One Wish: Fatima al-Fihri and the World's Oldest University by M.O. Yuksel

In the ninth century, Fatima al-Fihri was a little girl with a deep love of learning and a big dream. While a small child, she wanted to learn about the world around her. At this time, while boys attended school, girls such as Fatima were educated at home by tutors. So, she studied the Qur'an and worked on her math problems. Her faith taught her that knowledge was very important. As a result, Fatima had a dream to build a school for all students.

Then one day, war came to her town, and Fatima and her family had to flee to Fez, Morocco. Still Fatima continued to hold on to her dream to build a school one day, to continue her education. Life carried on, with Fatima accompanying her father to work at the souq. Eventually, Fatima grew up and got married. Her family prospered and became wealthy. But then her father and her husband both died.

With the fortune left to her by her father and her husband, Fatima began to consider how best to use this money. She decided to build a school where students from all over the world, including the poor and refugees could live and study for free. This school would teach many subjects including history, geometry and poetry and offer degrees.

Fatima drew up plans for the school and during its construction, she fasted to show her "passion, gratitude, and faith." She was involved in every aspect of the construction including the type of stone used, the mosaics on the walls and even the carvings on the ceiling. She named the school, al-Qarawiyyin, the name of her hometown in Tunisia. It was a school, a mosque and a library. 

Soon students began arriving and Fatima was thrilled. Her school, still open today, has taught students for over a thousand years.

Discussion

One Wish offers young readers the story of Fatima al-Fihri who fulfilled a life-long dream to create a school open to all students, including girls.

Fatima al-Fihri was born in Kairouan, Tunisia, into the family of a merchant, Mohamed al-Fihri. Her parents valued the education of girls. Fatima, her sister Miriam and father emigrated to Morocco along with many Tunisians during this century. It is possible that the violence that erupted over the un-Islamic taxes by the ruling government at the time, led to Fatima's family and many others to flee Tunisia. In Fes, Tunisia, Fatima's father became wealthy through hard work. When she came into significant wealth after the death of her father, she was able to move forward with her dream of creating a special school open to all students, from any country. 

Fes was a relatively new town, and as the population grew rapidly there were not enough schools. With their new wealth both Fatima and her sister founded mosques. Fatima's original school consisted of a mosque, library and a large number of classrooms but soon grew in size and prestige. The students were all boys but there was a means for girls to listen to teachers. The subjects offered for study included astronomy, languages and natural sciences. It was founded in 859 A.D. and eventually became the University of al-Qarawiyyin, - the first degree-granting educational institute in the world.  Fatima herself studied there and it is believed that Pope Sylvester II was also a student.

Its library is considered one of the oldest in the world with over four thousand manuscripts. It was recently renovated, the update designed by Canadian-Moroccan architect, Aziza Chaouni. You can see Fatima's original diploma - presented on a wooden board.

One Wish captures the essential facts as we know them of Fatima al-Fihir's life and her contributions. Although little historical information is available on Fatima's early life, Yuksel has presented her story with a focus on Fatima's dream of establishing a school, her love of learning and the belief that education should be available to all, including girls. Fatima and her sister Miriam could have used their newly acquired wealth in other ways, but their generosity ensured the education of many people down through the centuries. Her story is illustrated in the richly coloured panels created by artist Mariam Quraishi who used gouache and watercolor on Arches hot pressed paper. 

The author offers more biographical information about Fatima at the back of the book in the form of an Author's Note. There is also more information on The University of Al-Qarawiyyin.

Book Details:

One Wish: Fatima al-Fihri and the World's Oldest University by M.O. Yuksel
New York: HarperCollins Publishers      2022

Letters To My Daughters. A Memoir by Fawzia Koofi

Letters To My Daughters is a searing memoir that is an intimate look into the recent troubled history of Afghanistan from the perspective of a young Afghani who is both a woman and the country's only elected female politician. It is intense, thought provoking and and at times heart-rending. Fawzia Koofi's memoir is written in two formats; each chapter is prefaced by a letter to her young daughters Shuhra and Shaharzad, followed by an account of her life and the cultural and political landscape of Afghanistan at that time.

Fawzia was the nineteenth of her father's twenty-three children. Her mother was her father's second wife - he had seven wives but had divorced two so that he could marry two other women. Although her father had many wives, Fawzia claims that it was her mother Bibi jan whom he loved the most and it was her mother who ran the household, who kept the keys to the storeroom and the safe and whom coordinated the cooking for the huge political dinners he hosted.

Her father had recently married his seventh wife, a fourteen-year-old girl who gave birth to a son just three months prior to Fawzia's birth.Her mother, who had already had borne seven children when Fawzia came along, was distraught at yet another younger wife in the home. Upset at having lost his favour, she prayed for a son but it was not to be. Instead Fawzia was born in a remote mountain shack and left outside to bake in the fierce mountain sun. Finally after a day, her family took her back in and Fawzia's mother vowed that no harm would ever come to her again.

Fawzia's father, Abdul Rahman was a member of the Afghan parliament in 1975, the year she was born. He represented the people of Badakhshan province in the northern Afghanistan. It is one of the poorest areas of the country. Her family lived in the Koofi Valley, for which they are named.

Fawzi describes the rise to power of the Taliban from the ashes of an Afghanistan left in chaos after the defeat of the Soviets by the Mujahideen. While the West rejoiced in the Soviet withdrawal, a brutal civil war raged in Afghanistan between the factions of the Mujahideen. The country slipped into chaos and terror around the capital, Kabul as different Mujahideen struggled for control. This period was a dangerous time for Fawzi's family - her father was murdered and they had to flee their home in Badakhshan and travel to Kabul.

Meanwhile in the south, young men who had studied at the madrassas in the border regions between Afghanistan and Pakistan began to arrive in the southern villages of Afghanistan bringing with them radical Islam, common to Arab countries. The southerners, tired of civil war and poverty, accepted these "angels of rescue"as the young men called themselves.

When a peace treaty was brokered between the Rabbani government and the Mujahideen in 1995, the Taliban influence was growing. Koofi relates the heart-breaking and catastrophic changes that occurred within Afghanistan in 1996 when the Rabbani government fled north and Taliban rule commenced. Instead of rescuing the Afghan people as they initially claimed, the Taliban began to systematically implement laws that drove the country back into the dark ages within months. Women were required to wear burkas and were confined to home, no longer being allowed to attend school. All women in any type of public life were forced out. Men had to wear beards and turbans and many cultural practices such as the traditional Afghan weddings and music were banned.

Koofi accurately refers to this and other actions as cultural vandalism - a very perceptive description of radical Islam's effect on any culture it has ever overrun. Almost overnight, public beatings, stoning and executions became the norm for the slightest violations of radical Islamic code. Televison was banned and radio broadcast nonstop Taliban propaganda. Libraries were destroyed as were the beautiful Buddha statues of Bamiyan.

At this time of her life, Fawzi was in medical school and had to give up her studies. It was not only impossible to attend school, but impossible to go to even to the market unless dressed in "the new uniform of Afghanistan", the blue shuttlecock burka. Women were not allowed to speak to men who were not blood relatives. To do so was to risk arrest, beatings and possibly worse.

Fawzi tells us what this meant to her people:"And now that the war was officially over, the world also began to move on. The Cold War had ended, and the mighty Soviet Empire was collapsing. The Afghan fight against the Russians was no longer of relevance to the West. It was no longer broadcast internationally on the nightly news. Our civil war was over, and as far as the world understood it the Taliban were now our government. We were yesterday's story.....But our tragedy was not over. In many way, it was just beginning. And for the next few years, the world forgot us. They were our bleakest years of need."

Discussion

In Letters to My Daughters, Fawzia chronicles in detail the cultural annihilation Afghan underwent during Taliban rule and how it affected the people. During Taliban rule she felt Afghanistan was slipping back into the darkness of time. Her family suffered greatly. Newly married to a kindly man Hamid, he was soon taken from her and beaten and tortured, eventually contracting tuberculosis. Eventually Fawzia and Hamid decided to flee northward to Badakhshan where Ahmad Shah Massoud and President Rabbani's forces were fighting the Taliban. 

Only when Fawzia escaped the Taliban-ruled south did she realize how much she had changed. "Life under the Taliban had changed me in ways I hadn't really understood until now....The Taliban had taken that confident girl and determined teenager and turned her into a diminutive, cold, scared and exhausted woman living beneath the cloak of invisibility that was her burka."

She realized that her attitude towards men had changed. Although interestingly, Fawzia writes that while her father did beat her mother, she felt he respected her. This is definitely a difficult thing for Western women to understand. In one letter to her daughters, she insists that "true Islam accords you political and social rights. It offers you dignity, the freedom to be educated, to pursue your dreams and to live your life." However, in every country where Islam is the state religion, women are not treated as full citizens, do not have the same access to education, health care and employment as do men.

There's no doubt radical Islam took it's toll on her too. "There was a huge silence inside me. Until now, I hadn't even noticed it. Little by little, it had grown with each prison visit, each woman I saw getting beaten on the streets and each public execution of a young woman who was just like me."

When the Taliban were overthrown by the American military and Afghanistan began to be rebuilt, Fawzia ran for election in 2005 and became the first woman elected to the new parliament despite the opposition of many of her fellow male politicians. She is the first female deputy speaker of the Afghan Parliament - no small feat for a country that had few basic rights for women only several years ago.

Despite cultural and religious differences, Fawzia Koofi is to be admired. She is a brave woman who has incurred great personal risk in order to represent her northern province. Fawzia Koofi has a deep love of her country and she has a strong desire to help remake Afghanistan into a place that is safe for her two young daughters, where they can live with dignity. 

Fawzia's memoir, Letters To My Daughters, is highly recommended for those who wish to learn about the remarkable people of Afghanistan and to understand what has befallen in this turbulent country over the past thirty years. There is no doubt Fawzia is a remarkable young leader in a country desperate for good leaders. She is proof that Afghanistan and other Islamic states need the participation of women in society. She is proof of what these young women have to offer to their countries!

Book Details:
Letters To My Daughters by Fawzia Koofi
Vancouver: Douglas & McIntyre 2011
275 pp.

Beneath My Mother's Feet by Amjed Qamar

Beneath My Mother's Feet is a beautifully written novel which examines the role of women and their expectations in Pakistani society.

Fourteen-year-old Nazia lives with her family in Gizri colony, a working-class neighborhood in southern Karachi. She attends Gizri School for Girls with her friends Maleeha and Saira and is preparing for her arranged marriage which is to happen soon. She hopes to be able to continue her studies once married.

The story opens with Nazia arriving home from school to find that her father Abbu has been injured at his construction job. In the weeks following Abbu's accident, it becomes apparent that Nazia's family will have a difficult time surviving. At first they are able to subsist on the money her Amma saved from her sewing jobs. But with no one to help support the family things change for the worse quickly.

Amma pulls Nazia out of school to watch her younger siblings, ten-year-old Isha and four-year-old Mateen, while she cleans homes in the Defense Housing area - a section of residential homes owned by Karachi's elite. Amma is now a masi - a servant who cleans the homes of the wealthy. The work is hard for Amma so instead of watching her younger siblings, Nazia also begins to clean homes. The work is dirty, exhausting and endless, and pays poorly.

Nazia wants to finish school but with each month that she is forced to stay and help her mother, her dream of getting an education seems to be slipping away. Further disaster strikes when her jahez (dowry) is stolen, her father loses the rent money and then disappears and her family loses their home. Due to the family's precarious financial situation and the loss of her dowry, her Uncle Tariq breaks her engagement to his son Salam. While Nazia's mother takes the loss of the engagement hard, Nazia herself is not so sure that this is a bad thing.

Gradually Nazia comes to the realization that she has choices and that she doesn't always have to just accept what "fate" will bring her. "When did Nazia have the right to start thinking on her own? Was there some unwritten law that said even when things were going wrong, when the choices that her parents made led to one disaster after another, she had to ride the waves, holding her breath?"  She has the choice to continue her studies with the help of her friend Maleeha. She has the choice to leave her life of servitude with the help of a former teacher. Her life isn't necessarily dictated by fate. And so when Nazia helps a servant boy, Sherzad flee from a life of servitude she herself makes a different choice. Although her Uncle returns and arranges for her to return to Punjab with him and his son for their wedding, Nazia decides upon a different path for herself.

Discussion

In Beneath My Mother's Feet, author Amjed Qamar has crafted characters with substance and realism. The central character, Nazia is a teenager who we see is in the process of maturing and thinking for herself. Nazia loves her father. At first she refuses to accept Amma's opinion that he is lazy and deceitful and has shirked his responsibilities as a provider for his family. Nazia considers his situation and his actions carefully before she comes to a conclusion about him. She is intelligent and as she is exposed to the world around her, Nazia begins to realize that she has choices in her life. She matures from a young teen who simply follows her mother to someone who has the courage to made a decision that might be in her best interests but which will also conflict with what her mother wants for her.

Nazia's Amma is also a beautifully crafted character. Amma is portrayed as a long suffering wife who has struggled to cope with a difficult husband. She appears to favour her irresponsible son, Bilal, who abandons the family to look after his own needs but in the end she really does understand that her son is very much like his father. " 'Because Bilal is like his father. Why do you think I work as a masi? Because it was all I could do to protect Bilal from his father. They are the same. No matter how much they mean well, they cannot fight the shaitan - the devil - that lives within. They know what is right, what is wrong, but they always do what they know best. Cheat. Lie. Steal.' " Amma is also a woman of extraordinary strength and resolve. She accepts the fact that she must look after her family by herself and she sets out to do this. Even as she suffers one hardship after the next, Amma is representative of the resilience of Pakistani women in a culture that places certain expectations and limitations on them.

The story in Beneath My Mother's Feet succeeds because readers are able to experience an emotional connection to certain characters: Nazia and Amma because of their personal struggles and their physical suffering, and even Abbu, who is a generally dislikeable character. He always seems to have an ulterior motive, making him an annoying character. It soon becomes apparent that much of the suffering Nazia and her family experience are due to this man's irresponsibility. Although most of the male characters in the book are not positive role models, Qamar seems to imply that this is a family trait and not a statement on the men of Pakistan. For example, her friend Maleeha's brother, Hisham, is respectful and treats both Nazia and Maleeha with kindness.

There are many interesting themes that run throughout Beneath My Mother's Feet. The dominant theme concerns the relationship between mothers and daughters in Pakistani culture. The title of this novel is part of a quote attributed to the prophet Muhammad, "The gates of heaven lie beneath a mother's feet." This is a well-known Islamic saying that the way to Paradise is to serve, respect and honor one's mother. However, Nazia struggles with this. Amma expects that Nazia will do what she asks of her to please her - as a dutiful daughter. Yet as the novel progresses, Amma comes to the realization that Nazia is different and Nazia realizes that she will not be happy with the choices that her mother has made for her. While Amma expects that Nazia will marry because this offers her the best path in life, Nazia feels differently. It is not an easy decision to go against her mother, but unlike Bilal, she does it gently and with respect towards her mother. "...She asked Allah to forgive her for what she was about to do, and she hoped that Amma wouldn't think she was abandoning her in the same way Bilal had. When the time came, Nazia wanted the gates of heaven to be open for her."

Beneath My Mother's Feet is a well-written engaging novel that would be a great choice for a mother/daughter book club. There are many themes and ideas to explore in such a reading. Beneath My Mother's Feet is an absorbing coming of age novel for younger teens.

Book Details:
Beneath My Mother's Feet by Amjed Qamar
New York: Atheneum Books 2008
198 pp.

Movie Review: The Stoning of Soraya M

The Stoning of Soraya M is not an easy movie to watch. It tells the story of the stoning of thirty-five-year-old Soraya Manutchehri, mother to seven children and married to a brute of a man, Ghorban-Ali. Ali who worked as a prison guard in a neighbouring town, met a fourteen-year-old girl whom he wanted to marry. Although he could have divorced Soraya, he did not want to pay child support (for seven children that would be a significant amount) and so with the complicity of the pretend-mullah in his village of Kupayeh, Ali had Soraya convicted of adultery. The punishment for such a crime was death by stoning in order to restore the honour of Ali and the men of Kupayeh. 

On August 15, 1986, the innocent Soraya was buried up to her waist and stoned to death. Her aunt, Zahra Khanum managed to tell the story to an Iranian-born French journalist, Freidoune Sahebjam who wrote a book about Soraya. "In the religious traditions of the West, free will is offered as an explanation for such depredations, but that rationale seems grossly insufficient. When packs of armed men shout "God is Great" while disfiguring, abasing, or killing women, surely God is weeping."

Discussion

The Stoning of Soraya M is riveting and at times overwhelming. Director Cyrus Nowrasteh felt Soraya's story was important and wanted the world to know that this barbaric practice was still occurring in Iran and many other Islamic countries. Filming with a cast of Iranian actors who spoke Farsi, Nowrasteh captured the horror of Soraya's fate and the brutality of Islamic legal code that has no room for mercy.

The film's greatest strength besides an outstanding script, was its gifted cast. James Caviezel (Passion of Christ) was exceptional as journalist Freidoune Sahebjam. Nowrasteh has said that two well known actors were recruited to play the part but each dropped out because their wives were concerned they would be in danger if they made the movie. Caviezel was an obvious choice not only because the film's producer, Stephen McEveety had worked with Caviezel on Passion of Christ, but also because this wonderful actor has a gift for languages. And Nowrasteh and McEveety needed someone who could learn Farsi.

But it was actresses, newcomer Mozhan Marno (an Los Angeles native of Iranian descent) who played Soraya and Iranian born Shohreh Aghdashloo who played Zahra who truly shone. Their onscreen chemistry was superb, capturing the all the drama and hopelessness of Soraya's situation.

The Stoning of Soraya M made its debut at the Toronto Film Festival in 2008 and is now available on DVD. Expect a high level of discomfort viewing this movie. The stoning scene is horrific and unbearable, as one would expect such a barbaric practice to be. Watching a group of human beings torture a woman to death in the name of honour is not easy. As Carl Cannon who wrote a review at Politics Daily writes:  I do not know, as I told one of this movie's financial backers, whether Americans will sit through a film this sad and grisly. I only know that they should. It has been said many times since 9/11 that we are in a war of ideas -- and a shooting war as well -- with men who are confident that one day all the world will be governed by this kind of law. It would not be a world worth inhabiting. I am haunted by Soraya and her sisters.

For an excellent review of the movie checkout Carl Cannon's piece (http://www.politicsdaily.com/2009/05/13/he-who-casts-the-first-stone/) He wrote the following about this movie:

Critics compared "The Stoning of Soraya M." to Kafka, but actually nothing in the western canon of literature is comparable to the inadvertent self-parody -- the simple lunacy -- of a system of law that maintains that if a man is accused of infidelity by his wife, she must prove his guilt, but if a woman is accused, she must prove her innocence. Thus, in a single sentence, is a belief system codified. It is a system that rejects modernity, justice, equality and rationality -- and treats female sexuality as a vice.