group and this becomes a problem when this issue is
taken into the western feminist writing on Third World women. The crux of the
problem in recent western feminist studies is the notion of Third-World
difference: the stable, ahistorical something that apparently oppresses most, if
not all, women (Feminist Colonial Reading, p. 51). Mohanty further argued that
it is in the production of this Third-World difference that western feminists
usurp and colonise the complexities that characterise the lives of these Third
World women. By contrasting the representation of women in the Third World
with the western feminists self-presentation in the same context, Mohanty
pointed out how Third World women never rose above the debilitating generality
of their object status (2003, p. 39). Therefore, western feminists signified
themselves as the only true subject of this counter-history.
23
As they become an object in western feminist discourses, universal images of

the Third World women such as the veiled woman, the powerful mother, the
chaste virgin, the obedient wife are thus created, strengthening the hegemony of
western feminists over the Third World women. This binary opposition, where
the eastern women are defined as the other and western feminists are the centre,
is parallel to the opposition between east and west that Edward Said (1978) stated
in Orientalism and the one between men and women, the same binary opposition
that feminists try to eradicate. However, it is only by defining the Third World
women as such and placing them in a certain power relation that western feminists
can assert their superiority.
In the following chapters, I will refer to the concept of body politics in
analyzing how the body is politicised in the construction of horizontal and vertical
power relationships between the oppressor and the oppressed. Furthermore, I will
use the theory of postcolonial feminism to signify the stance of the texts in the
issue of western representation of Muslim women.
CHAPTER 3
THE CONSTRUCTION OF BODY POLITICS IN PILLARS OF SALT
3.1.
Pillars of Salt as a Post-colonial Novel
A post-colonial novel written by a transnational female writer in 1996, Pillars of

Salt takes its setting in Transjordan, a little before and after the British Mandate in
the 1920s. Thus, a large part of the novel is adorned with anticolonial struggles as
well as interactions between the native Arabs and the British colonialists. The
impacts of British colonialism on the female protagonists and the oppression they
experienced are significant, as Tucker (cited in Abdo, 2002) stated that, European
colonial and imperial powers that intervened in the Arab World in the nineteenth
and early twentieth centuries often claimed that the advancement of women was a
special concern of, and justification for, their intervention and rule (p. 230).
Colonialism, orientalist stigmas and patriarchy thus become inseparable aspects to
the nexus of the analysis of the female marginalisation. This nexus often becomes
the overall theme in post-colonial writings, and in Pillars of Salt, this is
strengthened by certain aspects in the novel.
One of such characteristics is its narrative style. In Pillars of Salt, readers
will be able to identify two main narrators in the novel. The first one is the
Storyteller, Sami al-Adjnabi, which literally translates into Sami the Foreigner.
Sami narrates the story from the point of view of an outsider in a traditional
Arabic storytelling technique8, using a wide range of elements, references, and
metaphors of the quintessential Arab culture. As a result, this betrays an exotic,
8
In the premise of his thesis, Roots of Oral Tradition in The Arabian Nights, Mahir
(2007) explains that the Arab storytelling technique refers to the oral tradition of
storytelling in the Arab world. Oral storytellers would travel across the country to tell
stories to a wide range of audience, either children or adults. As such, stories would be
altered to fit the taste of the audience as well as the communitys historical backgrounds.
Narrators would use historical names and events to create new tales and adorn them to
create an entertaining performance. However, more than merely a form of entertainment,
the tales are also aimed to educate the audience about morality and righteous creed. As a
result, such tales largely mirror the values and mores of a given community. It is thus
worthy to note the influential impacts of this storytelling tradition, particularly in
propagating moral codes and maintaining cultural beliefs.
24
25
Oriental sense to the readership. However, the Storytellers version of the

narrative, which is largely adorned with myths and phallocentrism9, is an
antagonistic alternative to the version of the second narrator, Maha. Maha narrates
her story from a first-person point of view, while simultaneously narrating Um
Saads story from a third person point of view. The significance of Maha in this
novel is not only demonstrated by her life story that frames the novel, but also by
the existence of Sami al-Adjnabis alternative narrative that challenges her version
of the story.
The character of Sami al-Adjnabi functions as an amalgam of the
masculine voice that has mutilated, misrepresented or completely buried
womens identities, existences, and narratives (Abdo, 2009, p. 244). In an
interview, Fadiq Faqir stated that the inspiration of this novel is the epic movie
Lawrence of Arabia (Faqir cited in Abdo, 2009). The inspiration of Sami alAdjnabi itself mainly comes from the character of Lawrence of Arabia, who was
neither English nor Arab in his loyalties, suggesting a cultural dislocation and a
loss of identity (p. 244): My friend the English traveller [] called it [the British
occupation in Jordan] the Mandate. Mandate, or no Mandate, I did not care. I
was half-Arab with an endless hunger for stories (Pillars of Salt, p. 3).
The Storyteller always began his tales with avowals of worship: In the
name of Allah the Beneficent, the Merciful [] Oh most illustrious masters, pray
for our prophet Muhammad whose soul is like the moon, and his righteous
companions (1). Contradictory to his consistent religious demonstrations, the
Storyteller recounted that he never prayed to Allah and at one occasion tried to
imitate the Muslims way of praying, which he thought was funny (28). The
Storyteller functions as a phallocentric alternative to Mahas narrative, as
demonstrated in how he retold the scene where Maha and her best friend Nasra
tried to attack Daffash, Mahas brother, after he raped the latter: Maha, my
honourable masters, with the help of Nasra the shepherdess planned to kill her
poor brother Daffash in order to inherit the farm (29). Contradictory to Mahas
While the term phallocentrism was simply defined by Merriam-Webster dictionary as
the male-centered point of view, the online website of CLA Purdue University further
explained the concept as a privileging of the masculine in understanding meaning or
social relations
(http://www.cla.purdue.edu/english/theory/genderandsex/terms/phallocentrism.html)
9
26
description of Daffash as a cruel man, the Storyteller described Daffash as a thin,

bright man, full of ideas and keen to modernize his backward village (29). The
Storytellers narrative also betrays a misleading, androcentric reading of the
Islamic teachings: Allah warned His loyal worshippers in His wise book against
the cunning of women, especially widows and spinsters (167) and [t]hats why
no man can trust his wife, no Lord can trust his mistress (3). Finally, the
Storytellers tale offers a different and intriguingly mythical version to the ending
of Mahas story:
The truth is Maha, the black widow, the bitter colocynth, supported by the
soldiers of our master Solomon, survived the series of catastrophes. The
jinn carried her and Mubarak on their wings away from the lava and fire.
[] Maha, my masters, is now living with her husband, the king, crosser
of seas and conqueror of lands, in a big castle at the top of Sheikh
Mountain (226).
However, one of the intentions of this research is to understand how
hierarchies of gender are affected not only by cultural aspects but also relative
power relations. Subsequently, it is important to go beyond the feminist practices
of exposing stereotypes and complimenting the authors skills to create characters
beyond such stereotypes (Warhol, 2012) in order to analyse how the hierarchy of
power is constructed through the implementation of body politics. Although the
Storytellers narrative is an important part of the novel, it lacks the sense of
veracity of Mahas narrative. The character of Sami al-Adjnabi himself hardly
makes an appearance in the plot, despite of his claim of his omniscience, which
enabled him to observe everything first-hand. The reference to his character is
only made twice in Mahas story, as a stranger and a driveling liar with no
further explanation on his role in the society (Pillars of Salt, p. 135). Moreover,
the adornment of myths, apparent misogyny, and contradictive doxology
(expressions of praises to God) added to the inaccuracy of the Storytellers
version. Diya Abdo (2009) pointed out that the Storytellers references to Maha as
a succubus, a vampire, a man-killer, a femme fatale, and a liar demonstrate a
sense of masculine hatred around her character (p. 255). It can be inferred that
the Storytellers third person narrative style represents the phallocentric views on
women that are apparent in society that Faqir tried to challenge. Therefore, the
analyses made in this part focus only on Mahas narrative line in order to take the
27
text
beyond the author and fulfil the aim of the research to analyse the
politicisation of the body as a form of control.

As body politics refers to the power relations that take place using the
body as an arena of occupation and control, I will first explain the manifestations
of body politics. Subsequently, I observed the dynamics of body politics through
close reading and describe how it comes into play within those two contexts in
order to analyse the construction of body politics on the female protagonists of
Pillars of Salt, namely Maha and Um Saad.
3.2.
Construction of Body Politics on the Character of Maha
3.2.1. Maha and the Construction of the Body

3.2.1.1. Violence and coercion as a means to control the body
In analysing the construction of body politics, it is important to consider the
physical relationship between sexes. The construction of power relations between
men and women is often characterised by humiliation, violence, and coercion,
which function as the main means to control the female body (Mies, 1998). Thus,
violence and coercion could not simply be seen as a banal act to hurt the victim,
but as a display of the desire of power and control. This is illustrated in the
relationship between Maha and Daffash, which is characterised by both physical
and emotional violence, which is carried out to signify and perpetuate a certain
structure of power and control.
Daffash, Mahas brother, is depicted as an oppressive and violent man.
This was demonstrated by his acts of rape, which happened twice throughout the
novel. When Maha confronted him after he raped her best friend Nasra, he blamed
Nasra instead for tempting him, with her pipe, calling him to touch her and
accused her of enjoying (the rape). When Maha tried to shoot him, Daffash
grabbed the rifle and pointed it at Maha and Nasra, while shouting, I will kill
both of you, crazy whores. When Sheik Nimer, Daffash and Mahas father, came
in and commanded him to stop, Daffash retorted, I wanted to put some sense into
those crazy womens heads. (pp. 12-13). The second victim was the wife of
another man in the tribe, who was referred to as the wife of Salih. When Maha
28
stopped him in the middle of the rape and condemned him for his immoral act,
Daffashs response was, It was not rape. She was begging for it and my manhood
did not allow me to let her go without giving her what she asked for (67).
Daffashs aggressive behaviour is representative of the typical repressive
male, who considers the female body as his occupied territory in align with his
belief that as a man, he is the subject, while women (and the female body) are
objects. Being an object, the female body is subject to his masculine desire and
common sense; in other words, it is his territory of control. Moreover, Angyal
(cited in Amiruddin, 2011) stated that rape is not about passion, desire or even
sexual attraction;instead, rape is about controlling the victim and removing their
autonomy and humanity. Thus, Daffashs acts of rape represent how men often
use rape as a tool to assert their power and masculinity. Through such a display of
physical power and control, the stronger male attempts to perpetuate the power
relation between men and women, in which men hold the superior position.
The rape incident is also a portrayal of how body politics work through the
way rape is viewed in society. In the case of rape, it is women who are generally
put to blame. Mens sexual desires are considered common and acceptable,
whereas women are regarded as sexual objects that are expected to guard their
honour and purity (Marching, 2011). Thus, it is the victims fault for tempting
the male desire, and so it is she alone who must bear the consequences.
Consequently, victims of rape are often subject to moral, social and physical
punishments, such as humiliation, degradation of status, exile and, in several
cultures, honour killings. These phenomena demonstrate how the female sexuality
is constructed and how the female body is used as a tool to perpetuate such a
construction and power relation.
Daffashs violent behaviour was also proved numerous times later in the
plot. He was often described as sparking quarrels and committing physical abuse
as a compensation of his bad mood. An incident of his aggravated assault
occurred after Maha found out that Daffash made her cook for the Britishsoldiers
who had killed her husband, and she spit on a British soldier to express her anger.
When Daffash came home afterwards, he was engulfed with rage that his sister
had humiliated him in front of his friends (the British and the head of tribe).
29
Daffash was illustrated to kick, slap, beat, and whip Maha until she lost two of her
teeth and fell unconscious. Despite trying to help her recover after the beating,
Hulala, the villages midwife, firmly stated that she would spit on Mahas face as
she is a disobedient girl and deserves to be beaten up (165).
Again, this conflict represents the way in which the female body is treated
as an object to strengthen the power relation between the male and the female,
both in the private and the public spheres. Given less power than male members
of the society, women are expected to be passive and submissive to mens wishes.
In certain cases such as mirrored in Hulalas statement, women are also demanded
to uphold and endorse such internalised norms to ensure the perpetuation of mens
superiority. In order to maintain the male privilege, key controls of female
sexuality are often embodied in the form of cultural tradition. Women are thus
misleadingly glorified as guardians of tradition in anti-colonial struggles
(Katrak, 2007, p. 11), although this is also the case in more general contexts in
colonised countries. This was apparent, for instance, in the case where Maha was
asked by Samir Pasha (the leader of the tribe) to help his cook in preparing an
important dinner because his guests (who she later found out were the British)
wanted to taste true Bedouin mansaf but his cook was Sudanese (153). As the
guards of morality, women are also demanded to uphold the honour of their
family by performing domestic duties, protecting their personal honour and
obeying orders of the superior male in the family (father, brother, or husband).
Women who try to challenge the construction will be properly punished, both
physically and verbally, as a means of putting them back in their rightful place.
Therefore, acts of male violence or cruelty are considered to be acceptable and
even permissible in order to control disobedient or rebellious women whose
failure to preserve the family honour may cause humiliation to the whole family
and threaten their status in society.
However, Daffashs cruelty also came hand-in-hand with gestures of
affection, as illustrated in Mahas narration:
He dug quarrels from under his fingernails. He yanked my hair. [] Then
Daffash would apologize and give me a packet of foreign chocolates. (21)
You face-of-catastrophes, he snarled. One of these days I will chew off
your kidney and drink your blood from your skull. [] Thank you, little
sister. What can I say? Nothing can describe your ruthlessness. [] I
30
am truly sorry, he said. He held my arms and kissed me on the forehead.

(67)
Daffashs fickle attitude between ruthlessness and affection legitimises his
authority through an attempt to create what Mehta suggested as docile minds and
bodies. Foucault (cited in Mehta, 2004) stated that the docile body is one that
may be subjected, used, transformed and improved, by serving as an easilyavailable target of power. By constantly changing his attitude towards Maha, thus
taking advantage of the unpredictability of his actions, Daffash showed an attempt
to strip the female body of its defence mechanisms, enabling the process of
docility to continue. As a docile body, Mahas body was considered an object
under his control, as he was free to perform both affective gestures and physical
abuse on it. The novel exposes how Mahas body was manipulated: He [Daffash]
threw me on the rug and started slapping my face [] and started beating me all
over my body. [] Mubaraks screams urged me to stand up. I could not. Two of
my teeth were lying on the floor. I collapsed and started crying and shouting []
(164). The making of docile minds and bodies is embodied within the controlling
policy that is rampant in patriarchal cultures, in which the patriarch establishes his
position of power by reducing the power of the female Other and degrading the
substance of her being, especially the body.
3.2.1.2. Manifestations of the objectification of the female body

Manifestations of how the female body is reduced into an object are not only
limited to physical control. The objectification of the female body also occurs
through the construction of the body itself. Within the patriarchal norms, the
female sexuality does not belong to the individual; instead, it is a public domain
and belongs to society (Mehta, 2004). The female bodys biological functions are
interpreted beyond their natural abilities and capacities, and subsequently
commodified to control her being and position in society. Thus, women are not
allowed to freely interpret what the biological functions of her body enable her to
be or to do; the social construction of her sexuality and her body dictates it to her.
31
An example of how femininity is constructed in a form of body politics is

the wedding night song that was sung outside Harbs and Mahas room during
their wedding night: Hey bridegroom, / We are as pure and / As soft as rose
petals (Pillars of Salt, p. 44). This song symbolises the vital importance for the
bridegroom to know that he has married a pure and chaste virgin. In regards to
this, Fatima Mernissi (cited in Mehta, 2004) stated that, The concept of honor
and virginity locate the prestige of a man between the legs of a woman, which is
showed by how the honour of a bridegroom and a brides family depends on the
brides virginity prior to her marriage (Satterfield, 1998). As a permanent property
of the clan, the purity of the female sexuality and lineage honour (of the man who
owns her) are intertwined (Antonius, cited in Mehta 2004). The incomparable
value that is placed on a females virginity is a manifestation of the malecontrolled norms in society, in which the patriarch manipulates the female
sexuality as a property and symbol of mens status and prestige, and as a weapon
to control women. Thus, the female Other is degraded into an object that could be
calibrated and put into subjection.
The simile that compares the brides softness to rose petals instead of the
rose itself implies that a bride should be as soft and delicate as a rose petal,
lacking of the undesirable qualities such as the thorns which the rose also
possesses. Moreover, the use of the plural we in the song implies that such moral
codes do not strictly apply to a bride, but also to young unmarried women as a
whole. In the majority of cultures, women are commonly dictated to stay chaste as
respectable and honourable women. However, such strict rules do not apply to
men, whose sexual desires are perceived as biological and part of their manhood.
On the other hand, women are exemplified as the upholders and preservers of
traditional cultures and religious norms, imposing moral codes of conduct on
them, especially as regards to their (a)sexuality (Mehta, 2004). Such a simile also
symbolises how women are constructed since childhood to be fragile and
vulnerable. With such inferior qualities, women are expected to be dependent on
the strong and masculine men, the exact antithesis of their being. Therefore, a
girls whole upbringing is about fabricating her into an ideal woman that
conforms to the standards of patriarchal society.
32
Another construction of the female body is its reproductive function. In

analysing how society views female sexuality and the procreative role of the
female body, it is important to understand the societal norms and beliefs. In Islam,
marriage is declared to be the only permissible way to procreate and build a
family (Abdul-Rauf, 1993). Thus, the patriarchal interpretation of Islamic
teachings on marriage believes that the recreational function of intercourse is
exclusive for men. This is mirrored in the statement made by Abdul-Rauf (1993,
p. 2) who stated that some [men] cannot afford to do without women. [] And
thus a wife is food for the man and a measure for purifying his heat. It is
important to note that in his explanation, no reference was made to the female
sexuality, most likely because the female sexuality is considered either void or
taboo. On the other hand, procreation, which is considered as the main purpose of
marriage, is designated as the full responsibility of Muslim wives, who is thus
responsible for both the bearing and rearing of the children. This custom may
have stemmed from patriarchal readings of secondary religious texts and myths,
where it is said that the punishments for Eve (and women) for causing the Fall are
painful childbirth and menstruation.10 Abdo (2009) emphasised that patriarchal
demarcation often regards women as vessels for procreation (p. 290). Therefore,
a pregnant wife is proof of the mans fertility and virility, yet in cases of
infertility, it is often the woman who is put at fault or bears the guilt for failing to
produce a child. As Brinda Mehta (2004, p. 716) claimed, The mediation of
female sexuality as a function valorized for its utilitarian, procreative use often
leads to the internalization of external pressures in the form of imposed feelings of
guilt and shame as the bodys only recourse to articulate this limitation through
the fragmented language of sexual abnegation. In the case that the female body is
unable to perform the utilitarian duties it has internalised, humiliation, pain, and
even sexual renunciation are inflicted on the body as a form of self-punishment.
The novel describes this condition through Mahas struggle to be pregnant in
10
In her essay, Muslim Women and Sexual Oppression: Reading Liberation from the Quran, Asma
Barlas argued against the myths of Eves sin for bringing about the Fall and how women are
punished for it by stating that the Quran does not designate childbirth as punishment for women
or a signifier of their inferiority to men (p. 124).
33
order to present children to her husband, as well as to prove that she was not
barren.
The guilt and shame that Maha felt after five months of her marriage
without any signs of pregnancy were severely imposed by the external pressures
from her environment. Her mother-in-law was described to repeatedly ask her, Is
the barrel still empty? and the people of her village began to chant a prayer
wishing that Allah would give her a son after every greeting (67). The metaphor
of an empty barrel, a still object of little importance, serves as a representation of
how society views a woman. If she is with a child, especially a son, she is as
valuable as a barrel full of wine; however, if the barrel is empty, it is of no
value. The constant reminding of the emptiness of her barrel caused Maha to
internalise the bitterness of her status as a barren woman. Moreover, the
comparison of Mahas womb to an empty barrel subsequently displaced Maha
from her body and made her body the object of her own criticising surveillance.
This was shown from how she examined her own body and bitterly internalised:
Yes, Mahas belly was as small as ever, her breasts were as limp as ever, and her
period visited her regularly (67). Such a critical examination of ones own body,
constructed by patriarchal society as a tenet in mind, leads to the feeling of
alienation from ones own body. She then realises that her body is not her own; it
is, in Millets words (1969), a private sphere which is subjected to social and
cultural construction. In this case, the subject would feel guilt and shame for not
being able to fulfil societys expectations. The alienated or hostile feeling that one
has for her body often leads to extreme actions which are taken in order to
conform to the pressure of society.
An example of the extensive measures that Maha took in her effort to get
pregnant was when she went to the local physician/midwife, Hajjeh Hulala, to
whom barren women would go in order to get medication. Initially, Maha
strongly opposed that idea, until she told her husband Harb that his mother wished
her to go to Hajjeh Hulala. Although he initially told her not to listen to old
women, he ultimately stated in a gentler manner to an emotional Maha, Allah
knows that I want hundreds of sons. Your sons (69). This response mirrors the
patriarchal belief in this society that it is womens responsibility to produce
34
children. In the case of infertility, it is even considered acceptable for a man to

find another wife, because his wife has failed to produce an heir to the family.
Although Harb blatantly stated that he did not want to take another wife and he
would not let Maha be humiliated, his aforementioned response signalled his
wishes that Maha should take every possible action which may enable her to give
him sons as it is her duty as a wife and as a woman. Out of her love for her
husband, Maha gave in, fully acknowledging the risk that, by agreeing to go to
Hajjeh Hulala, she had stamped herself with the word barren and every living
creature would know about [her] visit and start weaving stories and finding
reasons for [her] barrenness (70). The medication that Hajjeh Hulala performed
on Maha included giving her a bundle of herbs that must be kept inside her body
for three days and cauterising her belly with a smoldering iron bar, both of which
caused great pains for days.
The association between the female body and pain is a form of body
politics that is inflicted upon Maha. As Mehta (2004, p. 716) put it, the female
body situated itself within the problematics of the crime of being female, and its
corresponding punishment in the form of self-inflicted mutilation as a sign of the
infirm body. The female body is thus outlawed by a system of arbitrary
control within patriarchal systems of justice causing the female body to yield to
the restrictive regulations which is enforced upon it. Mahas decision to put
herself in such pain was led by her internalisation of the crime she had
committed: the crime of being a female who failed to fulfil her main utilitarian
procreative duty as a female. Her strong belief that she was not barren was
overwhelmed by the strong pressure that came from her environment. Thus,
Mahas martyr-like decision to receive a medication had a twofold meaning:
although it was a self-made decision which served as a form of self-control over
her body, which she deemed to be worthy of a punishment in the form of pain, she
was also succumbing to the construction of crime of being a woman, as well as to
society and its commodifying coercions. This shows how patriarchal, or even
misogynistic, notions take place in society: constant repetitions will be
internalised by the involved objects until they are pressured to conform, despite
the possible consequences such as self-inflicted punishments.
35
In the plot, however, it is described that, shortly after the medication and
ironically after Mahas husband was killed by the British, Maha realised that she
was pregnant. The most notable reaction came from her brother, Daffash, whose
behaviour drastically changed when he found out that she had given birth to a son.
Daffash was pictured to be overcome with excitement when he saw Mubarak, his
new-born nephew: I want to hold my nephew. By Allah, youve given birth to a
man. I want to hold him, he said with a voice full of excitement. Your uncle
will teach you how to ride and shoot and drive. How is that? (144). Daffashs
treatment to Maha also changed, although temporarily: Since youve given birth
to a man you may stay in my house. He held my arms and kissed me on the
forehead (145).His seemingly generous offer was in fact unnecessary, as the
house was Mahas house as much as it was his, and after their father died, it was
inherited by Maha. However, the statement and the gesture that followed after that
highlighted his good temper after finding out that he now had a nephew.
In the aforementioned illustration, Daffashs behaviour strengthened the
objectification of women as procreative beings. As in most patriarchal cultures,
childbearing is seen to be the central female duty and activity (Moghadam, 2004).
Thus, a womans value depends on her reproductive performance and, more
importantly, her ability to produce a son. The son preference is a typical
characteristic of what Caldwell and Kandiyoti (cited in Moghadam, 2004)
described as the belt of classic patriarchy, which favours the male kin and the
patrilineal line. Caldwell further claimed that the family structure in the Middle
East is one that is extended, patrilineal, patrilocal, patriarchal, endogamous, and
occasionally polygynous. The characteristics of the Middle Eastern family, thus,
are generally patriarchal: not only will men and/or male kin carry the family
name, but they will also hold the ownership of familys property and gain greater
power and prestige as the breadwinner of the family. However, it is important to
note that this claim is essentially a generalisation, and in order to avoid from
falling into such a trap, I will explain in a later section how several parts of this
generalising statementwill be proved as inaccurate.
36
3.2.1.3. Body politics as a catalyst for male dominance

The violence and coercion that serve as a means of body politics used to control
and objectify women ultimately lead to patriarchal dominance. The concept of
community is the nexus that outlines societies wherein Islam and Muslims are
prevalent (Aslan, 2006). Therefore, such dominance is apparent within each layer
of the community, of which the most basic unit is the family. In the private sphere
of the family, the patriarch holds arbitrary power over the other younger males,
females and children (Moghadam, 2004).As a result, this led to Malihas, Mahas
mother, statement, What do you expect? He (Daffash) is a boy. Allah placed him
a step higher. We must accept Allahs verdict (Pillars of Salt, p. 33). This
assertion, declared in such an unwavering conviction, is in fact extremely
erroneous. Nowhere in the Quran is it mentioned that women are designated as
inferior to men, or that they should suffer from the original sin for bringing about
the Fall. Conversely, the Quran acknowledges both men and womens status of
agency and responsibility as equal human beings (Barlas, 2001). That such a
repressive belief is assumed to be Islamic is the result of patriarchal misreadings
of the Quran instead of accurate understanding of Islam itself, and it is influenced
by pre-existing patriarchal cultures within society.
Mahas father further strengthened the misplaced emphasis on males
superiority, My daughter, you are better than that scoundrel brother of yours. I
wish you were a man because the land must go to its ploughman(173). Although
the father, as the patriarch of the household, holds the highest power, Daffash as
the only son in the family enjoyed a considerable amount of power over the
females, his mother and sister. This is due to Daffashs superior position as a man,
his privilege as the only son and ploughman, and ultimately the heir of the
patrilineal family. The mother, thus, was placed in a difficult position. As a
mother, Maliha was responsible for the caretaking of her children, yet she was
also hindered by the arbitrary stratification of gender that operated even within the
family, the smallest unit of patriarchal society. In this context, since the mother
had died, it does not allow us to make a further and detailed analysis on the power
relation between Maliha and her son. On the other hand, as the only daughter in
the family, Maha was educated since infant, particularly by her mother, to
37
acknowledge the superior power that her brother had and to let him do whatever
he pleased, even if it means that she should suffer from his physical and emotional
harassments. Therefore, it is observable that both Maliha and Maha are placed
relatively low in the power structure within the family, as shown by how Maliha
acknowledged the power her son has over her and forced her daughter to
acknowledge the same thing.
It is important to note, however, that the male hierarchy within the house
is still subject to arbitrary changes. While the head of the household is originally
and more commonly the father, the oldest son, as the heir of the family, will
replace the fathers position and enjoy the same power that the father once held
over the other family members. In such cases, in the acknowledgement of the
transfer of power, the father will become inferior to the son. When Daffash
decided to leave the house because of his fury that Maha had humiliated him in
front of his important friends, his father begged him to stay, Maha will never
repeat what she did again. Maha has repented. You are the master of the house.
No one will disobey you(173-174). Despite his personal contempt for his son
and the fact that Daffash had just beaten up his only daughter, Sheikh Nimer
considered it more important that his heir stay in the house. Daffashs act of
leaving was seen as a threat to the stability of power in the household and as a
disgrace to the reputation of his family. This shows that the position of power had
shifted. While the father had originally held the highest power, along with his
aging and deteriorating health, the power of the patriarch shifted to Daffash
instead. The consequence that Daffash may potentially do harm to his daughter
and his grandson should he remain under the same roof was considered to be less
important than the former occurrence. Their situation points to the conclusion that
male dominance leads to female vulnerability. The family, the domestic/private
sphere that is often believed to be the female sanctuary, often fails to provide her
with a system of justice and security that is vital for her wellbeing. Womens
protection is thus dependent on the mercy of their male counterparts.
Such reliance on the stronger male for protection, however acquiescent it
is, is not restricted to the domestic sphere. As Islam is a quintessentially
communal religion, Islamic/Muslim societies would usually place a stronger
38
emphasis on the protection of the community rather than the autonomy of the
individual (Aslan, 2006). This point was illustrated in Mahas description of how,
during the night, Raai, the watchman, was busily protecting the honor of the
women of the tribe (Pillars of Salt, p. 148). It is worthy to note that in this
situation, the honour of numerous girls and women of the tribe is illustrated to
be protected by a single man. According to Abdo (2009, p. 259) Arabs take
pride in protecting their womens honour and safety. Echoing my previous
arguments, a womans honour serves as a synecdoche of the whole tribes honour
and reputation, which Raai was protecting from external infiltrators. This
culturally sanctioned practice of protecting womens honour, however, failed to
protect Maha when on a dark night she was approached by Sheikh Talib, who
would have possibly harassed her and stained her honour, had she not defended
herself by pushing him away and fleeing:
Out of the darkness, a wide cloak appeared. In the name of Allah!
Who is it?
Me, Sheikh Talib. What are you doing here at this hour of the night?
I am going back home.
Why alone?
Because
He held my hand and said, Poor widow. I did not want to be touched. I
stepped back. [] He tried to pull me closer to him. Damn that hour. I
pushed him with all my might. (163)
This irony was not lost on Maha, who was later forced by her brother and
other influential male figures to accept Sheikh Talibs hand in marriage after her
husband had died. Not only was her autonomy of choice negotiated and
undermined by the male figures that held power over her, both at the domestic
sphere (i.e. her brother) and at the public sphere (i.e. Imam Rajab, the tribes
imam or religious leader), but her body was treated as a commodity that could be
offered and sold to any man that were interested in it. While the female body
was originally perceived to be first her familys and subsequently her husbands,
with the death of her husband, Mahas body was deemed by the society to once
again belong under the ownership of her family. Such commodification is thus
carried out by both the family and public, even regarding the most private affairs,
such as the body.
39
The manipulation of power that is exerted on women also occurs in legal

matters. Although women have the legal right to inherit and own property, this
right is often abused and overidden by their more powerful male relatives
(Moghadam, 2004). This act of subordination was apparent when Maha, who had
eventually inherited the land and house from her father, was hindered to exert her
right of the inheritance by her brother, Daffash. The right that she legally owned
to the property was reduced to an ever-changing approval and disapproval of her
remaining male relative, whose judgement on her access to the property
constantly shifted based on his mood and personal needs. She was forced to
acknowledge his superiority over her, as apparent in the pressure that Daffash
exerted on her to admit that the house and land were his, and ultimately forced her
to give them up altogether:
You have a decent house. [] I just came to inspect my property.
Your property?Since when?
Little sister. It is my property. [] Sign this. It is a deed of cession. You
will give me your share of the land.
I will keep what my father gave me.
No. You will stamp this piece of paper with your precious thumb.
I will do no such thing. (201-202)
Daffashs reference to the ownership of the house and the land constantly
changed. He had first referred to the house as his, then Mahas, then within the
same sentence, he claimed ownership over the land (which also included the
house). This seemingly inconsistency confirms that, despite Daffash knowing that
the property was rightfully inherited by his sister, he refused to acknowledge it,
based on his assertion that it was the male heir of the family who should be
prioritised. In response to Mahas initial objection, he threatened to kill her (202)
but ultimately resorted to claiming that he was marrying her off to Sheikh Talib
(203). His despotic demand of the property, however unlawful and unethical, was
not without support, as the witnesses of her fathers will, Imam Rajab and Raai,
eventually asserted Daffashs claim of the property. This illustration demonstrates
how the arbitrary power within the private and public spheres in patriarchal
society is a privilege owned by the stronger males. Despite the differences of each
male character and their personal belief or attitude, eventually they are expected
40
to perform and conform to the construction of power for the larger interest of
maintaining the fabric of the (patriarchal) society.
3.2.2. Challenging the Construction of Body Politics
Caldwell and Kandiyoti (cited in Moghadam, 2004) claimed that the family
structure in the Middle East is one that is largely patriarchal.This is the reason
why usuallyonly male heirs will receive the advantage of learning to ride, shoot
and drive, the masculine skills that are largely attributed to men. The female
heirs, whose main duties will merely be restricted to the private sphere, are
believed to be less desired in the patrilineal society. However, the character of
Maha is pictured to repeatedly challenge such restrictive gender constructions.
She recounted her childhood in which her father taught her to shoot and go
hunting, the skills believed to be reserved for men, whereas her brother Daffash
preferred to stay at home. According to her father, the daughter of the tiger of the
desert must be a tigress (Pillars of Salt, p. 11) and this seemed to build in her a
determination to stand for herself as a strong Bedouin woman. This was proven by
Mahas strong reaction when her best friend, Nasra, came to her after she was
raped by Daffash.
My friend had lost her virginity, her honor, her life. She was nothing now.
No longer a virgin, absolutely nothing.A piece of flesh.A cheap whore.
[] Daggers in my heart.
Daffash, son of Maliha, I will drink your blood. I tucked the end of my
dress into my trousers and marched into our house holding Nasras wrist
firmly. [] I would kill that mule and save the women of Hamia.
[] I pulled the English rifle off the wall, unhooked the safety-catch, and
pointed it at my brother who pretended to be asleep.
I dug the metal barrel between his ribs and shouted, Wake up, you dog,
and see with your own eyes how I am going to kill you.(pp. 11-12).
Mahas devastation upon knowing that Nasra had been raped and lost her
virginity showed how she acquiesced to the societys construction about womens
purity. However, at the same time, her reaction afterwards, as she threatened her
brother with a rifle and addressed him with profanity, showed a masculine quality
that was beyond the femininity expected from her. However, Nasra prevented her
from killing Daffash, and Maha was devastated even further when her father
41
reproached Daffash yet also reprimanded Nasra, saying that she should not have
tempted him. The reaction of the father, as the patriarch in the family, reflected
and perpetuated the patriarchal attitude that exists in the society: in the case of
rape, men are often forgiven because male sexuality is acknowledged, while
ironically women and their bodies are condemned for being a source of
temptation. As the father had saved Maha and Nasra from being shot by
Daffash, his position as a saviour with power enabled the doctrine to be
internalised by the victim of rape, Nasra. On the other hand, not only did Maha
fail to kill her brother and save the women of Hamia as she swore to do, but she
also had to face the fact that it was always women who were put to blame in cases
of rape. Thus, Maha ultimately failed to deconstruct the male construction of
femininity that existed in society.
The male construction of femininity as manifested by Maha is also
apparent from her relationship with Harb, her husband. At the beginning of their
clandestine courtship, Harb was described to visit Maha while she was milking
her cow, and to whom her first response was, What are you doing here? If
Daffash, my brother, sees you, he will kill us both (9). Knowing that Maha was
not seriously objecting him, Harb teased her instead by calling her my beautiful
mare and requested that she meet him that night.
Maha, I want to see you tonight.
Are you mad? For a girl to be out at night is a crime of honor. They will
shoot me between the eyes.
I will protect you, deer-eyes.
No.
I want to marry you. I pulled the shawl tightly around my breasts and
shook my head.(10)
The dialogue above shows that the dominant construction of femininity requires a
woman to be chaste, pure and perennially mindful of her honour. It is thus out of
the question for a woman to be seen outside at night with a man who is not her
relative, as it would be a serious crime to her and her familys honour. Therefore,
a woman would be objected to a punishment from her family, such as honourkilling, as pictured in Mahas statement that she would be shot between the eyes.
However, although the refusal seemed to be a result of fear for the
awaiting consequences, Mahas personal reflections indicated that this was not the
42
case. Immediately after refusing Harbs request and his offer of protection and
marriage, she was described as thinking, The women who loved my brother
Daffash, who sneaked out stealthily in the middle of the night to meet him, were
fools. Stupid idiots who risked honor for love. Did Harb think that Maha, too, the
daughter of Maliha, was a fool? (10). This showed Mahas criticism of womens
romantic illusion of men and love, which caused them to sacrifice themselves for
men that are not worth the risk. She was adamant in her belief that as a strong and
independent Bedouin woman, she should not exchange her honour for mens
desire. Such a strong judgement indicated Mahas strong principles and that her
decisions were not influenced by external factors such as intrafamily femicide11,
but her clear conscience. Harbs offer of protection did not persuade her to trade
her values, indicating that she was an individual capable of self-defence and logic.
Furthermore, Mahas refusal of Harbs light-hearted proposal of marriage would
seem odd in a patriarchal society in which marriage and motherhood are valued as
womens true vocation. This indicates that Maha valued herself higher than the
demeaning mores about women, as she later referred to herself as a bedouin
woman, free like a swallow and as courageous as my grandmother Sabha (14).
Thus, by exercising her right to object to the wishes of men, she placed herself on
an equal position with Harb.
This is not to say that Maha did not question her own decision and
judgement. Afterwards, Maha was described to blame her late mother for
teaching her to not give in to men and wondered whether she should have listened
to her heart (13). Mahas desire for Harb was apparent in her statement, What I
yearned for was Harbs arms(13). Furthermore, it is interesting to note her last
action in the aforementioned dialogue between her and Harb, where he invited her
to meet him at midnight, which was to pull the shawl she was wrapping around
her breasts. This seemingly insignificant action that followed Harbs avowal of
marriage could be interpreted that, by showing a defensive manner, Maha was not
only trying to protect herself from Harb she was also trying to control herself
11
This term was particularly used by Faqir in her 2001 essay, where she studied the case of honour
killings as a form of intrafamily femidice in defense of honour. See Fadia Faqir, Intrafamily
femicide in defense of honour: a case of Jordan, Third World Quarterly, Vol. 22, No. 1 (Feb.,
2001), pp. 65-82.
43
against the temptation of Harbs proposal, which might have been an empty
promise to lure her, and curb her own desires. The shawl here does not only
adhere to its commonly understood function, which is a sartorial choice of
accessory, but it also has a political connotation: to hinder the observing male
from an access to the female body behind the shawl, signifying a boundary that
both parties could not trespass. This is strengthened by Yeenolu (1998, p. 557),
who claimed that the veil ensures a sense of invisibility and challenges the
omnipotent male gaze from an access to what is behind the veil. On the other
hand, by marking the boundary that existed between them or in this case, a
shawl Maha was warning both Harb and herself about the sexual segregation
that stood between them as an unmarried couple. This shows that a sexual tension
was interplaying between Maha and Harb, signalling that the veiled female is as
sexually active as the male. It is the female, however, that must keep in mind the
moral codes within society and protect her virtue and purity from male desire.
Mahas firm stance was rewarded soon after, when her father came with
news of Harbs proposal of marriage. However, even on the day of their
engagement, Maha insisted to uphold her defensive attitude towards Harb, the
man she silently vowed to be the love of her life. This is demonstrated by the
following dialogue:
[Harb] grabbed my wrist and whispered in the darkness, I miss those
brown eyes. Our wedding will be next Friday. Prepare yourself, my
bride! I shook my head, snatched my hand out of his, and walked back to
the tent [] (24)
Although Mahas fierce act to her fianc contradicted her inner feelings, it is
obvious that she deemed it important to act as such. The reason for this may be so
that no one would witness her acting improperly and failing to preserve her purity.
Harbs action of grabbing Mahas wrist could be interpreted as a demonstration
of his desire and attempt to have Maha under his control. By snatching her hand
out of Harbs, Maha showed that she had a sense of agency and, thus, she
challenged his intimidating gesture and exercised her right to control her own
body.
Mahas exercise of agency was proven once again during her wedding
night. Arab marriage customs at the time required that, after the wedding
44
ceremony, the bride and groom should be escorted to their room, where the
attendants of the wedding outside the room would dance and sing while waiting
for the groom to consummate the marriage. Subsequently, the bridegroom should
present a sheet stained with his brides blood as proof of her virginity to the
attendants. The sheet would be paraded throughout the town to the family of the
brides house, which would ensure the honour of the bride and her family
(Satterfield, p. 12). However, when Harb failed to consummate their marriage
because of the high expectation of the whole tribe and his demanding mother who
kept knocking on the door, Maha realised that she had to take control of the
situation.
I was thinking of my honor. I was a virgin: I had the blood in me, but Harb
was the one to spill it. [] What if they were never given the sheet with
blood on it? They will think I had no honor. The shame of it will kill my
father. []
Harbs face was pale when he said with difficulty, Maha, I cannot do it.
I suddenly smiled and said, We can fool them.
Thats impossible! he sighed.
Prick my little finger with the end of your dagger
No, I will not.
It is my blood they are after.
I just cannot hurt you on our wedding night.
I snatched the dagger and nicked the tip of my finger in order to not bleed
too much. While wiping the blood I saw tears captured in my husbands
eyes. He kissed my hand and said that he didnt want me to suffer, that he
loved every part of me, even my little finger. (45)
The situation described in the dialogue pictured the structure of power
between Maha, Harb, and the rest of the tribe. The tribe held the highest power
over the couple. Harb, as the male, was expected to perform the active role, while
Maha, as the female whose body had to be proven pure, was expected to be the
passive object, earning the lowest rank in this structure of power. Despite her
difficult position, Mahas wit proves that she refused to passively succumb to the
awaiting condemnation from the society when Harb failed to prove her virginity.
By cutting the tip of her finger and thus taking control of her own body, she
succeeded in demonstrating an attempt to deconstruct the structure of power that
occurred between herself and both Harb and society at that particular moment.
The aforementioned illustration shows how Maha successfully defined her
position in her marriage from the start. In The Subject and Power, Foucault (1982,
45
p. 781) stated that power makes individuals as subjects by denoting their

individuality and identity. The term subject itself refers to the implication that
one is subject to someone else by control and dependence and tied to his own
identity by conscience or self-knowledge (Foucault, 1982). By consciously
politicising her body and taking full control over it for her own benefit, Maha
exercised a form of power that marked her individuality and independence
hence, a subject. By demonstrating her capability to protect both of her honour
and her husbands, she transcended the limit of a traditional housewife who is
subject to the protection and control of her husband at all times.
Moreover, Mahas exercise of power did not only affirm her status, but it
also helped her gain Harbs respect. A form of power does not merely mark ones
individuality, it also imposes a law of truth on that person that should be
recognised and acknowledged by the others (Foucault, 1982). In this case, Mahas
law of truth was her immediate analysis of the situation, by telling Harb that
they could fool the people. This notion was initially rejected by Harbs two
objections: Its impossible and No, I will not. However, his third response, I
just dont want to hurt you on our wedding night,implied that he had
acknowledged that she was right, although he was still reluctant to take part in it.
Harbs submissive attitude about the incident further confirmed Mahas
demonstration of power and status, challenging Harbs domination as the husband
and exposing him to the possibility of subjugation. Nevertheless, Harbs reaction
after that can be analysed as more than a simple expression of tenderness. The
action of kissing Mahas hand and declaring that he did not wish to see her suffer
once again restored him to his place as a protector and subject. It can be
concluded that this illustration demonstrated that in the marriage of Harb and
Maha there were two subjects with equal status, each being a protector for the
other.
The last point is illustrated further in the situation when Harb came home
after battling against the English.
He buried his face in my chest and said We had to withdraw. We had to
withdraw. I pressed his head to my chest. I felt helpless. Harb needed my
support. []
Harb, I am your supporter.
46
Lie beside me, deer-eyes. He held my waist tightly with his left arm. I
touched his tired eyes with my lips then licked the exhaustion out of his
lashes. He kissed my neck and I felt that he needed me, he yearned for
rest, for peace. I helped him take off his clothes and stripped myself and
made love to him gently, lightly like a feather flowing and landing on a
velvet pillow, a feather carried by the lazy breeze of hot summer nights. I
curled around him to keep him warm, protect him and save him from the
gushing wind
(pp. 83-84)
In this dialogue, the equal partnership between Harb and Maha is suggested when
Harb sought Maha to share his grief of the defeat he suffered from. Maha once
again used her body to transcend its physical and bodily limit. In the sexual
intercourse with her husband, Maha used her body to provide the rest and peace
that he yearned and the protection that he needed. The female body did not
conform to its traditional biological and aesthetical functions, as a means of
reproduction and object of the male gaze.
Thus, the sexual intercourse she performed did not adhere to the traditional
function of procreation, but to fulfil psychological functions. In this case, Maha,
through her body, actively performed as a guardian and protector, the masculine
roles that are commonly reserved for men. The psychological function of sex is to
reach a unity in the relationship in order to understand the most private side of the
partner emotionally, physically, and intellectually. If this psychological function
is fulfilled within the sexual relationship, a bond based on sharing and
understanding, and not on controlling or oppressing the other, will be built (Junus,
2012). Through her act, Maha succeeded to achieve such psychological functions,
while simultaneously performing her sense of agency and challenging Harbs
masculine superiority.
However, such superiority on her side was challenged afterwards by her
own act of crying upon her husbands declaration:
My love for you is frightening, Maha. Like Antar Ibn Shahad, I gallop
towards metal eagles because I see a glimpse of your face there, our
childrens faces and the high foreheads of the Arabs.
My bottled tears rushed up to my eyes and slid down my face recklessly.
By the soul of my grandmother Sabha, I will give you a son.
Dont cry. I fight in order not to see you crying. Arab mares never cry.
(84)
47
This act allowed Harb to assert his commitment to protecting her by fighting in
the battle. Harbs gesture enabled him to maintain the role as a husband, who
would fight not to see [his wife] cry. On the other hand, Maha relapsed instead
into the promise that she would give him a son, an emotional response which
resulted out of the imposed guilt by the external environment. Harb, however,
did not pressure her nor address the issue further. Instead, he beckoned her not to
cry and compared her to Arab mares. In the nomadic Arab Bedouin tribes,
Arabian horses are greatly prized, to the extent that measures of protection are
carried out to protect them from theft. The ability to own and protect their horses
are a great source of pride for Bedouin horsemen; where the same thing applies
for their attitude to women. Being a horseman himself, Harb used that metaphor
for Maha to express how important and prized she was to him, as well as to signal
the pride he takes in being able to protect his treasured Maha with competence
and respect. Therefore, I argue that the aforementioned analyses demonstrate that,
instead of strictly adhering to the traditional roles within the family, Harbs and
Mahas marriage consisted of an equal partnership, in which both individuals are
acknowledged as equal.
3.3.
Construction of Body Politics on the Character of Um Saad
I have mentioned earlier that Pillars of Salt highlights the lives of two Arab
women, Maha and Um Saad, both of whom are narrated by Maha. Um Saad was,
as she defined herself, an urban woman from Amman, the daughter of a Syrian
immigrant, who later became Mahas roommate in Fuhais mental hospital. The
significance of Um Saad in this novel is demonstrated by the large portion of the
novel that is dedicated to her life story. In this part of the chapter, I analyse how
the manifestation of body politics through the character of Um Saad, who was
also referred to as Haniyyeh, resulted in a sense of detachment from the body. I
then observe through close reading how this caused Um Saad to grapple with her
identity. This was subsequently manipulated by the stronger figures in her
environment to enforce their power and control over her, ultimately easing their
attempt to coerce her to be a subaltern object under the patriarchal hierarchy.
48
Through the analysis on her character, along with Mahas character, it will enable
us to see more clearly the binary oppositions between both of their situations (e.g.
traditional ideas of the countryside tribes and the modern ideas on the citydwellers), and their influences on the construction of body politics.
3.3.1. Um Saad and the Construction of the Body
3.3.1.1. Displacement from the body
In Pillars of Salt, Um Saads status as a city dweller is juxtaposed with Mahas
status as a villager and farmer. Maha had lived all her life as a Bedouin in the
deeper part of Jordan, while the former is a Syrian refugee who spent most of her
life in Amman. The challenges that Um Saad experienced, influenced by her city
life, vary widely with those of Mahas, although generally their principles are on a
par with each other. One of the variations is the gender construction that is
outlined in the middle class mores of the city people. Such an enforced gender
construction often leads to alienation from ones own body, as I explain in this
section.
In Feminine Mystique (1963), Betty Friedan pointed out the unnamed
problem that a great number of women was facing: a contradictive dissatisfaction
of the domestic life that women pursued as part of her feminine fulfilment. The
Freudian sophistication ruled that women could desire no greater destiny than to
glory in their own femininity (Friedan, 1963), so middle class women were only
concerned with what it meant to be feminine and what femininity was all about.
Such a construction of femininity required women, among others, to catch a man
and marry, to dress, look, and act more feminine and make marriage more
exciting, to keep their husbands from dying young and their sons from growing
into delinquents and women were taught that feminine women should not wish to
pursue careers and higher education, or fight for political rights, all of which were
fought for by old-fashioned feminists (pp. 15-16). Thus, females femininity was
in every way the opposite of the construction of male masculinity.
Coming from a middle class family from the city, Um Saad mentioned
how, in her childhood, her heart was full of hopes of a delightful tomorrow; a
tomorrow that would be full of candy-floss, swings, new clothes and some
49
freedom (18). This idea of happiness greatly differs from Mahas, which was
mostly based on nature and country life. The ideals of a perfect life in a city
subsequently influenced the construction of an ideal, perfect female. Thus, since
childhood, a girl is constantly enticed with feminine and girly attributes, such
as the dress with frills and embroidered front, which Um Saad described.
Growing older, the citys females are then persistently exposed to various kinds of
beauty products and adornments, which initiate in them the perennial desire to
adorn and beautify their female bodies. This is described through Um Saads
reflection with Maha:
Bedouin women are different. Arent they? They never use creams and
rubbish. Do they? [] They are wiser than us. We wax our legs, cut our
hair, line our eyes, paint our lips. The problem is men never notice the
change. Um Gharib used to say that we are just vessels. That is how men
see us. That is what men care about. (159)
A reference to the vessel in the aforementioned monologue is primarily made as
a metaphor of the female body. While it is deemed important that females adorn
their vessels to present themselves in the best form before (patriarchal) society,
they simultaneously recognise the fact that such adornments, or attempts to adorn,
shall never suffice, especially in the eyes of men. Thus, the pre-determined failure
to fulfil and satisfy such desires and demands resulted in self-loathing
dissatisfaction and a sense of displacement from the body.
This sense of alienation from the body started from Um Saads youth.
When she was forbidden by her father to continue her schooling, he stated that the
reason for it was because she was growing up. Um Saad, however, reflected that
she hated growing up, [she] wanted to push [her] body back to its former shape
(39). It is clear that, even as an adolescent, Um Saad understood that the concept
of growing up did not merely refer to the process of growing older, but also to her
physical development as a female. By growing up, Um Saads predetermined
place in the hierarchy of power within the family was also being emphasised.
Moreover, with the development of her body, she was also losing more and more
of the freedom she once had as a child. Thus, the feeling of mixed resentment and
fascination grew towards all that is related to sexual and biological developments.
50
Such mixed feelings that Um Saad had for her body was more or less
perpetuated by the construction that was existent in her society. The ideal woman
was pictured in a song she overheard at night: Dark-haired beauty/ Oh darkhaired beauty/ You are the glass/ And your lips are wine (79). The glass is the
embodiment of the female body, having the qualities of being delicate, breakable
and elegant. On the other hand, the metaphor of the lips as the wine symbolises
the entrance to the body, which is a vessel that contains the wine. Therefore,
the wine does not refer merely to the lips alone because, by sipping the wine,
one is experiencing the wholeness of the female sexuality itself. These metaphors
refer to women as desirable sexual objects, which leads to young Um Saads
vision of an ideal, desirable body: Oh, I wanted all of these. I wished I had round
hips like Hind Roustom. [] I had no hips, nothing (80) and For love I wanted
to be taller, whiter, and more rounded(72). The compulsion to be desirable
ironically stemmed from the displacement she felt from her own body, which
failed to serve its constructed purpose: to be valued and desired.
After she had reached sexual maturity, the self-consciousness that Um
Saad felt, perpetuated by her fathers constant reminder, did not disappear. This is
described in the following illustration:
Whenever I passed by his store, I used wrap the mulaya tightly around my
chest. I wanted to hide my breast. My father used to say, You are not a
child anymore. Your breasts are as big as melons. I was really shy of my
melons. I used to bend my back to hide them, bury them in my chest. (72)
Her struggle to deal with demands regarding her body indicates how the female
body is often used both as a site of struggle and objectification. By highlighting
the fact that she had breasts as big as melons, her father drew attention to her
difference as a female or in other words, her Otherness. The comparison to
melons, which were made in such a crude way, was intended to single her out for
her physical singularity and cause shame and guilt. As such, her father bounded
her in a position where she was a signifier for the male other due to her lack of
phallus, and had to be subjected to the sexing of a female infant (Mulvey, 1998,
p. 59). Being punished for being different and for being a woman, Um Saad
experienced a growing animosity for her body. This indication of contempt for her
51
own body was further perpetuated when she got married and found herself
pregnant:
I dont know how on earth I got pregnant. My body took over and started
swelling and swelling like giant balloon the English flew over the Castle
Mountain. [] I hated my body, my sticking-out navel and the baby
which was sucking my insides. [] I used to close my eyes, shut my nose
and hand my body to Allah. (122)
The biological changes and the effects they had on her caused Um Saad to feel
powerless and that she was losing control of her own body, to the extent that she
tried to deny the existence of her being within her body and surrender herself to
God. The pain she felt all over her body in a way demystified the mystification of
female sexuality she found that her pain was real, her body was inescapable, and
yet it does not belong to her. Her body belonged to her father, then to her
husband, and subsequently the child she is carrying symbolising the female
roles of childhood, wifehood, and motherhood. All this served to perpetuate her
existing dissatisfaction with her body.
The displeasure with her own body then triggered another kind of
pleasure: the pleasure in looking (Mulvey, 1999). Um Saad began to derive a
sense of pleasure of the Gaze, in which she could experience the freedom she
had never been entitled to through the freedom that the objects of the gaze were
enjoying. Her first experience of the gaze occurred in her first experience of
watching a film.
Farid al-Attrash appeared on the screen and a funny feeling hit me as if I
had lost the lower part of my body. [...] One night, he drove her back home
and kissed her gently on the lips. The lower part of my body fell down to
the floor. I felt like stretching my hands to hold my thighs and hips. I
couldnt. (49)
Laura Mulvey (1999, p. 60) stated that the cinema offers a number of pleasure,
one of which is scopophilia, or the pleasure in looking. Not being able to
experience the pleasure of being looked at, which Um Saad clearly felt
uncomfortable with, she experienced pleasure from the opposite formation. The
funny feeling that she described was explained more clearly in the following
passage. When she came home, Um Saad felt the strong desire to hold control of
her body as heroine in the film did.
52
I felt like falling to my knees; I, Hanniyyeh Um Saad, felt like calling

someones name; I felt like stroking something; I felt like reaching out to
touch, to fondle. I wanted to rub my nose on somebodys chin. All I
managed to do in that long, sweaty night was to caress myself and
embrace the darkness. (50)
The pleasure that Um Saad gained from looking led to sexual longings and
fantasies which resulted from her unhappy marriage and her sexual dissatisfaction
with her husband. According to Ketu Katrak, frustration and unhappiness within
marriage may lead to a tendency of fantasising, idealising and romanticising love
and sexuality (2007, p. 170), which is shown by Um Saads resort to selfindulgence (i.e. caressing herself) upon the realisation that her fantasies with an
ideal lover are unattainable.
Another instance of this claim is demonstrated during her mothers event
at the house. Um Saad declared to Maha that she used to have great fun at such
events, yet as she could not join the womens merriment, she used to sit behind
the big black stove and squeeze her thin body there (94). Although her two
statements seem to be of contrast to each other, it actually indicates that Um Saad
was more accustomed to her invisibility. This is in align with the early feminists
claim that, even in sitting or walking, the female subject is self-consciously not
allowing herself to transcend the limits of the body as an object (Young, cited in
Mills 1996). Moreover, Wex (cited in Mills, 1996) stated that women attempt to
take up as little space as possible by positioning their bodies in a restricted
fashion. Realising her rank in the power relations that were at play within that
room as the youngest female and being accustomed to objectification by the
stronger figures in her environment, Um Saad attempted to draw as little attention
as possible to her objectified body. Instead, she had more fun by merely
observing the adult women dancing and enjoying themselves.
This is not to suggest that Um Saad suffered from a form of voyeurism; it
is merely to suggest that the lack of control over her body distanced her from her
own body. Consequently, the control that other people have over their bodies
fascinated her in such a way that she desired to mirror others self-control or even
become another person, as illustrated in the following passage:
As soon as she entered the room, Um Rida used to take off her veil, her
black cape, and her thick black tights and throw them on the floor with
53
disgust. She would stand half-naked in her brocaded see-through dress,

and would start shaking her belly and wiggling her hips. I wanted to be
like her. I wanted to show my melons. (95)
The sense of freedom that Um Rida experienced by showing and moving her body
mirrored the sense of control that Um Saad so longed to have, but was restrained
from. As such, she compared her own situation as a young girl with little power,
to Um Ridas, who as an adult possessed a higher autonomy. The radical change
of her attitude on showing her breasts, from wanting to hide them to wanting to
show them, represents her confusion of her position regarding the body.
Moreover, she gained the impression that once she was an adult, she would be
able to overcome the feeling of displacement she experienced. Thus, when Um
Saad stated that, Um Ridas white skin was so smooth that I used to touch her
arm whenever possible (95), she was also indicating her desire to accelerate her
growth process and be Um Rida, or in other words, the adult with power that
Um Rida was.
However, Um Saad soon found out that developing into an adult was not
necessarily the answer to her issues with the female body. Instead, her
dissatisfaction developed, and she was constantly anxious of the physical factors
of growing older:
I stopped dreaming about having firmer breasts, longer legs, and round
lips. I just wanted a cream which might stop the net of days spreading over
my face. (159)
[I] took off all my clothes, and stood in front of the mirror. My belly was
big, my breasts almost touched my waist line, my black hair was gray, and
my face was wrinkled. (151)
The horror she felt when she realised that her age had started to take its toll on her
was further perpetuated when her husband came home with a new wife, whom she
described as a young, artificially blonde woman in high heels whose silk dress
clung to her body like smooth skin (178). In short, her husbands second wife
was everything she was not. Furthermore, when her husband started beating her
the next day and she spurted, Have you no respect for my gray hair?, he
responded that he got married again because of her grey hair. Thus, she
internalised that it was her grey hair that was responsible (179) and that it was
because she was aging that she was no longer attractive to her husband. This
54
reflection caused her to state helplessly, What can I do? Can you check the flow
of days and the spread of gray hair.They are unstoppable (179).
What started as a feeling of displacement from her body transformed
further into a form of self-loathing. Far from being the manifestation of her being,
Um Saad blamed her body instead as the reason of all her miseries hence, Um
Saads grapple with identity, as she indicated in her statement: My heart fidgeted
in my chest and yearned to roll out of my body, roll into another beautiful body
and another identity (151). This self-denunciating statement regarding her body,
in Benoits (2007, p. 45) words, locks the displaced individual in a void or nonspace, from which there is no escape. As a stranger to her own body, Um Saad
experienced a dislocation of identity and became estranged from her body,
constantly searching for a way to depart her body. This was further emphasised
by her constant wishes to slip into another identity (80), roll into another
identity (101), cast off her identity like dirty underwear (80), and depart this
body (101). However, Um Saad realised that there was no escape from her
corporeal being, and she began to manipulate her body as a site of struggle that
voiced her suffering and despair, as will be explained in the next subchapter.
3.3.1.2. Controlling the female body

A significant attempt to control that marks Um Saads life is the sartorial
regulations that were exerted on Arab city women during the time before the
British Mandate, which was the time setting of the novel. The veil, nowadays
widely judged to be the symbol of Islam, or more specifically Muslim women, is
often believed to be the main means of oppression on Muslim women and a
signifier of their backwardness and Otherness. Haniyyeh, the first name of Um
Saad, is perhaps a classic illustration of such stereotypes. During her childhood,
Um Saad was made by her mother to wear a long black skirt, cape, headscarf, and
mask. Um Saad vividly illustrated the discomfort she experienced as a child
forced to observe the traditional outfit: hot, masked, and unable to breathe, I
walked to the kutab. I could barely see the sidewalk, could not distinguish the
faces of passers-by(38)and she described her utter relief when her covered, yet
unmasked, female teacher told her to take the mask off, as it blocked Haniyyehs
55
sight. However, Haniyyeh eventually began to regularly wear the traditional

clothing as she illustrated how she fixed the cape, mask, and veil and descended
the narrow steps of [her] house (48) before she went to the cinema with her
friends.
Although the act of enforcing a piece of clothing that fails to provide
comfort along with the security that it offers could be indeed seen as oppressive,
it is important to note that such an enforcement is based more on societal mores
than religious obligations (Ahmed, 1992). This was also strengthened by the
subsequent sartorial demands that followed after that. On a day when her mother
invited guests to their house, after she spent half the day with the rigorous work of
cleaning up and preparing for the feast, she was asked by her mother, who was
somewhat indifferent of the labour Haniyyeh had endured, to wear something
decent. Taking into account the communal nature of Arab societies, it is
unsurprising that people of the city desired to always look their best and
presentable in certain situations such as in all-women events. In most situations,
however, they dress fully clad in black to observe modesty and draw less attention
to themselves in the streets.
This certain cultural practice of dressing was especially significant when
Haniyyeh had reached puberty. Her father forbade her to continue going to school
and told stay at home with her mother instead, merely because he claimed that she
was growing up. School was Haniyyehs private sanctuary, where she was able
to quench her thirst of knowledge and socialise with girls of her age outside the
house. Her fathers strict mandate against her schooling, which Haniyyeh was
forced to acquiesce to, resulted in a feeling of resentment of her biological growth
and a displacement from her body. Ironically, this feeling never left and instead
continued to develop even until her later years.
It is exactly such self-loath and insecurity, coupled with the construction
that required her to look presentable and attractive, which manifested into the
desire to beautify herself. I argue, however, that this desire was subsequently
manipulated into an attempt to control and coerce her body, and thus, her being.
Therefore, when Haniyyeh was told to put on the best dress she had (although
eventually her mother lent Haniyyeh her own dress to wear), and was even
56
allowed to put on make-up, what she formerly thought was an act of freedom
turned out to be the extreme opposite. Haniyyeh was told by her mother that they
were invited to a wedding, and when they arrived at the house of the wedding, she
turned to her father and asked, Whose wedding is it? [Her] father looked [her] in
the eye and said, Yours (102). This may be particularly ironic when compared to
the western practices, where the usage of make-up reflects the agency of a female
in controlling and adorning her body and sexuality.
The irony where Haniyyeh was misleadingly lured to succumb to another
form of confinement was foreshadowed in her description of her reflection after
she had put on make-up: Shushu the clown with his everlasting white tear sprang
out of the mirror (102). The everlasting white tear on her face serves as a
symbol of the perpetual misery she had to face in life since a girl, whereas the
imagery of the clown symbolises the ridiculous irony of how, by putting on the
make up in order to beautify herself, she was unconsciously conforming to both
her parents undisclosed plan of marriage and societal gender construction.
However, it was ironic how Haniyyeh perceived marriage as a greater doom than
what she frantically proposed to her father: to be his slave girl for the rest of [her]
life (108) in exchange for the forced marriage. That she voluntarily offered to
trade her freedom rather than to marry a stranger represents her desperate
conviction that, be it as a daughter or as a wife, she would have to suffer
nevertheless.
Um Saad described her life to be constantly filled with oppressive male
figures. Since the beginning, her father was portrayed exactly as the stereotype of
Muslim Arab fathers: harsh, oppressive, intolerant, backward and violent. Um
Saad often referred to her fear of her father, especially in circumstances in which
she did not act accordingly with his wishes and rules of chaste conduct. If
misconduct potentially occurred, she would not be given the benefit of the doubt.
Instead, she had to quietly ensure his violent beating and battering: Without
uttering a word, without opening my mouth, I ate about a hundred lashes. My
fathers belt reduced me to a heap of flayed meat (100). Her father was also
strictly rigid about her moral conducts, which is shown in the illustration of her
father beating her just because she lifted up the shutters in her room to peek at the
57
outside world: Why did you lift up the shutter, girl? My father shouted at me,
and started beating me with his leather belt. [] if my father had seen me [being
kissed by a man], he would have beaten me to death (80). Finally, it was also her
father who rejected the proposal of Muhammad, the Circassian man that Haniyyeh
was secretly in love with, on the base that he was a foreigner, and he married her
off to Abu Saad, an old butcher, instead.
Different from Mahas marriage, Um Saads forced marriage was far from
a happy one. Instead, she was the victim of domestic violence, especially in the
early years of her marriage. Abu Saads character mirrored that of her father,
suggesting a never-ending oppression by stronger males who act as a
synecdoche12 of the perpetuators of female oppression that widely occurs at the
domestic sphere: the home and the family. For instance, Um Saad illustrated her
wedding night with a hint of pain:
I will never forget one thing. At night, the man, my husband, who
afterwards I discovered was called Abu Saad, chased me and ripped my
dress apart. Then he asked me in a weak, thin voice that made the bulk of
his body look like a mistake, Have you had your period? I shook my
head. All the same. (109)
The introduction to her description resembled that of Um Saads recount of her
wedding day: Who wants to remember how my father slapped my face there and
then and pushed me inside the house?(108). Her words: I will never forget one
thing and Who wants to remember how [] exemplify how the female body is
presented as a site of remembrance (Tunca, 2012) or in other words, a site of
memory and trauma.
The bitterness that Um Saad felt was expressed in her statement, Maha,
my sister, my life is like candy-floss, fluffy and full from the outside, empty like
this damned hospital from the inside. And they called the candy-floss girlscurls. It was like my life. A girls life.A fluffy life for half a piaster.Ya-la-la
(19). The simile that compares the candy floss to her life suggests that norms and
construction within society which are enforced upon her are hardly fulfilling.
While she might have succeeded to fulfil the expectations of society as a
12
Synecdoche: a part that serves as a representation of the whole, or vice versa. In this
case, the patriarchs, i.e. father or husband, represent the oppressive practice of patriarchy,
a system that often outlines the domestic sphere.
58
woman, she constantly felt empty inside. The statement, moreover, implies that
Um Saad considered her life as a non-negotiable trade in which she hardly had the
privilege of exercising her right to choose and make decisions as an individual.
Moreover, all the important aspects in Um Saads life were determined by
the more powerful figures, such as her parents and her husband, who did not even
consider asking for her opinion. This manifests Foucaults concept of the docile
body, the (female) body which serves as an easily-available target of power
(cited in Mehta 2004). By the constant physical violence and psychological
demarcation that were exercised upon her, Um Saad was stripped of her defence
mechanisms, ensuring her docility. As a result, by depriving her of her agency of
choice, the stronger male figures demonstrated an attempt to simultaneously
establish their power over her and mould her into the ideal submissive and
obedient daughter, wife and woman that they had in mind.
Um Saad also had to endure further male oppression within the
confinement in the mental hospital. Sharing the same room with Maha, Um Saad
was able to talk and share her life stories, something she had never done before.
However, the doctor in the mental hospital, an Englishman named Dr. Edwards,
frequently commanded her to stop talking and eventually took extreme measures
to control her:
Dr. Edwards entered the room quietly, interrupting Um Saads story. You
never stop talking. He snatched the pink scarf off Um Saads head and
Um Saad objected, There are men in the room. I shouldnt show my hair
to strange men. [] Out of nowhere, the doctor produced a pair of
scissors, and gave them to Salam. Um Saad understood and started
shouting, Not my hair. She held her head protectively with both hands.
[] The English doctor, who came from the land of churches and clubs,
started clipping her hair [] leaving the skull bare. This is what they do to
control us. (208)
It is perhaps worthy to note that, despite Dr. Edwards being a doctor in the mental
hospital, he considered it important enough to personally check on every patient
and ensure that they were under his control, or else, he took the trouble to execute
extensive measures. By snatching Um Saads headscarf and shaving her tresses,
both being the symbols of her female identity, Dr. Edwards was demonstrating
how he was curtailing not just her identity, but also her power, her individuality
59
and her autonomy. The fact that Um Saad tried to maintain her headscarf,
something that she was once enforced to wear, is explained by Asma Barlas
argument (2001, pp. 124-125) that, in the event of colonialism, Muslims
perceived their cultural and religious heritage as a marker of their identities,
which signified their differences from the western colonists. Therefore, these
practices and symbols were re-established, losing the anti-Islamic and oppressive
characteristics that were formerly associated with them. Thus, Dr. Edwards, as the
symbol of western authority in the mental hospital, became a manifestation of the
oppressive colonial ruling and its omnipresent reinforcement of power and
domination.

Despite the constant oppressive construction that society, particularly the
patriarchal figures, exerted on her, I argue that Um Saad still demonstrated an
attempt to challenge such an oppression. Her struggle to obstruct the power and
domination that posited her as the Other was shown in her attempt to challenge
the suffocating body demarcation that was imposed on her, and her rebellion
against the officials of the mental hospitals attempt to control her.
The first act was Um Saads attempt to break free from the oppression that
was exerted upon her body. I have explained before that the body politics that was
exercised on her by the patriarchal society, predominantly her father and husband,
initiated a sense of displacement from her body and caused her to grapple with her
identity. However, after her husband brought home his second wife, Um Saad
began to take drastic measures. Dispelled from her own bedroom into the kitchen,
where she suffered from lack of sleep and heartaches, she started to regularly
leave the suffocating kitchen and pace around her house to get some fresh air.
Soon, what began as an attempt to ease herself from the horror that haunted her
incessantly at home developed into an act of self-liberation:
The pacing became marching and the marching turned into running. []
Run, Haniyyeh. Run. My feet were barely touching the ground when it
happened. Like birds, I fluttered my arms in the air. I slipped out of my skin
60
and rolled into another identity. I was Hind Roustom in a film dancing to
Faraid al-Attrashs tunes. I was young, a well-rounded woman with dyed
hair. [] I felt light, happy, and free. Later on, my husband and two strange
men found me in the Big Mosques yard, pushed my hands into a longsleeved jacket, then tied the sleeves behind my back. Do you know what I
was doing in the yard? By your life, I was sleeping. I was having my first
deep sleep in months. They woke me up, threw me in a car, and brought me
to this paradise. (pp. 187-188)
This illustration does not merely demonstrate how Um Saad attempted to
escape the confinement; moreover, it also shows how she challenged the moral
norms and gender construction that required her to remain docile, obedient and
morally righteous. Her act of running, which was followed by her deep sleeping at
the mosque, something that came to be seen as wild and loose, freed her from
the burdens that she carried since youth as well as released her from her impasse
with the patriarchal control over her and the identity issue that came with it. In
this moment of clarity, Um Saad was reborn and transformed into an individual
with no past and burdens. Despite her metaphor, I suggest that Um Saad did not
mean that she desired to embody Hind Roustom and replace her own identity, her
own being, with the latters. Instead, she described the elation she felt during that
moment by ascribing to the characteristics that she envied from Hind Roustom:
young, well-rounded and in control of her body. During that moment of liberation,
Um Saad was light, happy and free.
However, challenging such norms and construction came with its
consequences. For Um Saad, the consequence that she had to face was to be
marked as mad, and she deserved to be estranged in the mental hospital outside
her hometown. Despite mental breakdowns being a means of expressing female
agency or autonomy in situations of powerlessness, they are often challenged by
the unsympathetic spouses (Katrak, 2007, p. 168). This was illustrated by her
husbands act, when he caught Um Saad, who was internalising how she was
aging physically, seeing herself naked in the mirror.
I [] rushed to the bedroom, took off all my clothes, and stood in front of
the mirror. My belly was big, my breasts almost touched my waist line,
my black hair was gray, and my face was wrinkled. I realized then that my
youth had passed silently. [] I sat on the bedside and cried. At that very
minute, Abu Saad entered the bedroom and was shocked to see me naked.
What happened to your brain, woman? (151).
61
In the aftermath of her later drastic act, where she was found sleeping in a mosque
and captured by her husband and some men to be taken to the hospital, she was
also instantly judged mad by the other men: I kicked and kicked the back of the
seat of the decaying car. Through the thick circular layers of his glasses, the man
gazed at me. It is all right, she is mad. My husband nodded (207). The
diagnosis of madness to explain womens attempts at self-expression that did not
suit the existing societal norms of ordinariness, according to Mehta (2004),
reveals the limited possibilities available to women who try to take control
of a losing situation. Madness becomes a metaphor for female cultural and
social exile, a sign of protest and rejection of conventionally-defined roles
and expectations, thereby reflecting the desire to transgress the limitations
imposed by such forms of exile on women. [...] These symbols of
discontent are a symptom of the impasses that women encounter when
they try to transcend the limitations of their socially-fabricated destinies.
(pp. 717-718)
By denouncing Um Saad as a madwoman who needed to be confined in a
madhouse, Abu Saad, a symbol of the patriarch, attempted to repress Um Saads
effort to challenge the perpetuating limitation that he enforced upon her. Anxious
that she might overturn the power relations and uphold her self-control and
independence, he immediately took the measures to curb her self-expression and
regain control over her. This is in accordance with the male anxiety about female
autonomy or the Female Will, the negative image that shadows every
submissive [woman] enshrined in domesticity (Gilbert & Gubar, p. 604). Here,
Abu Saad serves as a synecdoche for the larger society which limits women from
simply being individuals without adhering to the conventional roles as a wife,
mother, and moral-preserver within the society.
I have explained how in the mental hospital Um Saad was still subject to
both patriarchal and colonial domination; however, Um Saad actively attempted
to uphold her dignity as an individual by exercising her freedom of speech. In her
statement to Maha, I wanted to talk. We never talked, Abu Saad and I (151,
emphasis added), she indicated that such freedom was a rarity in her earlier years.
Thus, when she referred to the mental hospital as paradise (188), Um Saad was
expressing her delight that she was able to express herself to Maha through such
62
freedom of speech, and that she had the opportunity to have her story and miseries
heard.
Not only did she find freedom in the storytelling sessions, but Um Saad
also found the sister she never had in Maha, as indicated in her avowal that
Mahas hands gave her freedom (18). Together with Maha, she found the
courage in her to stand up to the English doctor and the hospital officials.
[Doctor Edwards] said something in English, Impossible, then said in
broken Arabic, You two never stop talking. Yes, we said together. I
will increase the dose. I looked at Um Saads face and one of the muscles
in her cheeks was twitching. She was laughing. I placed my hand over my
mouth to cover the bare gums and started laughing. Um Saad suddenly
roared with laughter. The doctor loosened the tight collar at his neck and
gazed at us, baffled. (110)
[] To the madhouse, where mind sparrows twitter and bees fly away,
he sent me, meee, meee. We shrieked with laughter. The English doctor
entered the room and started shouting at us in a different tongue, then said
in Arabic, Shut up. (188)
Although in her pre-hospitalised life Um Saad was not personally scarred by the
colonists as was Maha, her standing up to the authoritative English doctor can be
analysed as her way to challenge the patriarchal conventions. Doctor Edwards
represented the patriarchs who had burdened her life and limited her as a woman.
By challenging his power, she was exerting her independence and control,
simultaneously expressing her protests and discontents, notwithstanding the
ultimate results or the inevitable consequences. It is worthy to note that all this
took place within the walls of the mental institution. It could be concluded that
despite Um Saad having a relatively lesser freedom in the confinement compared
to her former life, her spirit was not confined. In fact, she found and fought for a
sort of freedom which is new to her: the freedom of speech. In addition, by
standing up to him alongside Maha, she was asserting their sisterhood; a
sisterhood not only based on gender but also on their colonised and confined
status. As such, her act demonstrated a form of support to Maha, who had been
fighting the white doctor the symbol of the British colonists alone before
she came and took part in the resistance. It was perhaps not considered important
whether their resistance would have any tremendous effect; what was more
significant was that they could claim their sense of agency as women and
63
individuals despite their confined state. In a way, in those moments, Um Saad

became a woman she fully became an individual.
3.4. Pillars of Salt: Challenging or Perpetuating the Representation of

Muslim Women
In this subchapter, I explore the questions of whether Pillars of Salt serves to
challenge, or conversely perpetuate, the representation of Muslim women, and to
what extent does it manage to do so. In approaching these questions, I shall refer
primarily to Mohantys findings (2003) of how Muslim women are represented in
western feminism and analyse this in connection to Pillars of Salt.
Firstly, Mohanty claimed that Arab and Muslim women are constantly defined
by a single entity, their gender, and all Arab and/or Muslim women are oppressed
by men and Islam. Thus, western feminism believes that, in Islamic societies, an
oppressing vision of women is upheld by the patriarchal family, endorsed further
by the practice of seclusion and executed through the sexual control that is
maintained by both the state and its people.Second, western feminists claim that
these women are consistently defined as the victims of mens sexual oppression.
(Third-world) Women are defined as a group solely based on their shared
dependencies. The representation of Third World women as the object of
oppression isthus used to strengthen the self-representation of western feminists
as a subject.
Both Maha and Um Saad are described to be subject under the oppression of
the stronger males, which on the surface strengthens the western stereotype that
the covered Arab and/or Muslim women are constantly oppressed by Arab and/or
Muslim males and Islam.13 However, I argue that this hasty conclusion is
erroneous for several reasons. First, the complexity of the Arab male characters is
13
Such representations of Muslim women are pervasive in western writings, as El Gatit

(2009) pointed out that in the western world, the idea of Islamic terrorists solely refer to
Muslim men, while Muslim women are perceived as an object of pity or empathy and
victims of fundamentalist Islamic tradition, implicitly brown women in need of rescue
by civilized people throughout the world. Furthermore, Mancini (2012) emphasised the
only thing most westerners know about Islam is that Muslim women are terribly
oppressed, which led to the claim that western intervention is necessary to defend such
Muslim women (p. 414).
64
represented by the differences of the three male characters in Mahas story, i.e.
her father, her brother, and her husband. Despite betraying strong patriarchal
characteristics, especially in the earlier parts of the story, the father was illustrated
as a multifaceted person. He was described as a loving and faithful husband to his
deceased wife. Against the rule and custom of the tribe, he taught his daughter
Maha various so-called masculine skills and ultimately prioritised her and her
new-born son in inheriting the land. The character of Harb, who treated his wife
with respect and love, also functioned as an antithesis to the character of Daffash,
the antagonist in the novel. This proves that the stereotype that all Arab/Muslim
men are oppressive is erroneous because they could not be generalised.
Another reason is that the veil, the universal symbol of their oppression, is
not the source of the oppression itself. It is the application of body politics,
through whatever form, that attempts to second their individuality and autonomy
that oppresses them, not the mere cloth itself. Moreover, although it appears that
Maha and Um Saad were constantly oppressed by the males around them, it is
important to note the origin of that subordination. In Pillars of Salt, both Maha
and Um Saad wore a form of veil. Maha is numerously described to wear a sort of
headband (18), mask her face using the end of her veil at the presence of strange
men (32) and cover her head before she left the house (64). However, the
significance of the veil is not emphasised as a religious obligation and does not
apply strictly on her, as she is also described to leave her house with her plaits
uncovered (84). The practice of covering is explained by Lila Abu-Lughod (2002)
as a cultural practice within the community to signify womens degree within
society. Thus, only well-off and privileged women can afford to cover themselves.
Such cultural practices explained Mahas astonishment and contempt when she
saw how the foreign and city women shamelessly showed off their bodies,
without any sense of dignity and honour. In this case, arguments based on
Islamic feminism would point out that western colonialism, which is said to
liberate the so-called oppressed female Muslims from their cultural and religious
heritage, actually prompted the establishment of such practices and symbols
(Barlas, p. 124). As such, the veil is used to mark the differences of their identities
65
from the west, and as a result, it is the practice of uncovering that was viewed
with distaste as an inferior type of behaviour by these women.
As I have explained before, Maha and Um Saad are both described to
challenge the oppression that the stronger male figures tried to exert. On the one
hand, Mahas brother, Daffash, constantly demonstrated attempts to overpower
her. Maha, however, showed a strong characteristic and repeatedly demonstrated
that she refused to knuckle under her brothers and patriarchal societys tyranny.
On the other hand, although Um Saad was never quite as rebellious as Maha was,
she ultimately demonstrated attempts to challenge the oppression from her
husband and perform self-agency. It is important to note that the struggle of
liberation itself is not strictly a western feminist idea. As Asma Barlas (2002, p.
118) argued, it is actually intrinsic to the Islamic principles, which promotes
egalitarianism and equal rights for every human being. By resisting to such
subordination, Maha and Um Saad also simultaneously challenged the
representation of covered Muslim women as passive and incapable.
However, such challenges of oppression were, in one way or another,
ultimately obstructed by colonial influences. In Mahas case, her brother was very
much influenced by the British forces in Jordan. He was described to be willing to
do anything to prove himself to the British. It is thus important to note the
connection between Daffashs oppressive acts on Maha with his close relationship
with the colonialists, as symbolised by the British. Not to mention that the British
also killed Mahas husband, the love of her life and the man who could support
her liberation from Daffashs oppression. The fact that the British killed Harb can
thus be seen as a metaphor of how the colonialists eradicate the remaining
power of the colonised. This metaphor also applies to Um Saad, whose ultimate
taste of liberation within the mental hospitals walls was exterminated by Doctor
Edwardss brutal act, which serves as a metaphor for the permanent imposition of
silence on marginalised women (Conwell, 2011, p. 49). The Doctor becomes a
symbol of the remaining influences of colonialism and its interplay with the local
traditions of Jordan. By presenting these colonial figures, Faqir attempted to
challenge stereotypes by providing another perspective of the twofold situation in
colonised regions.
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In deciding where this text stands on the issue of western representation of

Muslim women, it is worthy to note several important post-colonial characteristics
of this novel. Such characteristics in this novel include the narrative style which
incorporates the traditional storytelling way of the Arabs and the appropriation of
the English language, which is used to directly translate Arabic expressions and
proverbs. At first, the (western) readership would find this tendency to strengthen
the exoticness of the indigenous culture and validate their original assumptions of
the oppressive nature of the Arabs. However, the western reader will soon be at
unease when they find out the Storyteller, whose narrative is largely filled with
misogynistic expressions, is only half-Arab, suggesting the closeness and
similarity of the oppressive Arab culture to the western beliefs and norms. The
literal translations of Arabic expressions further strengthens the state of unease to
the western readership, as it denies informancy by exposing, alienating, and
exiling English-speaking readers from their own language (Abdo, 2004, p. 239).
It can be concluded that these strategies are carried out to not only criticise the
oppressive practices in the Arab community, but also challenge the western
readership of their initial sense of superiority.
In the same manner, although on the surface Pillars of Salt may seem to
strengthen the western representation of Muslim women as oppressed, it
ultimately overturns such stereotypes by demonstrating that even in their
restricting environment, these women could still find a way to fight for their
agency.The text proves that, although they ultimately failed to exert their
resistance, these protagonists do own a certain sense of agency, challenging the
western representations as such. Therefore, it is erroneous to simplify the
complexity of the situation and define Arab and/or Muslim women as constantly
oppressed by Arab and/or Muslim men without taking the specific cases into
context and up-streaming the power relations that are at play. In this situation, the
control and power of the western colonialists in colonised Levant serve as the
nexus of the issue. Although perhaps without colonialism oppression of women in
the Arab culture and landscape may still occur, it is ultimately the presence of
colonialism, doubled with patriarchy, which perpetuated such a practice.
CHAPTER 4
THE CONSTRUCTION OF BODY POLITICS IN MY NAME IS SALMA
4.1.
My Name is Salma as a Post-colonial Novel
Written by a Jordanian British author and taking place both in contemporary

Levantine and British settings, My Name is Salma could be easily defined as a
post-colonial novel. Upon being pregnant out of wedlock, the main protagonist,
Salma, had to flee from her native country to Lebanon, and ultimately to Exeter,
England, where she experienced cultural clashes and identity conflicts. The setting
takes place in modern England, its time setting being in the late 90s or early
2000s. It is worthy to note that, despite the novel being written in 2007, the time
setting of the novel may have taken place before the 9/11 incident, hence its nonreferences to the terrorist attacks and the multifaceted issues faced by brown or
Arab Muslims in western countries post-9/11. While in the post-9/11 era, Muslim
foreigners14 are often stigmatised and attacked for being terrorists, in the pre9/11 era people often viewed Muslims adorned with overt Islamic symbols as
aliens (Faqir, 2007), immigrants or simply subjugated as the Other. Muslims
are often marginalised and classified under the ethnic category of brown people,
Asians, and in the case of Arabs, the Other-Others (Awad, 2001, p. 52). Thus
the analysis on the character of Salma would not take into consideration the
stigma of Islam and/or Islamic symbols post-9/11 and the tensions that the 9/11
incident created.
14
These attacks also occur to Oriental individuals who are often mistaken as Muslims, e.g. Sikhs,
Hindus (Abdullah cited in Ancellin, 2009).
67
68
4.2.
Construction of Body Politics on the Character of Salma
4.2.1. Salma and the Construction of the Body

4.2.1.1. Humiliation, violence and the veil as a means to control the body
This part of the chapter focuses on how the manifestations of body politics
imposed on the character of Salma resulted in a form of self-exile and alienation
in each of the locations she went. I then observe through close reading how this
alienation from her own body caused Salma to grapple with her identity. This was
subsequently manipulated by the stronger figures in her environment to enforce
their power and control over her, ultimately attempting to coerce her to be a
subaltern under the post-colonial patriarchal hierarchy.
Since childhood, Salma was perpetually exposed to gender constructions
and cultural mores that aimed to control her place and position in the tribe. The
first instance that is apparent was her fathers instructions to cover up her breasts,
which he compared with melons (6). This comparison, very much similar to the
way Um Saads father described her breasts, led to results akin to Um Saads:
embarrassment of the female body and the action of hunching her back to hide her
breasts. In addition, it was also described how her brother Mahmoud kept an eye
on her (6) and threatened to tie each leg to a different horse and get them to run
in different directions if he ever saw her talking to strange men (20). Here, we are
reminded of Fatima Mernissis (1975) statement on spatial boundaries:
A woman is always trespassing in a male space because she is, by
definition, a foe. A woman has no right to use male spaces. If she enters
them, she is upsetting the males order and his peace of mind. She is
actually committing an act of aggression against him merely by being
present where she should not be. (p. 494)
A female should not, therefore, be visible in the public space. She is expected to
conceal the biological features that define her as a woman lest she attract the
unwanted attentions of men, making it known that she is trespassingtheir space.
Were she to flaunt features of her female body, it would clearly disrupt the males
peace of mind as, not only is she invading their space, but she is also seen as the
object of the male gaze. The description of how protective Salmas brother was
in regards to her behaviour in public highlights the fine line between the public
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space, the male territory, and the domestic space, where the female should strictly
be confined. Thus, as the Other, the female is not allowed to cross the line and
make her presence known and/or noticed by the male by talking to strange men,
which will potentially signify her individuality as a Self instead of the Other.
Salma described her second encounter with Hamdan, which was also their
first sexual encounter in which he first kissed her, with an apparent chaos of mind.
Further sexual attempts were halted by Salma, despite the mutual attraction she
felt for Hamdan.
The cool dusk air was whirling in my wide pantaloons, reminding me of
the code of honour in our village. No. Have you gone mad? Do not be
impulsive! I could hear my mother shout in my ears. No. They will shoot
you between your eyes. Yes. No. No. No. I pushed him away. You will
be full of regret later, oh beautiful, he said [] (19-20)
Although she initially rejected him, Salma finally gave in to her desires, as
illustrated later: In darkness or at dawn keep your petals shut and legs closed! But
like a reckless flower opening up to the sun I received Hamdan (27). The
relationship between Hamdan and Salma was, for the large part, adorned by his
seemingly degrading nicknames for her, for instance: my courtesan, my slave
(39), my little slut, my courtesan, my whore (157). However, not only did Salma
seem to consent to the nicknames; she seemed to be contented with them. This is
shown in her response to Hamdans calling her as his courtesan and slave:
Yes, master (39). By explicitly expressing her approval, Salma showed that she
found the nickname hardly offensive or demeaning. On the other hand, she felt
that Hamdan loved [her], cherished [her] (40).
In the aforementioned illustration, we are able to see two contradictive
implementations of body politics that are carried out by two opposing sides in the
same individual, Salma. The first manifestation of such body politics came from
the society through the form of honour killing, as represented by the mothers
reproaching voice and her morally-sanctioned advice: in darkness or at dawn
keep your petals shut and legs closed lest they will shoot you between the eyes
(20). It is clear from these statements what it meant to be a woman according to
this society. Moreover, the notion that a virtuous woman should guard her purity
from adultery at all times, lest she will be shot between the eyes by them was
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strengthened by the mother, which shows that misogynistic notions are

internalised by passing it down through generations. It is important to note that the
word they is used in this context, considering that the act of honour killing is
usually carried out by the male members of the family, i.e. the father or brother.
Thus, an intrafamily femicide can only be carried out by a single male member of
the family, which in this case is Salmas brother Mahmoud, of which the pronoun
should have been he.The word they is used instead to denote the invisible yet
omnipresent hand of the patriarchal society, which may not directly participate in
the act of honour killing, yet holds the power to dictate the execution of such a
sanction. In the case of a dishonoured female, it is the honour of the whole
community that is stained (Perlmutter, 2011), thus it is believed that it is also the
responsibility of the Muslim community to restore the honour and moral
righteousness of society. In this belief, women are subject to the act of honour
killing, men are entitled to conduct the act of honour killing, and society is
responsible to make sure that the honour and dignity of the community is upheld
through honour killing. The threats of honour killing and sanction from society
thus serve to control the conduct and behaviour of women, as the weakest link yet
the moral upholder within a patriarchal community. This was also strengthened by
the fact that, despite Salma ultimately being shot.Hamdan, being a man, was given
the privilege to live, although he is described to be a changed man, a mere
shadow (277).
However, in a later instance when Salmas mother began to get suspicious
of her daughters encounter with Hamdan, the threat of honour killing was
reiterated again with an emphasis on Salmas brother as the executor: You
smeared our name with tar. Your brother will shoot you between the eyes (27,
emphasis added). The change of reference from they to your brother occurred
along with the change from a mere empty threat that served to hinder members
of the community (particularly women) from misconducts to a punishment that
could possibly take place for Salmas dishonourable act. This strengthens the
notion that, although the patriarchal society holds the highest control of the moral
system and mores that are applied within the community, the family as the
smallest unit in society is responsible to ensure the reinforcement of the system.
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The role of the patriarch in the family is thus of great importance to guard
the honour of the family and, ultimately, society, as shown in her brother
Mahmouds act in the conclusion of the story, in which he shoots her between the
eyes with an English rifle (279). That Mahmoud had to carry out the killing after
Salma had been away for more than 15 years should be highlighted. While one of
the purposes of honour killing is to remove the polluting evil that infected the
weak female before it corrupts the entire family and subsequently the community
(Perlmutter, 2011), it is proven to not be the main objective of honour killing
itself. Salma had actually left her community, preventing it from the possibility of
being corrupted by the evil she was said to bring. However, Salmas mothers
brief description of the fathers condition after Salma escaped illustrated that her
father and the whole family were condemned by society:
The day they took you he suddenly turned into an old man walking with
difficulty and leaning on a stick. From the horseman of the tribe to the butt
of their jokes and gibes. His daughter had tarnished the honour of the tribe
and got away with it. (277)
Therefore, the ultimate purpose of the honour killing is the restoration of family
honour, not the moral purity of the society, as quoted by an unnamed man on
Mahmouds act of shooting Salma: Its his duty. He has to hold his head high
[] dishonour can only be wiped off with blood (279). In this regard, we can
conclude that the norms that regulate womens behaviour and attitudes both at the
private and public spaces are part of societys moral system. In order to uphold
the sanctioned system, the concept of honour is manipulated and put into use to
justify actions that are taken against women within the domestic sphere to defend
the familys honour. The oppression of and control over a womans body are thus
systemised and politicised from the more general form of society to the smallest
unit within it.
The second manifestation of how body politics is used to signify power
relations is shown through Hamdans statement that Salma had become a woman
after their illegitimate intercourse: Salma, youre a woman now you are mine,
my slave girl. Yes, yes, yes, I used to say (27). This statement implies that
Salmas womanhood was defined by the intercourse and the power relation within
it, despite the fact that she stained her and her familys honour, while
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simultaneously comparing her womanhood to an intangible object that could be

presented by a male, Hamdan. Although it is erroneous to believe that the
momentum of becoming a woman could be a gift from a man, by stating so,
Hamdan was demarcating the power structure between them. Moreover, he
strengthened his power over her by claiming that she is his, his slave girl, which
emphasises both superiority and ownership. This power relation is also
symbolised in the simile that Salma ironically described: like a reckless flower
opening up to the sun I received Hamdan. A flower can only bloom in the
presence of the sun. Was Salma suggesting that a woman could not become a
woman without a man? It is likely possible that she only echoed what Hamdan,
and other men in her community, forced her to internalise. She was the flower, he
was the Sun. She was, at all times, the Ones Other.
Discourses on the female body related to the Muslim and/or Arab world,
more often than not, tend to lapse into the discourse of the veil. The question is,
what significance does this cultural/religious practice holds, which attracts such
overabundant attention? Suggestively, when viewed from the western eye, the
practice of the veil is not only controversial; it is troublesome in its very nature.
From a mere cloth to a sartorial practice, the veil has now become a multi-faceted
symbol which is prone to politicisation by both the west and the east, patriarchs
and feminists. In My Name is Salma, the issue of the veil recurs constantly
throughout the plot. In the earlier part of the narrative that took place in Exeter, it
was described how Salma tossed [her] no longer braided and veiled hair on [her]
shoulders (2). Later in the story, it is mentioned that the practice of veiling was
imposed upon Salma, as she described how her father had asked her to wear the
veil and her mother had bought it for her (108). While the reason for the
imposition of the veil was mentioned by neither the father nor Salma, and while
motivations of female veiling are generally numerous and heterogeneous, Leila
Ahmed (1992) argued that it is ultimately patriarchy that enforces the practice of
veiling to protect men from sexual temptation. Taking this into consideration,
Pereira-Ares (2012, p. 77) concluded that it is most likely for Muslim women,
when exposed, to become the object of the male gaze; a male gaze that seems to
assume phallic dimensions penetrating the female body. In this respect, the
73
enforcement of the veil mirrors the perennial patriarchal domination in Salmas

environment, as it is meant to be a solution to avoid objectification of the male
gaze.
However, this notion is proven as erroneous, as illustrated by Salmas
narration: I started hunching my back to hide my breasts, which were the first
thing Hamdan had noticed about me (6). Despite her wearing a veil and
attempting to cover her body by hunching, Salma still became the object of
Hamdans male gaze and sexual desires her body was the first thing Hamdan
noticed about her. The veil thus failed its purpose to make her invisible from the
male gaze, as emphasised by Mernissi (cited by Abraham, 2007) that the veil is a
partial, ill-suited solution to the heterosexual males aggressive gaze and lack of
internal control, explaining the disturbing contradiction of the so-called function
of the veil itself. On the other hand, in England, Salma became the object of gaze,
both by males and females, even more frequently due to her headscarf. Possibly
not used to the sight of a veiled woman roaming in public streets, people look at
[Salma] all [the] time as if [she has a] disease (102). As an object of gaze in a
new cultural environment, Salma was not just objectified; she was also OtherOthered due to her veiling practice.
Despite acknowledging that the practice of veiling is of patriarchal
consequence, I choose to address Salmas agency in the practice of veiling. I
argue that the decision of veiling or unveiling in Salmas case is ultimately a
conscious choice, yet largely resulted from constant negotiations between herself,
her shift of identity and the environment she was in. When describing the
religious environment of her village in Hima, Salma indicated that her family was
not entirely pious by stating that her father did not pray regularly. The mat was
out whenever a goat was stolen or [they] were having a long spell of drought
(11). Nevertheless, their Islamic imam was a central figure in their lives, and they
firmly adhered to the rules he dictated and the Islamic principles he interpreted for
them. This is demonstrated by her fathers statements: You are lucky to be born
Muslim, because your final abode is paradise. You will sit there in a cloud of
perfume drinking milk and honey (11) and [w]e cannot sell our olives before
getting a fatwa from the imam (34). Thus, although Salma had to don the veil and
74
cover her private parts as it was what society expected of her (and other women),
and she also believed that her hair was aura which she must hide. Just like [her]
private parts (159). It can be deduced that, despite her father asking her to wear
the veil, it was also a choice that arose from her comprehension and
consciousness. The lack of reference to the veil during her life in Hima is perhaps
surprising. While her sense of insecurity with her female body was discussed, any
kind of discomfort with her veil was not. Salma understood that, in order to be
part of her society, she was expected to dress in accordance with the custom, and
that the veil was a form of cultural practices that was commonly adapted by
women who were coming of age. However, it was when she began to interact with
people apart from her native communitythat she began to experience a sense of
uneasiness with the veil.
In the secular environment of the west, Salma had to face a new challenge: she
was under the constant pressure to abandon her veil. The first sign of discomfort
in regards to her veil was shown when she intended to visit a Turkish castle in
Cyprus and was halted by the guard.
When we got there the guard pointed at my veil and said, Turkish?
No this, he said, pointing at my white veil.
Please, said Miss Asher.
He waved us in, but he seemed unhappy. (97)
Salmas observation that the guard seemed unhappy betrays a sense of
discomfort of what she had which, until then, was viewed as nothing out of
ordinary. She was temporarily saved from further bewilderment by Sister Asher,
the Catholic nun who helped her to escape and enter England. Yet not long after,
it was brought once more to the surface when Miss Asher demonstrated her
displeasure of Salmas veil: Do you have to wear this veil? God has made you
perfect and he loves every part of you, including your hair (159). The hardest
blow struck her when she came to see a doctor due to her sleeping trouble and
symptoms of illness. He was described to look at Salma, who was wearing a veil,
suspiciously and said, Your name is Miss Sally Asher? How preposterous!(95).
The doctor also showed reluctance to take her complaints seriously and in the end
ticked her off: I told you there is nothing wrong with you. Please do not waste my
time and government money (95, emphasis added). Not only did the doctor
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generate a strong sense of distrust and suspicion because she is a (veiled)

foreigner, he also indicated a clear line between them by using the emphasised
my, simultaneously differentiating her and positioning her as the Other. The
doctors gestures imply that Salma was not worth his efforts as a distinguished
and superior white doctor, and that it was his (and not her) governments expense
she was wasting, signalling a sense of permanent alienation that people like
Salma, whose religious and/or cultural symbols betray their foreignness,
deserve.
This issue was also addressed by her new friend in England, a Pakistani
girl named Parvin, who questioned Salmas sartorial practice despite being a
Muslim herself: We have to look for jobs, but first I must ask you about this scarf
you keep wearing. [] It will be much harder to get a job while you insist on
wearing it (102). Having lived in England for a longer time than Salma, and
having received an English-based education in her Pakistani hometown, Parvin
was more accustomed to the English custom and the stereotypes that often came
with it. Parvin had a better comprehension of western orientalist biases and the
negative connotation of the veil, which resulted in her belief that Oriental
religiously-charged symbols serve as a detriment to their adaptation in the western
environment. It is interesting, however, that Parvin is described to wear her
shalwar kameez15 daily, yet no reference of rejection was made to this apparent
representation of Oriental authenticity. It can only be suggested that, despite
betraying a sense of Oriental characteristics, there is little religious implication
that is attached to the shalwar kameez16, in contrast to the veil that is not only
viewed as Oriental but also Islamic.
15
Shalwar kameez is a traditional outfit of South India, particularly in Pakistan, India, Afghanistan
and Bangladesh. The outfit consists of a collared long shirt or a tunic (kameez) and a pair of loose
trousers that are wide at the top and narrow by the ankle (shalwar).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shalwar_kameez
16
In his interesting article in The Hindu, Ramachandra Guha (2004) stated that despite some
people viewing that the shalwar kameez is a dress worn exclusively by Muslims, his personal
experiences showed that this is not exactly accurate. The shalwar is often worn by Hindu and Sikh
women, whereas in his residence in Karnataka, it is worn by more Hindu women than Muslim.
http://www.hindu.com/mag/2004/10/24/stories/2004102400380300.htm
76
As a result of these constant pressures, added with her personal urge to

adapt and blend into her new environment as Sally, Salma ultimately decided to
take off her headscarf. It is not surprising perhaps, that this act, which western
feminists would most likely value as an act of liberation from the oppressive and
backward patriarchal values, did not achieve its liberating effect.
I pulled my hair out of the elastic band, brushed it and tossed it around.
I looked again at the veil, which my father had asked me to wear and
my mother had bought for me, folded on the bed. I rubbed my
forehead and walked out. It felt as if my head was covered with raw
sores and I had taken off the bandages. I felt as dirty as a whore, with
no name or family, a sinner who would never see paradise and drink
from its rivers of milk and honey. When a man walked by and looked
at my hair my scalp twitched. I sat down on the pavement, held my
head and cried and cried for hours. (102)
Salmas seemingly contradictive and emotional response betrays the amalgam of
overwhelming emotions that she felt, and although it may seem baffling, it is not
astonishing. What once perhaps started as a cultural and/or religious imposition
had become a part of her, and she had identified the headscarf as part of her
identity of her being Salma. This is in alignment with her earlier statement to
Sister Asher: I cannot take off veil, Sister. My country, my language, my
daughter. No piece of cloth. Feel naked, me (159). In the west, the veil is often
seen as a supreme symbol of oppression and the practice of female covering as
strictly an issue of gender (Abdo, 2002), but in reality it is usually more complex
than that. To Salma, the significance of the veil was beyond religious rules; it was
part of her identity, her cultural custom, her motherland, and even the only
connection left with her daughter. Although several feminists might claim that this
is a result of internalised norms, I argue that in this context, Salma had left her
homeland and the community where donning the veil was expected of her; thus
she had the option to abandon this practice. On the contrary, Salma insisted to
maintain it for the reason that it is something that she identified herself with.
When she removed the headscarf in order to become Sally, she was also
removing a significant part of herself. Despite feeling alienated when donning the
veil, when she took it off, it caused her to experience a perennial sense of
uneasiness and insecurity instead of liberation. She felt exposed to the whole
world: her scars, her insecurity, her fears were no longer covered and
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protected. This shows a severe clash between the internalised doctrine within
Salma as a result of her upbringing, external pressures to abandon the veil, and
Salmas own identification with it.
It can be concluded that, in the case of Salma, the practice of veiling and
unveiling is used as a form of control, to exert their power over her and to limit
her agency. The male desire to veil the unveiled body underlines the desire to
regulate the female propriety and determine the female sexuality that can be
flaunted in the public sphere and to public eye. By imposing the regulation to
wear the veil, the men of Salmas patriarchal tribe attempted to subordinate the
females in the society by undermining their sexuality. Subsequently, by
controlling how his daughter should dress, the father established his position as
the sole authority in the house. The veil, in this context, is manipulated and
politicised to establish and strengthen male domination, as the male sexuality is
acknowledged and catered to, while the female sexuality is curbed and even
viewed as void.
On the other hand, the politicisation of the veil is also carried out by
westerners. This aligns with, in Ibrahim Abrahams words (2007, p. 3), the ironic
twist of the society seeking to either veil the veiled, or to veil difference, through
its very unveiling. In addition, Bullock (cited in Pereira-Ares, 2012) argued that
the interest to unveil the veiled body mirrors the desire of the gaze to appropriate
the covered body of the Muslim woman, who can see without being seen.By
pressing her to take off the veil, they put Salma into a subordinate position in
which her right to practice her custom and express her cultural identity was
denied. She was pressured to adapt to how the English natives spoke, behaved and
particularly dressed, in order to become part of them and be seen as openminded and liberated, despite what she actually felt. By making Salma uneasy
with her veil, they made her feel uneasy with herself as a being, to the extent that
she felt that it was no longer acceptable or comfortable to be Salma. Salma
ultimately realised that preserving her cultural identity in the neo-colonial
environment was an ill-fated attempt and so, instead of releasing her from her
past, the act of unveiling served to imprison her even more. She thus experienced
a twofold othering process: first, she was othered for being a foreign, Oriental
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female, and then she was othered for wearing a veil, the symbol of Islam that is
often viewed with distaste from the western perspective. Thus, the option left was
to take the most agreeable choice according to the norms of the new society; the
choice that would enable her to blend in the strange and new environment:
unveiling.
4.2.1.2. Manifestations of how the female body was limited to an object

Salmas circumstances as a diaspora exiled from her home caused her to
experience dual subjugation and objectification from two different societies.
Having escaped from the threats posed by the oppressive males in her village, she
found herself in a new environment in England, whose nature was entirely
different from her home. In Salmas native tribe, the value and honour of a female
were measured by the purity of the female body. This tenet of femininity became
the basis of the objectification imposed on the female members of the community.
In order to ensure such purity, it is permissible, and even necessary, to take
extreme measures on the female body.
An instance of this is illustrated in Salmas description of a brides
preparations before her wedding night:
Before your wedding night they spread a paste of boiled sugar and lemon
between your legs and yank away the hair. My grandmother Shahla said,
When they finished with me I was covered with bruises, but as smooth
and hairless as a nine-year-old girl. Your grandfather preferred it clean. I
looked so pure and innocent, he said. (p. 5)
By vividly describing the painful waxing that a bride had to undertake, Salma was
highlighting how a female body was politicised by society. The notion of purity
was rooted so deep as it was passed down through generations, as showed by how
Salmas grandmother Shahla dismissed the taboo of discussing sexuality in order
to instil the ideals of female purity in young Salmas mind. The pain that the
female body experienced is set aside in order to ensure the qualities of pureness
and innocence that a woman must own as regulated in accordance to the wishes
of males.
It is ironic, however, that due to the mystification surrounding (female)
sexuality, it is often the case that sexuality is not talked about openly, even
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between a mother and her daughter. Katrak (2007) notes that it is a common
custom for mothers to keep their daughters ignorant about their sexuality, which
leads to utter shock and rage when the daughters find themselves somehow
pregnant (p. 205). When Salma revealed her pregnancy to Hamdan, he exclaimed
in horror, You cannot be. How? to which she replied I dont know (My Name
is Salma, 171). Despite Hamdans question being a rhetorical one, it can be
inferred that, to some extent, Salma really was unaware about what her illicit
relationship with Hamdan had resulted in. Furthermore, the fact that Hamdan had
to ask How? upon hearing about Salmas pregnancy shows how men could be
disturbingly oblivious about female sexuality. This simple dialogue between the
two young lovers is both a representation and a critique of the ignorance regarding
sexuality and the female body.
Another extreme act that was imposed on Salma after she was discovered
pregnant was an abortion attempt. As Salma had committed a crime punishable by
death because of getting pregnant out of wedlock, abortion was seen by her
mother as a crucial action, both to save her life and to restore her purity. Indeed
the fact that she might have been killed by the abortion is ironic in its very nature;
thus, it can be inferred that the motivation to purify her is prioritised over other
considerations. The process of the abortion attempt was described in vivid
imageries: the midwife was sticking sharp iron bars inside me. She scraped and
scraped looking for the growing flesh. The fluid of tears did not put out the fire
(36). Upon waking up, however, Salma discovered that the abortion failed, despite
the excruciating pain that she had experienced. Subsequently, Salma began
beating [her] head and crying and asked in despair What shall I do? In
response, her mother replied, If your father or brother find out they will kill you
(36). The pain inflicted upon the female body, as Salma experienced through her
abortion attempt, is an illustration how the female body often becomes a site on
which womens pain is written (Abdo, 2009, p. 263). Referring to Abdos
arguments, the pain that Salma suffered from the sharp iron bars penetrated her is
a representation of the internalised torture that came from her environment. The
torture itself shall extend long after the physical pain has subsided to ensure the
perpetuation of the female bodys glorified purity and mystified sexuality.
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The aforementioned illustrations demonstrate the impacts caused by

societys politicisation of the body. In the case of the female, her body is not her
own; it belongs to the society. Not having control over her body, a woman finds
that her body is often used against her in order to abide to societys mores (Abdo,
2009). As such, in the case that the female body is corrupted, it is the females
being, and she alone, that is subject to bear the consequences. When Hamdan
found out that Salma was pregnant, instead of taking his share of responsibility,
he blamed her for it:
When he finally looked up at me he was a different man, his brown eyes
burning with anger rather than desire. He cleared his voice and said, You
are responsible. You have seduced me with the yearning tunes of your
pipes and swaying hips, he said and raised his arm about to hit me. I
shrank on the wheat pile and covered my head with both arms. Ive never
laid a finger on you. Ive never seen you ever before. Do you understand?
he said, wrapped his kufiyya around his face like a mask and walked into a
cloud of dust. (pp. 171-172).
Hamdans act, though coward and disgraceful, stemmed from the rigid
implementation of the code of conduct. In a misogynist society, claiming that one
is responsible for the corruption of the females purity shall also bring death to the
person, as a corrupted female body equals to the corruption of the honour of the
whole society. Thus, not only was Salma betrayed by her lover, but she was also
betrayed by her own body. By not adhering to the rules and restrictions that
society imposed on women, she had to find that her own body was turned against
her, causing misery and condemnation. It is through such a fabrication of power
that objectification on women is reinforced in male-dominated society.
On the other hand, Salma was not completely released from such an
objectification even when she succeeded to escape to Britain. Instead, she
experienced a whole new form of subjugation in this neo-colonial environment,
which also had its own ideals of the female body. Salma soon discovered that, in
western society, the value of women was reduced into the aesthetics of the female
body, as her friend Parvin stressed to her, Lighten up! Groom yourself! Sell
yourself! [] You are now in a capitalist society that is not your own (p. 40,
emphasis added). This statement was intended to awaken Salma to the fact that
the enemy has changed, and so has the demands and constructions that come
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with it. In this new environment, a female is judged from her superficial
appearance, and her beauty is valued based on the typical western standard of
beauty: fair and blonde. This was highlighted by Salmas observation about the
blondness of it all in which most hair colour was designed for blondes and
healthy young blonde[s] were commonly selected for advertisements (40).
Failing to conform to the beauty standard of a western belle, Salma found it hard
to fit in, which caused her to struggle with the image of her own body.
My hair was dark, my hands were dark and I was capable of committing
dark deeds, I thought [] I would rub my olive skin against him, and
puff like magic, I would turn white. Just like that, without using a skinbleaching cream for years I would become whiter and fairer. Just like that,
I would disappear. (40)
Exiled from her home and from her own body, Salma was forced to believe in
the bodily notions of beauty as outlined by white westerners. However, this only
led her to experience what Katrak (2007) terms as an exilic sense of nonbelonging (p. 100) in this new country. It is perhaps the frustration caused by this
sense of exile that forced Salma to abandon her cultural identity and transform
herself in order to fit in.
Salmas transformation, although supported by her friend Parvin, was
ultimately triggered by the pressure of her working environment. In order to earn
additional income other from her job as a tailors assistant, she decided to do a
part-time job during the evening in a bar. Upon receiving advice from her English
friend Gwen to look respectable, Salma chose to dress conservatively: she
changed into a long black skirt, a white frilled shirt and flat shoes [] tied [her]
hair and coiled it into a bun, then put on some light make-up (136). Observing
herself in the mirror, she reflected that she looked like her old self, the
shepherdess from Hima (136). Despite her effort to look like a lady, she was
lectured by her boss Allan, regarding her appearance:
Our customers want to be surrounded by beautiful women; they all go to
cinema and see those Bacardi girls. You must try to look presentable like...
like an air hostess. Whenever I take a flight, I get tucked in, taken care of
by girls with lined eyes, tight skirts and full red lips. (150)
Conversely, later on Allan justified himself by telling Salma that if it were down
to [him], [he] would have just let [her] wear what [she] wants, unfortunately it
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was the wish of the hotel manager (pp. 153-154). Allans lecture mirrors the
construction of beauty in the society through the idealisation of certain female
professions that are considered as the embodiment of the ideal female, such as
models, air hostesses, etc. This caused Salma to critically view herself and her
body from the gaze of a male foreigner, causing her to internalise that she is
only a Shandy, a black doll, a black tart that can never be Sandy, a white
beautiful doll (150). Throughout Salmas self-adaptation process, she constantly
betrayed what Frantz Fanon (cited in Sinclair, 2012) described as the turn white
or disappear syndrome (p. 100). The option that she had was either to embody the
whiteness of the white westerners or cease to be a respected human being with
equal position.
Nevertheless, the reproach made an impact on Salma. On Allans advice,
the next day she came to work, she tried hard to dress up and adorn herself to
please her boss:
I went back home, had a bath, shaved my legs, washed my hair, rubbed my
body with cream, sprayed myself with deodorant and powdered myself
with perfume. I dried my hair enhancing its body, put on black tights, a
short black skirt, black high-heeled shoes, a sleeveless frilly white shirt
and painted a rainbow around my eyes. (149)
It turned out that her efforts made a profound effect, especially on Allan. Salma
observed that Allan liked the frizzy wild hair and the short skirt. With a stretch of
his imagination he could see me now as an air hostess, cooing and flirting, tucking
him in, getting him his drinks, kissing him with a lipsticked mouth (150). Not
only did Salma realise that she had become an object of males fantasy, but she
also noted that her make-over had a greater impact. In the male gaze, she had
stopped being an incomprehensible foreigner and had instead become a woman,
a body neither white nor olive-skinned nor black. What was more, Salma
discovered that, in spite of her being dark-skinned, in the eyes of the men her
colour had faded away and was replaced by curves, flesh and promises (150).
Similar to a previous scene in her past, when Hamdan claimed her to have
become a woman after they made love, Salmas gender status as a woman
depended on the approval of the opposite sex. Despite it being a purely
biological status, a definite given thing, her sex was of second importance to her
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gender she was only worthy enough as a woman if her woman-ness was
acknowledged by men. The perennial occurrences in which Salmas femininity
depends on her male counterparts approval shows the power relations between
both parties. By granting Salmas status of femininity, these male figures aim to
exert their power over her while simultaneously establishing their superiority and
gaining acknowledgement of their own maleness.
In this case, however, to be acknowledged and seen as a woman, Salma
had to constantly devote an effort to beautify herself. And yet, such
acknowledgement did not provide her with satisfaction or contentment because
she could never become the subject of gaze. Salma was indignant when she
caught Allan stealing a glance at her legs, as she did not like it when Allan
reminded [her] that he was a man. [She] wanted to be just a friend without desires
and stolen glances (169). As an object of the male gaze, she was constantly
subjugated to a position lower than her male counterparts, and was subject to their
wishes and desires. This resulted in a status quo: Salma was in a permanent state
of exile, both internally and externally, because she did not belong to her female
body, her native tribe, or her new country. She was perpetually an outsider.
4.2.1.3. Body politics lead to male dominance

The objectification and politicisation perpetuated to women, in particular to their
bodies, cause self-exile and confusion regarding the female body, which aims to
strengthen and reinforce male domination. Since Salmas encounter with Hamdan,
she had shown a sense of fragility, which made it easier for men to extend their
power over her. Her description of her first encounter with Hamdan, alone in the
woods, foreshadowed the power relation between them: [he] walked away to
come back layer and claim what was his already, releasing me and imprisoning
me for the rest of my life (17). This self-imprisonment occurred during her time
in prison, where Salma could restrain herself from talking for days after her
newborn daughter was taken away from her, and it reoccurred in England, where
she constantly undervalued herself to be not worthy of love (30), deserved to be
mocked, beaten, even killed (32), too fragile for closeness, [her] skin was all
tender and bruised and if [she] were him [she] wouldnt give [herself] a second
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glance (22). Lacking self-worth and exiled from her body, Salma resorted to look
for a space to re-belong to their bodies (Katrak, 2007, p.7) by finding her place
in the English community. However, this environment proved to be inconvenient
as an inhabitation of her body, as she continued to grapple with her female body
and identity. By constantly dominating and belittling her, society had an ultimate
role in defining the females place and position.
It is often the case that the rules of patriarchal societies decide how women
should be treated, what ethics should apply for women, and ultimately, the status
of women in the community. In androcentric communities, however, such rules as
disguised in the forms of mores and morals generally privilege men, allowing
their domination and the others subordination. Since she was a child, Salma was
used to hearing her father saying that the burden of girls is from cot to coffin
(117). Therefore, since the tender years of her life she had been subject to the
stigmatising that girls, or women, are of minor importance to their male
counterparts. Growing up, Salma also had to get used to her brothers violent
behaviour. As Katrak (2007) argued, The experience of internalised exile unfolds
as a process that includes the female protagonists complicated levels of consent
and collusion to domination (p. 7) to which she was enforced to consent. It is
thus exactly such traditions and practices that strengthen womens subjugation,
resulting in male privilege and power.
While the analysis of the earlier section focuses on how Salma was colonised
within her very own body, it will not be complete without analysing Salmas
sense of agency in the attempt to transfer the power that patriarchal societies hold
over her body into her own hands. Since she was young, Salma was described to
make impulsive choices as part of her self-expression. For instance, she dyed her
tuft of wool scarlet because she liked attention, and it made her stand out from the
other girls (47). In another situation, Salma spontaneously decided to swim in a
river only because the water was cool; fully conscious that there was a possibility
she would be seen by men and condemned as a loose woman (245).
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Similarly, in the face of the two opposing demands from her mother and
Hamdan, which were seemingly imposed on Salma regarding her relationship
with Hamdan, Salma seemed to determine her ultimate decisions based on her
own choices. Despite her mothers threats and Hamdans lures, when she chose to
give in to her desires, it was an autonomous decision which was under little, if not
none, external influences. She decided to take no heed of the rigid limitations of
society and instead based her decision pursuant to her grandmothers advice to
follow [her] heart always (22). When her pregnancy became known to her
mother and teacher, instead of helplessly surrendering to fate and the wrath of her
tribe, Salma decided to take her fate in her own hands by obeying her teachers
advice to leave the village and go to the police to be kept in protective custody
(41).
As illustrated earlier, however, this decision to resist the restrictions
ironically resulted in exile and (temporary) confinement as she fled to police and
was ushered to prison to ensure her safety. Directly after giving birth in prison,
however, Salma had to bitterly acquiesce to the fact that her daughter Layla had to
be taken away from her and transferred to a home for illegitimate children (126).
From then on, she refused to eat for days and speak for weeks until she had to be
force fed (232), and her inmates called her the pipe-mute (52). In align with this,
Katrak (2007, p. 2) states that women under confinement or restriction commonly
attempt to resist domination and exile by using their female bodies, through
speech, silence, or starvation. Salmas hunger strike and silence demonstrated
how she used her body to put up resistance to the domination of societys norms,
which disallowed her to keep her illegitimate child and forced her to stay in
hiding. Her resistance ultimately failed, yet is important to look beyond the
success or failure of her act. What was more important was that, to an extent,
Salma had managed to find a space to express her grief and transcend attempts to
control her completely through such self-expression.
On the other hand, in England Salma seemed to experience difficulties to
challenge the white Britons biased assumptions and racial discriminations. An
instance of this was the numerous rejections that she and Parvin received when
they applied for jobs, on the implicit ground that they were foreigners and brown.
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This was proven in the initial reaction that Max, Salmas future boss, showed.
When Salma applied as a seamstress in his tailor shop, his first comment was,
She cannot speak English, for Christs sake! (123) despite the fact that Salmas
English did not affect her capacity as a seamstress. Ultimately, he did give her the
job, yet the bias that he held about her as a foreigner and an Arab did not largely
change. Although he finally warmed up to her, he still enjoyed reminding her
about her differences and foreignness:
Our discussions always ended the same way, either with Sal, you have a
long way to go, or Sally, you have a lot to learn, so this time it was:
Sal, you dont know anything about us, the British, do you? I always
give him the pleasure of giving in to his logic. I guess not. I dont blame
you, being foreign and all, he said and lit a cigarette. (235)
It is useful to note that Salma incessantly conceded to Maxs outspoken
comments and undermining stereotypes, such as demonstrated when Salma
received a coconut cake as a gift from Maxs family, as Maxs wife said that
[Salma] must like coconuts, being foreign and all, to which she unwaveringly
said yes. The truth was that Salma actually never saw a coconut until she arrived
in England (196). On another case, Max decided to give her a raise of salary,
something he initially refused to do for years, but not without taking benefit out of
it:
I was at the same time resentful that he made the announcement [of the
raise] in front of Mrs Smith of the Royal Mail of all people. The whole
town would hear the news by tomorrow morning: He is ever so kind, Max
is, giving a rise to his black apprentice. I knew what Max expected of me
so I said, Max, youve been always kind to me. Thank you very, very
much. (237)
Maxs attitude betrayed the post-colonial tendency of white westerners to view
coloured foreigners as different, if not inferior. On the other hand, as a coloured
foreigner, his employee, and a woman, Salma was placed in a lower position than
Max, which enabled her with little choice other than to agree and give in to please
her superior. This ideological framework is manifested in white westerners
interactions with the coloured, ensuring a sustainable hierarchy of power.
In the conversations that Salma had with other men that she encountered,
they also tirelessly reminded her of her differences. One of the first questions that
Jim, a man that she met at a bar, asked was, Where do you come from? When he
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was asked to guess, Salma recounted that [t]he list, as usual, included every
country on earth except [her] own followed by a question that was faithful to
script: Why did you leave your country? (55). Later, when her tutor at the Open
University and her husband-to-be, John, also parroted the question of where she
came from, she answered with a strained voice, I am English. John replied, I am
English too, before walking away. This caused Salma to internalise that it was
like a curse upon [her] head. Moreover, she mused that it was [her] fate: [her]
accent and the colour of [her] skin. [She] could hear it sung everywhere:
WHERE DO YOU COME FROM? (161). These constant reminders resulted
in bewilderment in Salmas part and a perpetual sense of alienation, as she used
Parvins favourite phrase to explain her state of exile: I felt like a fish out of
water [] in this new land (246). However, Salma insisted to stick to what she
called her immigrant survival rule, which was to stay silent and acknowledge
their superiority in order to not draw attention to herself.
The racial biases that Salma received were not only demonstrated by men,
as made clear in her landladys straightforward racism. In a dialogue with Salma,
Liz compared several foreigners they saw on television to Salma, referring to the
whole lot as aliens and illegal immigrants. When Salma defended herself by
stating that she was not illegal, Liz retorted, Yes, you are. You must be (18). In
another instance, Salmas arm was accidentally whipped by a drunken Liz, who
remembered nothing when she woke up the next day. Instead, Liz was overtaken
by her prejudices that, as an immigrant, Salma must be earning money from
prostitution:
I knew what Liz was thinking: a lower-class immigrant slut, hustling down
on the quay, must have been stabbed by her pimp. All of that was written
on her hangovered face. I must go now, I said. She parroted my accent. I
moost go noo she said and smiled. (187)
All the passivity that Salma demonstrated reflected her strategies to merely fit in,
to blend and to shed her immigrant differences. The bombarding and constant
reminders of her alienness exiled her further from the environment she was trying
to adapt and blend in, and she desperately performed certain strategies to achieve
that purpose.
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Several of strategies that Salma took in order to pass as less foreign

included trying to order apple juice when she went to a bar one night, as the
colour made it look like beer, so whoever approached [her] would think that [she]
was open-minded, not an inflexible Muslim immigrant (52). It so happened that a
man did approach her, introducing himself as Jim. After talking for a while, Jim
offered to drive her home and ended up being invited inside, which opens up a
way for Salmas first sexual experience with a stranger: He placed his cold lips
on mine. I had nowhere to go. This country was the only home I had. I shut my
eyes, shut out the urgent love-making of Hamdan, and received his kiss (63). The
basis of her consent to his love-making was described in her statement: all that
fumbling in the dark so that you would forget who you were for a few minutes
(86), mirroring how she sought to escape from herself, her past, and her
problems in that act. However, she soon found out that it was not possible, and
she was faced with a hard-hitting realisation that the body, and what it signifies,
are inescapable (Katrak, 2007, p. 173). Later on, Salma recounted the night with
an apparent tone of regret: You stay in bed next to him all night pretending to be
content, asleep and all you wanted to do was to jump up and wash your body with
soap and water including your insides, do your ablutions then pray for
forgiveness (65); why did I sleep with Jim? Why did I do it? He did not even
acknowledge my presence (157). Salmas primary obedience reflects how her
consent to such a domination stemmed from the experience of internalised exile,
where the body feels disconnected from herself, as though it does not belong to it
and has no agency (Katrak, 2007, p. 2). Not only did Salma undergo self-exile,
but she also experienced external exile. In the unfamiliar and disparaging
environment that she was relocated in, survival was the main objective and
resistance became out of the question.
Another strategy that Salma attempted to carry out was through writing.
As she was taking a course in English Literature, she had an assignment to write
an essay on Virginia Woolf, or the Shakespeares sister, as Salma called her.
Salma began the essay with: Why was I asked to write about Shakespeares sister
not Shakespeare although so much has been said and written about him? He must
have had friends and women to help him. Nobody talks about the women. She
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concluded her essay with her experience as an alien in their land, which
expressed her discomfort and dissatisfaction, as she recounted: they, and I, think
I dont live here, but I do, just like all the women who were ignored in these tales
(187). However, her tutor John dismissed the aspect of originality that her essay
had and instead sharply criticised her for the lack of academic excellence in it and
how ignorant, simplistic and subjective the writing was (235). Unable to find a
medium to express herself and resist the neo-colonial domination that was
reinforced upon her, Salma was left with no other option but her imagination:
Sitting in a cloud of steam, tea with the Queen and whiteness. What if I woke up
one morning a nippleless blonde bombshell [] What if I turned white like milk,
like seagulls, like rushing clouds. [..] I would turn white just like Tracy no
more unwanted black hair; no more What did you say your name is? (90). Such
self-indulgent fantasies signals are not only disempowering, but they are also an
end in themselves (Katrak, p. 273), and in Salmas case, it resulted in her finding
fault in her body and ceasing to be herself as an individual.
4.3.
My Name is Salma: Challenging or Perpetuating the Representation of
Muslim Women
In this subchapter, I explore the question of whether My Name is Salma serves to

challenge, or conversely perpetuate, the representation of Muslim women. In
approaching this question, I shall juxtapose the two opposing elements that Fadia
Faqir presented in the novels, the east and the west, and how the differences
between both entities relate to the implementation of body politics on the female
protagonist, Salma. Finally, I conclude whether the binary opposition highlighted
in this post-colonial novel is aimed at challenging or propagating the western
representation of Muslim women.
By presenting the opposite settings of the east, as represented by the
Levant, and the west, which was symbolised by England, Faqir was able to
highlight how female oppression happens in both cultures, albeit in a different
manner. Faqir started by presenting an illustration of the oppressive nature of
Arab women in their native land. She drew the readers attention to the explicit
misogynist politicisation of and the restrictive rules imposed on the female body
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that Arab women suffered. Moreover, she enhanced the narrative with vivid and
exotic illustrations of the tribal village of Hima, which immediately reminds us
of the western labelling of the Arabs: an ethnic group that could be easily reduced
to tent and tribe (Renan, cited in Said 1978). Abdo (2009, p. 246) usefully
pointed out that Faqirs strategy of authenticating and orientalising her
narrative is catered to western readership in order to justify their belief that the
Arabs exist in a backward ahistorical vacuum. According to Boehmer (2000),
post-colonial writings that are valued highly by western readership are those that
are perfumed, decorated, sinuous, sensuous (p. 67). Thus, the orientalising of her
narrative through exquisite descriptions of the village, coupled with exotic tastes
and scents (e.g. Salmas numerous references to fig trees, sage tea, and milk
and honey) further enhances the Otherness of the characters (p. 247). However,
western readers soon find that their sense of superiority is challenged when Salma
was relocated to England. By presenting a whole new outlook on western
landscape and culture from the eyes of a foreign immigrant, such readers will be
able to experience the alienation that Salma felt in the new country. This
simultaneously alienates them from their own western-ness, enabling them, to an
extent, to objectively view the forms of male domination imposed on Salma.
In My Name is Salma, the manifestation of male supremacy in western and
eastern settings was juxtaposed with equal illustrations from both sides. While
Faqir implicitly attacks the imposition of the veil and covering practices by Arab
Muslim men, she also demonstrates how the practice of enforced unveiling was as
problematic, if not more disempowering than the westerns perception of veiling.
Although the obligation for Arab Muslim women to cover themselves may be
oppressive, the relentless pressure and coercion to dress down and conform to
the skin-deep values of the capitalist society equally objectify the female body.
This ultimately trespasses womens rights to make choices independently.
Moreover, Faqirs depiction of eastern male oppression of the female protagonist
is presented as largely cultural, resulting from values passing down through
generations, thus justifying the western readerships belief of the backwardness of
such cultural values. Ironically, the characteristic of western subjugation on
women is largely colonial, hence as conservative, as apparent in the post-colonial
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biases showed by the character of Liz and the racist, white-supremacy attitude
betrayed by the white male characters, such as Max, Jim, etc. The contrasting
forms of oppression that Faqir presented in her narrative are concluded by
displaying Salmas attempts of resistance in both settings.
Like most third world women writers, Faqir devoted a large part of her
narrative describing the female protagonists endeavours to liberate herself from
patriarchal oppression. While the Arab Muslim culture was often portrayed as
relentless, harsh and barbaric, interestingly enough, Salma was still able to resist
the subjugation imposed upon her. Despite the ending, in which Salma was shot
by her brother, thus giving her resistance a final ending, during her lifetime she
was still able to find a space to express herself and her individuality, while
simultaneously escaping from attempts to confine her being. On the other hand,
while the west was often identical to the concept of freedom and liberation,
Salmas self-expression was persistently curbed, and she was hardly given a space
to make independent choices. Her corporeal being might have been killed in
Hima, yet she had died inside long before that in Exeter, as it was ultimately the
relentless colonial tendency to define her as the Other that killed her spirits and
constantly brought her to her past.
Faqirs strategy to start the novel by confirming the western stigmas and
swiftly shifting them to the complete opposite by forcing western readership to
face criticism of their cultures implies her intention of double criticism. In Diya
Abdos (2009) words, this narrative strategically exoticised its characters, places
and ideas in order to lull, and then pull the rug from under, western readers, to
critique them and bring them face-to-face with oppressive orientalist or colonial
discourses (p. 249). The question is, where does this text actually stand on the
issue of western representation of Muslim women? I argue that My Name is Salma
intends to acknowledge the oppression aimed at women, which is still rampant in
Arab and/or Muslim communities, yet not without confronting western readership
of their own oppressive practices, particularly on the Oriental. By aiming at this,
Faqir became a synecdoche of third world women writers, who intend to
demonstrate the complexity of how the female body, in particular the Orientals,
is colonised (Katrak, 2007, p. 8). To an extent, Salmas struggles to resist both
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cultural and racial subjugations, as well as claiming independence of her body,

mirrored Faqirs own struggle via writing to challenge colonial domination on
women be it white, brown, coloured, Muslims or sceptics.
CHAPTER 5
CONCLUSION
Through a comprehensive analysis on the female protagonists in the novels of

Pillars of Salt and My Name Is Salma, we can understand the intricate process
between the operation of body politics, patriarchy and colonisation. It can be
concluded that the process of internalising patriarchal and western-biased ideas by
the colonised objects and the intangible legacies of colonialism until the present
day resulted in several forms of body politics. In Pillars of Salt, the politicisation
of the female bodies that largely took place through violence and coercion, such
as rape (including marital rape, as in the case of Um Saad), assault and battery,
were used to create a docile body. By establishing these docile bodies and
reducing the power of the female Other by degrading the substance of her being,
the patriarch was able to simultaneously demarcate and perpetuate his position of
power and superiority. Moreover, objectification of the female body also
manifests in the traditional and/or cultural constructions existing in society
through the constant repetition of moral-sanctioned advice, judgements and songs.
The repetitions established and reinforced ideologies surrounding the female
being, such as the construction of femininity that strongly requires women to
uphold her purity and honour, the construction of the females roles within the
family and community that greatly emphasises on her reproductive function and
the humiliation that women are subject to.
On the other hand, Pillars of Salt also presents the complexities within the
society itself through the illustration of several male characters that contested the
typical stereotype of the Arab/Muslim men and their so-called oppressive
behaviour. For instance, Mahas father ultimately inherited the land to Maha
instead of Daffash, despite the fact that it was an uncommon gesture in that
society. As a father, he was also described to be gentle to his daughter and
devoted to his wife. In addition, Mahas husband, Harb, was pictured to treat
Maha as an equal partner within their marriage, deconstructing the stereotype of
domineering and violent Muslim husbands. The relation between Maha and the
male characters within the family presents the specific practices within the family
93
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which constitutes her as a wife, sister, and daughter, suggesting that the concept of
family itself is not a rigid, fixed system but an ever-changing one, according to the
specificities of the particular family in question.
Finally, Pillars of Salt highlights how colonisation and its ideas of
westernisation greatly influence the operation of body politics carried out by
both the colonists and their agents (e.g. Daffash and the Storyteller), where the
indigenous women are placed at the lowest rank in the structure, from where they
attempted their resistance. The measures that were taken, either by the Arab
Muslims or the westerners, to curb resistance from the female side are also a form
of body politics. Both women, Maha and Um Saad, were declared as mad and
thus confined in a madhouse by their male relatives because they attempted to
challenge the power of the oppressive patriarchs in their restrictive environments.
In the mental hospital, however, their attempts to resist confinement through
exercising their freedom of speech were brutally ended by the English doctor, a
symbol of colonial power in the Arab hemisphere during the British Mandate,
who enforced an act of unveiling on Um Saads part and chopped off both
womens tresses. This shows that when women make an attempt to challenge
patriarchal oppression, the female bodies, as the site of their struggle, are exiled
and punished in order to suppress their resistance and control their being.
Moreover, it demonstrates that they were not suppressed merely because of their
gender, but also because of their class, their race and their status as colonised
objects, and this takes places first and foremost through the female body.
In My Name is Salma, it is apparent how colonisation still takes place in
another form. Despite the fact that the previously colonised objects had left their
ex-colonised countries, they find that such oppression still takes place, by
different agents, in different landscapes, and in different ways, but essentially
based on the ideas and legacy of colonisation to control and exploit. By way of
neo-colonialism, several body politics are manipulated to demarcate the power
relations between entities. For instance, in her native village in Hima, Salma
repeatedly faced intimidations and restrictions from her environment: her father
regarding her body, her brother regarding her behaviour with men, her mother
regarding her relationship with Hamdan, and Hamdan himself, who attempted to
95
exert his power over her despite the fact that they were lovers. However, in the
supposedly liberating society in the west, she was constantly restricted by her
superiors, where she was subject to a twofold othering process: for being a
coloured foreigner and a veiled woman. Another form of body politics that is
apparent in the particular contexts is how the Muslim female body is appropriated
differently in different situations. In her native tribe, it is represented in the
cultural practice of honour killing to uphold the family and tribes honour. Threats
of honour killing and sanction from society, then, serve to control the conduct of
women and ensure womens purity, as the weakest link yet at the same time the
moral upholder in the patriarchal community. On the other hand, in the western
society, the female body is commodified and women are valued on the basis of
their superficial appearance. As such, beauty is constructed by either a white
belle or an exotic foreigner. The politicisation of the veil is also an issue that
appeared numerously throughout the text. I conclude that in both the Arab and
western contexts, the practices of veiling and unveiling that are imposed on Salma
are used as a mechanism of control to exert power over her and limit her agency.
In addressing the second aim of the research, which is to answer whether
the corpus, through its illustration of the female characters struggles towards
liberation, strengthen or deconstruct western representations of Muslim women, I
suggest a multi-interpretative approach. To an extent, these texts may seem to
strengthen such representations of Muslim women as oppressed because they are
pictured to be subjected to oppressive cultural traditional practices. However, if
we analyse closely the strategies that they carried out to challenge male
repression, the texts actually proves that these women did own a sense of agency
which they proved in various occasions. Ultimately, this deconstruction
challenges the portrayals of Muslim women as passive and obedient because, in
this corpus, they proved that they were able to exercise self-agency. The fact that
they realised and carried out their agency is of particular importance in the
postcolonial feminist framework. Furthermore, it is more essential to underscore
that their attempts to resist oppression and achieve liberation albeit not in the
western sense of the word failed due to the existing system instead of lack of
struggles. In Salmas case, for instance, she was able to exert her agency and fight
96
for resistance in the oppression she experienced at home, despite the measures
that were taken to curb her resistance attempts. Salma was initially able to flee
from the honour killing, express her grief through silence and escape confinement
in prison with the help of a police officer and Sister Khairiyya, a Catholic nun.
Ironically, Salmas resistance was not given a space in the western environment.
Thus, Salma had to constantly struggle to adapt and change everything about
herself: her name, her appearance and, finally, her identity. Her foreignness was
not allowed to be expressed and she constantly faced a twofold othering process
which curbed her spirit of resistance, which ultimately caused her to return to her
hometown to find both her daughter and, I argue, her identity.
These two novels seem to suggest that both in the colonial and postcolonial contexts, it is women especially colonised women who suffer the
most from colonisation. In the colonial context of the British Mandate in Levant,
Maha and Um Saads resistance was put to an end by the English colonists and
their legacy; while in post-colonial England, Salmas struggle to challenge male
oppression was ultimately curbed by the neo-colonialist and capitalist
environment. In the end, both novels demonstrated and criticised the fact that it
was both patriarchy and colonialism that overturned their resistance and
strengthened the marginalisation they attempted to challenge.
However, Faqirs attempts to double criticise the oppressive practices in
not only the Arab/Muslim culture but also the western culture seem to incline
more towards criticising the former. As Abdo pointed out, although several of the
strategies that Faqir used are successful in alienating the western readership,
they may not have achieved the objectives she aimed for: to enforce the western
readers to face critical scrutiny (2009, p. 266). The endings of both novels, which
put an end to the resistance of the female characters, may create a sense of
discomfort to both criticised readerships. However, instead of educating and
causing them to critically reflect upon themselves, it could only provide them with
a reason to justify and strengthen their prior beliefs.
For instance, in Pillars of Salt, both women were described to exert their
agency by voicing their experiences within the mental institution until their
resistance was ended by the British doctor. The notion that the suppressed
97
women were liberated by the freedom of expression to the extent that they
were considered as mad by their environment very much caters to the western
audience, particularly western feminists idea of liberation. In addition, the
conclusion of My Name is Salma, where Salma was killed by her brother, would
possibly satisfy the western readership, eluding them from Faqirs intention to
criticise their own repressive practices that led to Salmas tragic end. In addition,
Faqirs narrative provides a more dominant illustration on the oppression that the
female protagonists experienced, where only the most receptive readers can
observe the agency within and the individualities of these women. It is possible
that, upon reading these novels, the readers will only grasp the conclusion that all
women, especially Muslim and/or Third World women, are a terribly oppressed
and
powerless
homogenous
group
without
considering
the
particular
individualities, contexts, and socio-political differences of each subject.

Despite my effort to do a comprehensive analysis of the two novels, I
acknowledge that there are several points that have not been adequately explored
this research. For instance, a more extensive study on the effects of colonialism on
the power relations between the colonised men and women could enrich other
research made in the field of post-colonialism. An analysis of post-colonial biases
and white supremacy showed by Liz, Salmas landlord, who was constantly under
the illusion that she was still living in colonised India, is worth consideration in
the field of post-colonial feminism. Finally, through the analysis of how female
oppression operates through body politics in specific cultural contexts and
historical settings, I call to question the simplistic and generalising western and/or
mainstream feminist representations of Muslim women. In dealing with
representations of any kind, it is essential to consider how Edward Said (1982, p.
272) eloquently described representations: embedded first in the language and
then in the culture, institutions, and political ambience of the representer. It is
thus necessary to criticise simplistic reproaching of the Arab and/or Islamic
culture and patriarchy for such subjugations without considering the intricacies of
colonialism or neo-colonialism or even capitalism at play.
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Politics of The Body and Its Representation: An Analysis of The Body Politics and Western Representation of Muslim Women in Pillars of Salt and My Name Is Salma by Fadia Faqir

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Politics of The Body and Its Representation: An Analysis of The Body Politics and Western Representation of Muslim Women in Pillars of Salt and My Name Is Salma by Fadia Faqir

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UNIVERSITAS INDONESIA

POLITICS OF THE BODY AND ITS REPRESENTATION:

SHAFFIRA DIRAPRANA GAYATRI

FAKULTAS ILMU PENGETAHUAN BUDAYA

POLITICS OF THE BODY AND ITS REPRESENTATION:

Diajukan sebagai salah satu syarat untuk memperoleh gelar Sarjana

SHAFFIRA DIRAPRANA GAYATRI

FAKULTAS ILMU PENGETAHUAN BUDAYA

SURAT PERNYATAAN BEBAS PLAGIARISME

Jakarta, 9 Januari 2014

Shaffira Diraprana Gayatri

HALAMAN PERNYATAAN ORISINALITAS

: Shaffira Diraprana Gayatri

Dedicated to my late grandfather,

This undergraduate thesis is one of the prerequisites of attaining the Bachelor in

Jakarta, January 2014

Shaffira Diraprana Gayatri

HALAMAN PERNYATAAN PERSETUJUAN PUBLIKASI TUGAS

: Shaffira Diraprana Gayatri

: Ilmu Pengetahuan Budaya

demi pengembangan ilmu pengetahuan, menyetujui untuk memberikan kepada

Shaffira Diraprana Gayatri

Kata kunci: patriarki, perempuan Muslim, politik tubuh, poskolonial feminisme,

Keywords: body politics, Muslim women, patriarchy, postcolonial feminism,

CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION ......................................................................... 1

Research Questions ........................................................................................... 10

Scope of Research ............................................................................................. 11

Thesis Organisation .......................................................................................... 11

CHAPTER 2 THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK ............................................ 13

Politics of the Body........................................................................................... 13

Sexual Politics and Body Politics ............................................................. 13

The Veiled Body ....................................................................................... 15

Post-colonial Feminism .................................................................................... 18

Decolonising Feminism ............................................................................ 18

CHAPTER 3 THE CONSTRUCTION OF BODY POLITICS IN PILLARS

Pillars of Salt as a Post-colonial Novel ............................................................ 24

Construction of Body Politics on the Character of Maha ................................. 27

Maha and the Construction of the Body ................................................... 27

Challenging the Construction of Body Politics......................................... 40

Construction of Body Politics on the Character of Um Saad ........................... 47

Um Saad and the Construction of the Body.............................................. 48

Challenging the Construction of Body Politics......................................... 59

3.4. Pillars of Salt: Challenging or Perpetuating the Representation of Muslim

CHAPTER 4 THE CONSTRUCTION OF BODY POLITICS IN MY NAME

My Name is Salma as a Post-colonial Novel..................................................... 67

Construction of Body Politics on the Character of Salma ................................ 68

Salma and the Construction of the Body .................................................. 68

Challenging the Construction of Body Politics......................................... 84

4.3. My Name is Salma: Challenging or Perpetuating the Representation of Muslim

CHAPTER 5 CONCLUSION ............................................................................ 93

relationship of power, of domination, [and] of varying degrees of complex

In Pillars of Salt, the plot mainly focuses on two female protagonists,

struggle towards liberation, succeed to strengthen, or conversely to challenge,

Politics of the Body

2.1.1. Sexual Politics and Body Politics

The Veiled Body

2.2.1. Decolonising Feminism

thinking, resulting in a biased judgement on erroneous struggles that do not

3. (Third-world) Women are defined as a group solely based on their

As they become an object in western feminist discourses, universal images of

Pillars of Salt as a Post-colonial Novel

A post-colonial novel written by a transnational female writer in 1996, Pillars of

Oriental sense to the readership. However, the Storytellers version of the