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Al-Ahram Weekly 23 - 29 March 2000 Issue No. 474 
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Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Al-Ahram Weekly 23 - 29 March 2000 Issue No. 474
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| Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Egypt Region International Economy Opinion Culture Features Focus Travel Living Sports Profile People Time Out Chronicles Cartoons Mothers of substance
By Fayza Hassan
Rami was one of the most popular students at the university, not only for his excellent academic performance and the help he readily extended to the less gifted, but mainly because he managed to win the girls' hearts with his devotion to his mother. Such a good son would certainly make a good husband, they reasoned. Rami never joined in outings or stayed out late at night. He disappeared during holidays. His mother, he explained, was almost paralysed, and she had only him to care for her. His sisters were married, had their own lives and did not really have the time. They lived far away and it was difficult for them to visit on a regular basis, what with their children's homework, their own jobs and the household chores. He was the only one who still lived at home and it was his duty to make his mother's remaining days happy. Whenever he became close to a girl, he would ask her not to call him at home. "It disturbs the poor woman to think that I may marry one day and force her to put up with a daughter-in-law who may treat her badly, or worse, that I may consider moving out. I have made such a cozy life for her."
He used to recount in detail how he sat in the morning with his mother on the balcony of their apartment, overlooking a tiny garden, and how she insisted on making their first cup of coffee herself on the small spirit stove. It was like a small daily celebration, in which the delicate coffee cups -- gold-rimmed and part of a set of six, given to her by her own mother at the time of her marriage -- the old-fashioned stove with its butane bottle and the special aromatic blend that he bought in Bab Al-Louq all played an essential role, reinforcing the mother-son bond every morning.
When a boy at university discovered by accident that Rami had a rich wife and that it was his little sister who actually took care of their mother, he tried to warn the group but no one believed him. "One does not make up stories about one's mother," said one of the girls indignantly. "You are just spreading rumours about him because you are jealous." And in most cases, she would have been quite right.
Women in Egypt may not enjoy political, social or economic rights, but their role as mothers has always been sanctified. The most chauvinistic of Egyptian men, while forbidding his wife to visit her family or travel alone, will nevertheless give her due respect as the mother of his children. To her children, in turn, she represents the whole world and, even though they may rebel against their father at times, their anger will never include her. No matter how hostile their relationship with the rest of the family may become, they will still love and honour her. Grown men and women who may have good reason to complain will seldom raise their voices against their mother, and will more often than not take her side against their own spouse.
Over the centuries, Egyptian women may not have always played the role they deserved in public life but they have earned the eternal gratitude of the men and women they raised. Egyptian literature is singularly devoid of the hatred that many Western writers have traditionally showered on their forbears. The heartfelt cry of Familles, je vous hais, does not seem to apply here. Writing about the women in their families, Egyptian authors usually only recall tenderness and compassion.
This is also true of children who grew up in an extended family or a harem and who often clung to favourite female relatives or to their father's other wives, showing love and respect to all of them and being showered with the women's kindness in return. Although such communal arrangements were far from free of internecine frictions, regardless of small feuds, the women's joint authority reigned supreme over the younger generation.
Huda Sha'rawi recounts in her memoirs that she had two mothers, her own, and Umm Kabira (Big Mother), another of Sultan Pasha's wives, with whom she developed a very special degree of intimacy. "I loved Umm Kabira immensely, and she returned that love and showed compassion toward me. She, alone, talked frankly with me on a number of matters, making it easy for me to confide in her...Often my mother granted permission to spend a few nights with Umm Kabira..." Huda, who suffered from terrifying recurrent nightmares after her father's death, felt reassured near her "second mother:" "I thus spent nights sleeping peacefully in the same bed with Umm Kabira, talking with her until sleep overtook me. Unlike my mother, who insisted upon closing the windows and doors for fear the fresh air would make us ill, Umm Kabira, like me, could not sleep unless the windows were open, especially in summer. After sleeping in Umm Kabira's room, I would awake, invigorated, in the early hours of the morning..."
Isis and Horus
Photo: Antoune Albert
In his Trilogy, Naguib Mahfouz pictures Amina, the tender compassionate mother who cannot bring herself to punish her children for their peccadilloes but rather "let the father or his shadow which dominated the children from afar, straighten them out and lay down the law." Amina is worshipped by her grown sons as well as by the younger Aisha, Khadiga and Kamal, who consult her and listen to her pronouncements with an uncritical mind. Kamal, who at a tender age has undertaken the task of increasing his mother's Qur'anic knowledge, looks forward all day to their special moment together. "He would tell her about the lesson and she would review, in the light of this new information, what she had previously learned from her father, a religious scholar trained at Al-Azhar mosque university. They would discuss what they knew for a long time. Then he would teach her the new Qur'an suras she had not previously memorised." At no time does it occur to Kamal that he is becoming more proficient than his mother.
When Amina is thrown out of the house by the irate Ahmed Abdel-Gawwad for disobeying him, her daughters are so dismayed that they can hardly think straight. How will they be able to continue living without her? She, on the other hand, has no other refuge than her own mother, now old and blind, who welcomes her nevertheless with open heart and mind and does her best to cheer her up. The two women have remained as close as they were when Amina herself was a child, although for the past twenty years they have only seen each other infrequently. Amina's father was much gentler than her husband, the mother reflects, but she refrains from criticising Sil-Sayed, considering such an attitude to represent a failing in the fulfilment of her maternal duties.
That same night, Amina's sons come to visit her as soon as they find out what has happened: "Like a fugitive seeking asylum, Kamal climbed onto his mother's lap. For the first time he stated his decision that he had kept secret at home and on the way: 'I am staying here with Mother... I am not going back with you.' (...) Fahmy had been gazing at her silently for a long time the way he did when he wanted to tell her something with a look. This silent glance was the best expression for her of what both their hearts were feeling. He was her darling and his love for her was exceeded only by her love for him."
A New Egyptian, poet Sayed Hegab's memoirs, pictures his mother as ever present in his life as he grows up in the small fishermen's town of Matariya in the Delta. She scolds him for his bad grades or fills his mouth with hot peppercorns as punishment for lying. She worries about his health, his behaviour, his lack of attention at school and discusses his future with the father earnestly. Sayed feels more affinities with his father and considers his mother a rather vindictive woman, quick to chastise him for the slightest of his misdemeanours; but, observing her tears at the death of his baby brother, he realises that below the sternness with which she treats him lies a compassionate heart. Unlike Kamal in Palace Walk, however, he does not trust her wisdom implicitly: "When the small Sayed asked his mother, 'Where did you get me from?' she answered: We found you in front of the mosque. Your father, on his way to the morning prayers, found you crying on the mosque doorstep... He felt pity for you, so he brought you home.'
"He asked insistently: 'And who put me on the mosque's doorstep?'
'God made you and put you there for whoever wants to bring up a son.'
"He did not really believe her, but he thought secretly and sadly, 'perhaps'... By that time, he had seen with his own eyes the birth of his brother Hamdi. From his friends he had heard how women gave birth. That is why he was sure his mother lied. If he lied, his mother would beat him, so why did she lie?"
Growing up, Sayed gains a deeper understanding of his mother's character, and soon puts the mosque story behind him. He revels in the affection his parents show for each other; learning that, as a young girl, his mother used to spray her perfume in the room in which she knew her brother's friend -- and future husband -- would be sitting fills his imagination with loving delight.
Growing up in Matariya, Hegab was spared the consequences of the debate that had been raging around the turn of the century on the changing conception of the "good mother."
With the onset of the modernisation project linked to a nascent nationalistic discourse, the emphasis shifted towards organising upbringing "along scientific lines according to modern, hygienic and rational principles for developing productive members of society," writes Omnia Shakri, a PhD candidate at the department of history, Princeton University. Qasim Amin had pioneered the idea of a direct link between the development and progress of the country and the condition of women, "a link that is forged precisely by women's ability to properly raise a generation of children." A proliferation of treatises and articles on child rearing began to appear, promoting the direct involvement of enlightened mothers in their children's progress and advising against the delegation of this role to servants, relatives or nannies. The task at hand for those who aimed at creating a nation of strong men and women was to address the problem of Egyptian mothers, deemed ignorant and thus unable to participate in the upbringing of the economically useful citizens of a modern nation. While women of the lower classes remained blissfully unaware of the promotion of motherhood to an accurate science, more educated mothers, impelled to subscribe to the new criteria and thus caught between two cultures, were beset by confusion. They could no longer rely on time-tested wisdom. They were entering uncharted territory.
This may explain why the perception of their mothers as a separate entity, often provoked such mixed feelings in subsequent generations of upper-class children. Writing about the influence of female relatives in her life, Leila Ahmed comments in A Border Passage: "It is quite possible that, while the women in Zatoun did not think of themselves and of us as inferior, the men did, although -- given how powerful the cultural imperative of respect for parents, particularly the mother, was among those people -- even for men such a view could not have been altogether uncomplicated."
Soon new theories were advanced, creating further confusion as to the mother's identity. By the second half of the century, she had joined the work force, making her task as an educator of future generations even more problematic. While mothers cannot yet fulfil the mutually exclusive roles of full-time home-maker and full-time breadwinner, their children's love endures.
Sources:Huda Sha'rawi: Harem Years, transl. Margo Badran, Virago Press, 1986
Leila Ahmed: A Border Passage, Farrar, Strauss and Giroux, 1999
Omnia Shakri: "Schooled Mothers and Structured Play: Child Rearing in Turn-of-the-Century Egypt", in Remaking Women: Feminism and Modernity in the Middle East, ed. Lila Abu Lughod, The American University in Cairo Press, 1998
Qasim Amin: The New Woman, the American University in Cairo Press, 1995
Naguib Mahfouz: Palace Walk, The American University in Cairo Press, 1989
Sayed Hegab: A New Egyptian, Praeger Publishers, 1971
