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alonewiththemoonWomen in the City of the Dead, by Helen Watson, is a collection of life stories and creative stories told by the very poor women who live in the City of the Dead, a giant graveyard over four centuries old just outside Cairo. Initially it was inhabited only by gravediggers and groundskeepers and their families, but as more and more rural people moved to Cairo to seek their fortunes, the already overpopulated city could not contain them all and so many people moved into the City of the Dead, which has become a community onto itself.
I was initially drawn to this book because of a half-remembered interview I read somewhere with some Egyptian costume designer who worked out of an old tomb in the City of the Dead (and people wonder why goths are drawn to belly dance). I always wondered how it was that a cemetery was a normal place for a business to operate. As it turns out, the City of the Dead contains a reluctant workforce of women who prefer to work inside their own homes. Thus a business like a costumer or other clothing manufacturer can easily operate in the City of the Dead with very little overhead and a cheap labor pool to draw from. The most common employment for women, at least among those interviewed by Watson, was to cut out fabric pattern pieces, which would then be sent back over to a workshop for assembly by women who were willing to work outside their homes. One or two other women operated produce stands, although this was seen as something shameful even as it gave them economic security. For these women, all of whom had rural roots, the only proper employment for a woman was in her own home, raising her children and keeping her house. Thus work that let you stay in your own house was less shameful than work that took you outside the house, but all employment for a wage was seen as wrong. However, divorced or widowed women had no choice other than to work to support themselves and their children, and often married women had to work to contribute to the family income. In one case, a woman hid the fact that she was doing pattern work from her husband out of respect for his feelings. Another woman who owned her own produce stand and worked at it said she was little better than a prostitute for working out in the streets and talking to all kinds of strange men. (it was clear though, however paradoxically, that this woman was proud of her ability to survive and to raise her children and keep them well fed and clothed and in school.)
All of these women had stories to break your heart. Even the few whose lives were relatively stable and reasonably successful by City of the Dead standards live under tremendous hardship. Nearly all had lost children, about half were divorced or widowed and of those who were married, they didn't have much good to say about their men for the most part. Marriage was not a matter of love but of economic necessity and sometimes the tying together of two families. As the women observed, love comes later if you are lucky. If you are not lucky, or if you prove to be barren, your husband can divorce you and leave you with nothing and very little recourse to other support, since chances are your family is far away in the country and you'd have no way to travel back there, even assuming they'd take you. The young unmarried woman who worked as Helen Watson's translator said that she wished she could be a widow without being bothered to get married first so that she could just go ahead and start her own business and be self-reliant without people staring and talking about her. Life is pretty contingent for women in the City of the Dead.
Most of these women showed tremendous strength and resiliency in how they faced life, and through regular tea parties, formed strong supportive bonds with each other that were probably at least as, if not more, important to them as their relationships with their husbands. In a way, these unrelated women formed for themselves the kind of support system they would have if they still lived back in their villages. One way they built bonds among themselves was by telling stories during the tea parties that were thinly veiled allegories about each other's lives, sometimes to comfort a woman with the knowledge that everybody sympathized with her plight or sometimes to rebuke a woman for perhaps being too gloomy or greedy. Helen Watson structured her book by giving first a woman's life story, then a story told at a tea party more or less about her so that the reader could understand the points that were being made in the tea party story and how they applied (the book contained little anthro theory or metanarrative, but happily contained copious footnotes to explain context--a zar was featured prominently in one story). Not all women liked hearing their stories, and some refused to see themselves in the stories. But all in all, the stories served to reassure one another that there were people who cared about them and sympathized with their lot in life, and illustrated that the women would try to help each other whenever they could.
Some of the stories were not really about each other, but were folktales or fantasies about sultans, princesses, magicians and so forth, just told for the enjoyment of a good story. Usually there was a moral involved, but only by way of putting a satisfying end to the story. Watson stresses that the older women were truly masterful storytellers, keeping their audiences on the edges of their seats with their dramatic flair, and a lot of that comes through in the translations. Some of the stories were quite beautiful, and showed that even though life was very hard for these women, they could find plenty of joy and warmth. The final chapter in the book is a story that one of the women told about the anthropologist as a sort of parting gift, to tell her essentially that they did think she was strange but all in all, they liked her because they knew she could listen and understand--demonstrated exactly by telling a story for her.
One of the things that I as a dancer interested in learning about Egyptian life as a way to improve my dancing took away from this book is an increased awareness of the importance of baladi in the life of Egypt's poor. For the inhabitants of the City of the Dead, the countryside is a place where life was good, food was plentiful, you had relatives to look out for you, things were cleaner, people were healthier--whether all these things were true or not, the countryside became an idealized vision in people's minds. In the case of the women, it also represented a place where they had the freedom to be proper women. It sounds contrary to a Western reader, but for the women who had moved from the country, freedom of choice would mean staying inside the house where a woman ought to be. Anyway, baladi is much more than what say the Old West or Colonial New England is to Americans--it is that, an iconic vision of one's country that informs national character, but it is also infused with painful nostalgia and the idea that one could be so much more if one had the opportunity, because things are very not right where one is. Baladi music is profoundly escapist and as a dancer I would strive to take an audience who knows this stuff on an escapist journey with me.
Another thing I took away from the book is an increased awareness of where our costumes come from. I think after reading this I will have more tolerance for custom orders that don't fit quite right, because chances are the fabric pieces were cut out late at night by lamplight by a woman already exhausted by a full day's housework and childcare, conflicted about working at all, so that I can buy a fancy costume and dance to her people's music while never having to worry about where my next meal is coming from. It was sobering in that regard. I don't think the women are being exploited per se; what they are being paid is probably proportionate to what profit there is at that level, and since they are paid by the piece they do to some extent control how much they work, something the women spoke of as an advantage (though obviously if they aren't productive enough the tailor or costumer will find somebody else). But they and their life experience are a part of what brought that costume to me. I am glad that I decided to make my Raks Spooki events charitable drives for organizations like Women for Women Intl. I will think about ways that I can give back more.
I was initially drawn to this book because of a half-remembered interview I read somewhere with some Egyptian costume designer who worked out of an old tomb in the City of the Dead (and people wonder why goths are drawn to belly dance). I always wondered how it was that a cemetery was a normal place for a business to operate. As it turns out, the City of the Dead contains a reluctant workforce of women who prefer to work inside their own homes. Thus a business like a costumer or other clothing manufacturer can easily operate in the City of the Dead with very little overhead and a cheap labor pool to draw from. The most common employment for women, at least among those interviewed by Watson, was to cut out fabric pattern pieces, which would then be sent back over to a workshop for assembly by women who were willing to work outside their homes. One or two other women operated produce stands, although this was seen as something shameful even as it gave them economic security. For these women, all of whom had rural roots, the only proper employment for a woman was in her own home, raising her children and keeping her house. Thus work that let you stay in your own house was less shameful than work that took you outside the house, but all employment for a wage was seen as wrong. However, divorced or widowed women had no choice other than to work to support themselves and their children, and often married women had to work to contribute to the family income. In one case, a woman hid the fact that she was doing pattern work from her husband out of respect for his feelings. Another woman who owned her own produce stand and worked at it said she was little better than a prostitute for working out in the streets and talking to all kinds of strange men. (it was clear though, however paradoxically, that this woman was proud of her ability to survive and to raise her children and keep them well fed and clothed and in school.)
All of these women had stories to break your heart. Even the few whose lives were relatively stable and reasonably successful by City of the Dead standards live under tremendous hardship. Nearly all had lost children, about half were divorced or widowed and of those who were married, they didn't have much good to say about their men for the most part. Marriage was not a matter of love but of economic necessity and sometimes the tying together of two families. As the women observed, love comes later if you are lucky. If you are not lucky, or if you prove to be barren, your husband can divorce you and leave you with nothing and very little recourse to other support, since chances are your family is far away in the country and you'd have no way to travel back there, even assuming they'd take you. The young unmarried woman who worked as Helen Watson's translator said that she wished she could be a widow without being bothered to get married first so that she could just go ahead and start her own business and be self-reliant without people staring and talking about her. Life is pretty contingent for women in the City of the Dead.
Most of these women showed tremendous strength and resiliency in how they faced life, and through regular tea parties, formed strong supportive bonds with each other that were probably at least as, if not more, important to them as their relationships with their husbands. In a way, these unrelated women formed for themselves the kind of support system they would have if they still lived back in their villages. One way they built bonds among themselves was by telling stories during the tea parties that were thinly veiled allegories about each other's lives, sometimes to comfort a woman with the knowledge that everybody sympathized with her plight or sometimes to rebuke a woman for perhaps being too gloomy or greedy. Helen Watson structured her book by giving first a woman's life story, then a story told at a tea party more or less about her so that the reader could understand the points that were being made in the tea party story and how they applied (the book contained little anthro theory or metanarrative, but happily contained copious footnotes to explain context--a zar was featured prominently in one story). Not all women liked hearing their stories, and some refused to see themselves in the stories. But all in all, the stories served to reassure one another that there were people who cared about them and sympathized with their lot in life, and illustrated that the women would try to help each other whenever they could.
Some of the stories were not really about each other, but were folktales or fantasies about sultans, princesses, magicians and so forth, just told for the enjoyment of a good story. Usually there was a moral involved, but only by way of putting a satisfying end to the story. Watson stresses that the older women were truly masterful storytellers, keeping their audiences on the edges of their seats with their dramatic flair, and a lot of that comes through in the translations. Some of the stories were quite beautiful, and showed that even though life was very hard for these women, they could find plenty of joy and warmth. The final chapter in the book is a story that one of the women told about the anthropologist as a sort of parting gift, to tell her essentially that they did think she was strange but all in all, they liked her because they knew she could listen and understand--demonstrated exactly by telling a story for her.
One of the things that I as a dancer interested in learning about Egyptian life as a way to improve my dancing took away from this book is an increased awareness of the importance of baladi in the life of Egypt's poor. For the inhabitants of the City of the Dead, the countryside is a place where life was good, food was plentiful, you had relatives to look out for you, things were cleaner, people were healthier--whether all these things were true or not, the countryside became an idealized vision in people's minds. In the case of the women, it also represented a place where they had the freedom to be proper women. It sounds contrary to a Western reader, but for the women who had moved from the country, freedom of choice would mean staying inside the house where a woman ought to be. Anyway, baladi is much more than what say the Old West or Colonial New England is to Americans--it is that, an iconic vision of one's country that informs national character, but it is also infused with painful nostalgia and the idea that one could be so much more if one had the opportunity, because things are very not right where one is. Baladi music is profoundly escapist and as a dancer I would strive to take an audience who knows this stuff on an escapist journey with me.
Another thing I took away from the book is an increased awareness of where our costumes come from. I think after reading this I will have more tolerance for custom orders that don't fit quite right, because chances are the fabric pieces were cut out late at night by lamplight by a woman already exhausted by a full day's housework and childcare, conflicted about working at all, so that I can buy a fancy costume and dance to her people's music while never having to worry about where my next meal is coming from. It was sobering in that regard. I don't think the women are being exploited per se; what they are being paid is probably proportionate to what profit there is at that level, and since they are paid by the piece they do to some extent control how much they work, something the women spoke of as an advantage (though obviously if they aren't productive enough the tailor or costumer will find somebody else). But they and their life experience are a part of what brought that costume to me. I am glad that I decided to make my Raks Spooki events charitable drives for organizations like Women for Women Intl. I will think about ways that I can give back more.
no subject
Date: 2008-06-14 04:01 am (UTC)The City of the Dead was one place that no one would take us. Not even wouldn't take us - but woud say "it's safe anywhere in Cairo for you to walk around by yourself, but don't go there. It's not safe." I heard this many many times. People consider it to be a no-go zone. Of course it made me all the more curious every time our car passed by it.
no subject
Date: 2008-06-14 05:23 pm (UTC)