Badrs A Balcony over the Fakihani, Pillars of Salt, by Fadia Faqir, and Al-Atrashs A Woman of Five Seasons :: Badr Fakihani Faqir Pillars Five Seasons Essays

Badrs A Balcony over the Fakihani, P aguishars of Salt, by Fadia Faqir, and Al-Atrashs A char of Five SeasonsStruggles for independence from foreign conquerors, civil tyrants, and the hands of the oppressive receive long been the setting for life in the Arab World. This skin is compounded for Arab women, who nourish the added worries of societal and cultural constraints. The 20th century was a notably bloody-minded integrity, particularly in the Middle East. There have been numerous, almost round-the-clock aggressive confrontations in the region since the dawn of the 20th century, beginning with Ibn Saud?s campaign against the Ottoman Empire (Diller 384) and concluding with the suicide bombings of contemporary nonchalant news. Typically, the actors of this violence have been predominantly men, yet such far reaching, and pervading raft of violence have inevitably had an impact on the daily lives and disposition of countless generations of Arab women. This impact has also sa turated the minds of many Arab women writers, and the depth of this case comes across very well in the works of Liyana Badr, Leila Al-Atrash, and Fadia Faqir. The political and historical scopes of each novel are extremely telling. This ever-present aggressive backdrop influences settings and personal storylines of characters in Badr?s A Balcony over the Fakihani, Faqir?s Pillars of Salt, and Al-Atrash?s A Woman of Five Seasons overwhelmingly.Pillars of Salt, which is set in the early(a) 20s in Jordan, has the earliest setting of all three novels and happens to be one of the more violent. In 1920, Transjordan was p laced under British mandate. The British left in May of 1923, and then Emir Abdullah attempted to outride and unite various Bedouin groups and form a unit of men competent to protect the land from invaders (Diller 261). It is with this historical context that we happen upon the story of Maha and her struggle for survival and independence. The novel begins with the s toryteller?s muddy mixture of event and fable. The storyteller recounts his first encounter with the English, and describes the way ?their cars exhaled black smoke into the drop off blue sky? (Faqir 3). The storyteller is somewhat removed from the political context because he is ?half-Arab? (Faqir 3), yet it is still evident that there is some ill feeling towards the English. Later on, we are presented with another political opinion of the storyteller. He describes the story of the Balfour Declaration, and portrays it in a very negative manner, calling i t the result of Lord Balfour?