Customer Reviews

Distant View of a Minaret and Other Stories (African Writers)

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This is a remarkable collection of short stories from Egypts urban and peasant societies. Alifa Rifaat stories are full of raw emotion and overwhelming sense of the hopelessness of the human experience. Rifaat is an extraordinarily gifted writer with a fresh approach and a remarkable ability to transplant us completely in just a few paragraphs to totally different worlds, to the lives of the very ordinary.

The recurring themes of this collection of short stories are sexual frustration, pervasive cultural pressures and death. The loneliness and emptiness of the lives of Egyptian women from every class and background are, in particular, well portrayed in an honest and bare fashion. Each and every story in this collection stood out for me and forced me to reflect on the lives of their imperfect characters. The melancholy that dominates the style is so reminiscent of Annie Proulxs Close Range; with ordinary sad lives racing at breakneck pace from hope to the inevitable acceptance of no fulfillment. Rifaats characters, however, illustrate quiet perseverance along with their submission to their fate in a uniquely Egyptian way.

Rifaat is a very sensitive writer capable of conveying so much emotion and graphic detail with very few words. In the  The Flat in Nakshabendi Street Rifaat talks of an elderly Cairo spinster who has nothing left in life to do but attend funerals and pick on others, she captures the image so well Everyone else lived in hope yet her own life was a struggle to ensure that the present routine continued forever.

In The Long Night of Winter Rifaat starts with an exceptional setting of the scene, a wife that knows of the never ending infidelity of her husband, In an instant between sleep and wakefulness, an instant outside the bounds of time, that gave the sensation of being eternal, the sounds of night, like slippery fishes passing through the mesh of a net, registered themselves on Zennoubas hearing, filtering gradually into her awakening consciousness: the machine like croaking of frogs and the barking of dogs in the fields answered by the dogs of the village on the other bank in a never-ending exchange of information in some code language. This first paragraph is typical of Rifaat approach to seducing the reader to relating to and advocating for her characters.

It was unfortunate that Johnson-Davis chose to use Allah in lieu of God in the English translation, apart from that the translation comes across faithful to the original, with thoughtful and beautiful often lyrical prose.

Rifaat writes with the elegant simplicity of an Arabic Margaret Atwood.
One thing that amazed me about Distant View of the Minaret was that Rifaat,
unlike most other female Arab writers I've read, does not shy away from writing
explicitly about sex. From the very first story, "Distant View of the
Minaret," sex is openly thought about and discussed by the female characters. In
this story, the narrator begins by discussing her attempts at experiencing an
orgasm during sex with her husband. The story actually takes place, in the
beginning, during sex. So great is the narrator's boredom that she even "noted her
toenails needed cutting" (2).

A painful, but important cultural act is written about in "Bahiyya's
Eyes." The female narrator recalls her youth and the female circumcision
forced upon her by her female neighbors. She remembers, "They left a wound in my
body and another wound deep inside me, a feeling that a wrong had been done to
me, a wrong that could never be undone"(9). The story, which is written as a
letter addressed to the narrator's daughter, concludes succinctly with
"Daughter, I'm not crying now because I'm fed up or regret that the Lord created me a woman. No, it's not that. It's just that I'm sad about my life and my youth that have come and gone without my knowing how to live them really and truly
as a woman" (11).

I also loved the female camaraderie of the story "An Incident in the Ghobashi Household." The mother in the story gives her pregnant daughter everything she possesses in order to save the daughter from the punishment that would result from an illegitimate pregnancy. This story presents a mother-daughter bond that is frequently overlooked in the Arabic literature I have read. Usually the focus is on mother-son or man-homeland love, and female are frequently placed in opposition to each other. Therefore this story is refreshing.

The power relationship between a woman and her husband's mistress is explored in "The Long Night of Winter." What appears to be a homoerotic experience is actually a psychologically complex balance of power and desire. Rene Girard writes about this kind of mimetic desire, but I assume that Rifaat
bases the story off her own personal experiences and observations, rather than a practical study in mimesis. To me, this adds to Rifaat's ability as a storyteller.

The last story, "Just Another Day," is also beautifully crafted. Death is presented from the point of view of the deceased. Within the context of the story, certain observations are made about life. The narrator says, "What
was to stop me from staying in bed? I had grown tired of pretending I had jobs to do that filled my day, while in actual fact I had no role to fulfill" (113). In this story, Rifaat makes a point about the life of the elderly and describes the life of a person overlooked by society.

It is interesting to note that Alifa Rifaat is an orthodox Muslim. Her writing reflects the ideology of gender equality that was preached by Mohammad and thus presents a point of view that is ignored by mainstream media when looking at the Muslim world. Rifaat is so successful at creating realistic
female characters and also placing them within meaningful experiences that show them changing not only as women, but as Muslims.

Also amazing is Rifaat's lack of formal education. To me, this gives her a legitimacy that I normally ascribe to my grandmother-a woman whose education has been life experience rather than academic in nature. I have no doubt that Rifaat is an amazing observer of humanity who brings her natural feminism to the table when crafting characters and stories.

A friend who teaches non-western literature recommended this author, and now I wish there were other collections of Rifaat's in English. I am not a short-story lover at all, but these were wonderful, well-rounded gems. Other Egyptian writers whom I have read are also English speakers, so reading Rifaat takes one truly back to an unfiltered Egypt.

The author is not militant, but writes realistically about the lives of (mostly) women in Egypt. Each of the slice-of-life stories is short, usually less than ten pages, but in those pages the reader is drawn into the lives and personal struggles of ordinary, likable people. It's easy, interesting reading, and I was sorry to reach the end of the 116 pages.

Distant View of a Minaret by Alifa Rifaat is a collection of short stories about what it is like to be an Arabic woman. The stories are written from the perspective of a woman, and they defy any of the stereotypes placed on Arabic women. I really liked this book because it gives women a voice. Alifa Rifaat was not educated at the university level, but she writes based on her own experiences and observations of real people. This brings universality to her stories.
Most of the stories in this book had to do with relationships between husbands and wives. It seems like most of the men in this book are unfaithful, and the women were sexually and emotionally unsatisfied. What I really liked about this book is that the wives who were betrayed never looked beyond their marriage for sexual fulfillment. I liked that the women remained faithful because it showed that the women mostly just wanted to be loved by their husbands. They were not sexually satisfied, but what hurt these women the most was the emptiness they felt in their hearts.
I personally believe that the worst part of cheating is not the sexual act committed, but the emotional pain of being betrayed. In one of the stories in this book, called "The Long Night of Winter", the main character is a woman who is repeatedly betrayed emotionally by her husband. In this story Alifa Rifaat writes " The pent-up hatred against him had long ago changed to a cold contempt; the hope that things would change had now gone, but the ache to love and be loved was still there, as physically part of her as her sight or sense of smell." I liked this line because I think that it really captures the true feelings of women in this situation. Women want to be loved by the men that they love. They want to be treated with the same respect and loyalty that they give their men.
In another story, called "Distant View of a Minaret", the main character is a woman who is sexually and emotionally unsatisfied by her husband. In this story Alifa Rifaat writes, "There had been occasions when he had indicated that he had had relationships with other women, and sometimes she had suspicions that maybe he still had affairs, and she was surprised that the idea no longer upset her." At the end of the story, the husband dies and the wife is surprisingly calm. I think this shows how after a while of women taking this emotional and mental abuse, they enable themselves to get through it by shutting themselves off to reality. The wife knew what was going on, but in order to make her life work, she had to turn a blind eye to it. The problem is, when you act like you don't care long enough, eventually you start to really not care.
Another story in this book, called "Badriyya and Her Husband", also tells the story of a wife betrayed. Badriyya is married to Omar, and her whole family tells her that he is no good. She is very devoted to her husband though, and refuses to see any of the things her family sees. She even waits faithfully for him to come home from prison. When he does come home, she begins to notice things about him, and she wonders if he is being faithful to her. When she finds out that he is cheating on her, Alifa Rifaat writes "As she walked back she asked herself how it would be possible for her to find the strength not to open the door to him. I think that this is yet another feeling that women go through when being betrayed." Having to find the strength to let go of someone that you love because of something they have done to hurt you is very difficult, and Alifa Rifaat illustrates that in this story through Badriyya.
One story called "Bahiyya's Eyes" was interesting to me. The story is about an old woman who has something wrong with her eyes. She doesn't go to the doctor until it is too late to save them. She is telling her daughter about the pain that was put upon her throughout her life. She faced horrible things during her life, and now that it is almost over, she feels like she never really lived her life. While I was reading this story, I was thinking about the saying that "eyes are the window to the soul". I think that you can tell a lot by looking in a person's eyes. Bahiyya's eyes seemed dead, like a part of her that was useless to her. I think that this is how her soul was at this point. She had empty eyes and an empty soul. The fact that she didn't want to get her eyes fixed, to me, is also like saying that she had given up on her life. Her eyes were beyond repair, and so was she. This story was depressing, but it was honest.
I think that the stories in this book really capture some of the feelings that women in this situation have, and tells the stories in a way in which women of all cultures can relate to. I recommend this book to everybody, but especially to women.

This book was published in 1983 and contains 15 short stories translated from the Arabic. At the time of publication their author, the Egyptian Alifa Rifaat (1930-96), was described as the female writer who most convincingly expressed what it meant to be a woman living in a traditional Muslim society. Between the early 1970s and her death, she published several short-story collections and a novel. Previously, from 1955 to about 1960, she'd published under a pseudonym.

A number of the stories in the present book centered on women of the peasant or middle class, usually married, living traditionally and devoutly in Islam. Though often emotionally discontented with their lot as women, they coped as best they could, finding quiet strength in themselves and their faith. They weren't in revolt against their faith or society, but contemptuous of the ignorance of those who didn't truly practice their religion or fulfill their social obligations. In an introduction Rifaat's translator, Denys Johnson-Davies, claimed her approach differed from those of her younger contemporaries, the Lebanese writers Laila Baalabaki and Hanan al-Shaykh and the Syrian Ghada al-Samman, whose writing drew some inspiration from the women's movement of the West.

Many of Rifaat's stories touched on sex and death. Her directness in treating sexual themes and women's thinking about them has been called unusual for her time. In one piece, for instance, a wife described frankly her relations with her husband:

"She was suddenly aroused from her thoughts by his more urgent movements. She turned to him and watched him struggling in the world he occupied on his own. His eyes were tightly closed, his lips drawn down in an ugly contortion, and the veins in his neck stood out. She felt his hand on her leg, seizing it above the knee and thrusting it sideways as his movements became more frenzied. She stared up at her foot that now pointed towards the spider's web and noted her toenails needed cutting."

In another, the female character, an old peasant woman, mentioned genital mutilation suffered as a young girl. In the form of a monologue to a daughter, she recounted all her misfortunes as a woman since childhood, ending in her sadness about her life and youth that had "come and gone without my knowing how to live them really and truly as a woman."

In the stories I liked most, the feeling behind the author's writing was quietly and deeply religious, particularly in the face of mortality. Though it was difficult sometimes to accept her characters' resignation to their lot, I often admired the sensibility with which she described them.

In one work, for example, a widow was visited by a man she'd loved in her youth, now an old widower proposing marriage. She felt reluctant at first, but her heart warmed to him, and later she dreamed of him standing in her courtyard, protecting the beloved chickens she was raising. When morning came and the call to dawn prayers sounded, she dreamed she was standing behind him and following his movements as he prayed, and felt content. This was the story in which a man and a woman most closely approached one another and love seemed most clearly felt. At the same time, the woman remembered "there is a time for everything: a time for romantic dreams, and a time for marriage and child-bearing, and a time when God has decreed that you are left alone in this world in order to prepare yourself for the leaving of it."

And in the final story, an old woman relived the happiest of her memories and eventually took leave of life: "The sounds from the next room were drowned by the monotonous voice of a Qur'an reciter. He was reciting the final verses of the Chapter of the Dawn. When he repeated the words 'And enter My Garden,' a feeling of peace flowed over me and I abandoned myself to the hands of the woman."

In the only work told from a male point of view, a middle-aged man returned to the countryside to attend his father's funeral, playing the role expected of him in performing the rites, but recognizing with remorse the lack of understanding he and his parent had been unable to overcome and the hopes on both sides that now were left unfulfilled.

The pieces I enjoyed least were ones where a religious outlook was less prominent and the focus was on unsympathetic characters or naive ones lacking all awareness of misfortune: a complaining, miserly spinster, or a young wife who kept putting her trust in a worthless husband, or a young schoolgirl who didn't understand the sexual games of her sister and a boyfriend. Or what seemed to be merely a confused tale of how a woman drowned in a canal and some believed her spirit had taken revenge on a man who'd been involved.

In many of the stories, maybe the author was trying to show that characters who lacked a firm grounding in their religion would be unable to find any real comfort or peace. It's an outlook I haven't found in that many other writers of the past few decades from other regions.

I finished this short book wanting to read more of this author's writing. Two of her better pieces that don't appear in this collection have been translated into English elsewhere: "My Wedding Night" in Arab Women Writers: An Anthology of Short Stories (2005) and "Another Evening at the Club" in Arabic Short Stories (1983).

As you probably already know, the best way to learn something about a person or people is to try and understand them on their own terms. In an age when the media paints Muslims as inherently violent, oppressive, senselessly overzealous, and extreme, based on the violent behavior of a select few, Rifaat's short story collection is a welcome read. Unlike so much Christian propaganda that focuses on "where Muslims went wrong" and how to essentially religiously conquer/convert them, Rifaat's book lets readers see inside the heads of her characters, Muslims whose faith is not necessarily the sum total of their essence. Moreover, she often treats the stories of Muslim women, illustrating a more complex picture of their lives, sexuality, and religious feelings than Americans are usually spoon-fed by Fox News.

These stories are great--well-written, interesting, and mysterious. Rifaat's characters deal with sexual frustration, sexual liberation, supernatural encounters, family dysfunction, and juxtaposition of old/young and city/pastoral life. Throughout, Islam is portrayed as both a problematizing, sometimes restrictive religion (hmm, much like Christianity, Judaism, etc. etc.) but also as a liberating force and gateway to love and happiness (hmm, much like Christianity, Judaism, etc. etc.). Again, I think most importantly, these stories show people who aren't simply derivative of their religion, something American (Christians) can't seem to (or want to) understand.

I recommend this wonderful collection to anyone to anyone interested in learning something new about Muslims and Egyptians (keep in mind, it's just about people from north Africa--Muslims live in every continent in the world), and I also recommend keeping your mind open and trying to see the story from the point of view of the characters and author, as you probably always should if you want to learn something. If you do, you'll probably find a lot more familiar human experience than difference and "Other." I hope you take a chance to avoid the news-entertainment cycle of misrepresentation and enjoy this book!

I was shocked at what was written throughout the entire book from the moment I picked it up until I finished! It changed my view of my sisters in the Middle East forever. "Distant View of a Minaret" is largely a collection of short stories dealing with woman and sex issues. The stories also discuss women at various ages, social economic status, as well as, cultures. I liked this book because it was like sitting down talking with Alfifa Rifaat over a cup of cappuccino at Star Bucks. I would say to her, "Tell me everything that happened and do not hold anything back! How did it make you feel? Was he really that much of a dog?" This book truly moved me. What would it feel like to be married to someone and not be able to enjoy sex because of something that happened to you during your childhood. This was discussed in "Bahiyya's Eyes". The book touches on every phase of a woman's life. It looks at young innocent love as in "The Flat in Nakshabandi Street". In this story, it encourages readers to think about this: What if your husband was doing something behind your back but you were the last to know? They say love is blind. The short story dramatizes how bad it is to have your sight returned through the gossip of an outsider. "The Long Night of Winter" is about a mature woman who finds that she is not the gleam in her husband's eye, or the spark that jump starts his motor. We learn about her frustration and how she handles the dilemma. In"The Time of the Jasmine" a man struggles with the lost of his father. It teaches us a valuable lesson that we should spend as much time with our loved one while they are here because time truly waits for no one. I loved the entire book and enjoyed reading each story because the author was an every day house wife with a talent to write. The book is written from a level that all cultural backgrounds can read and enjoy. While I do not want to place an emphasis culture because one might think life's issues are different on the other side of the globe. However, reading this book brings life from across the sea into your living room and it looks the same. I loved it!

I found Alifa Rifaat's Distant View of A Minaret to be a powerful testament to the strength and fortitude of women despite difficult and trying circumstances. The book is a startlingly honest collection of short stories allowing a rare glimpse into the lives, hearts and experience of Arab women living in Egypt. Throughout these stories, Rifaat maintains the common thread of two universal subjects, sex and death, and the ways that Arab women from various backgrounds and experiences deal with the complexities associated with these themes. Her stories are brief and straightforward, but are packed with meaning and symbolism that will reveal the hearts and minds of Arab women and distinguish a connection among women throughout the world. The common themes of the stories reveal the similarity of human beings and the universality of human struggles. I recommend this book because of its brutal honesty, beautiful symbolism, and raw emotion.
Besides the pervasive themes of the novel, I found the author's own personal experiences to add to the depth and meaning of these stories. At the time these stories were written, Rifaat was an Arab woman living in Egypt who had never left her country. She spoke no other language than her native Arabic and was not university educated. Despite this sheltered experience, Rifaat's knowledge and understanding of the human struggle is far from limited. As a young woman influenced solely by Western culture, I was pleasantly surprised at how her words crossed all borders to proclaim a clear and poignant message of the challenges and disadvantages of womanhood, the struggle for female independence, and the harsh realities of love and marriage.
Of the fifteen short stories, I enjoyed "An Incident in the Ghobashi Household" and "Bahiyya's Eyes" the most. In the former story, Rifaat emphasizes the strong and often unbreakable bond formed between a mother and her young daughter in the face of adversity. This story is a testament to the difficulties often faced by Arab women as a result of their culture, but is also an uplifting portrayal of two women coming together to overcome their struggle and survive. The story "Bahiyya's Eyes" is a bittersweet reflection of an older Arab woman trying to pass her wisdom and life lessons to her daughter. In a few pages, Rifaat manages to familiarize the reader with an entire lifetime of heartache and turmoil. The author brilliantly invokes an emphasis on the uniqueness of life as an Arab woman while maintaining the common bond between women everywhere.
After reading the stories in Alifa Rifaat's Distant View of A Minaret, I have better appreciation of what it means to be an Arab woman. I have also solidified the understanding that the inherent strength of women forms an unbreakable bond that links generations of female hearts and minds together despite physical, cultural, and religious borders. Any one reading these stories can find a connection with the author's words, which makes book a valuable resource and a worthwhile read. While some of the stories convey a sense of darkness, hopelessness, or sadness, they are no doubt a realistic and insightful journey into the human experience.

The author is not militant, but writes realistically about the lives of (mostly) women in Egypt. Each of the slice-of-life stories is short, usually less than ten pages, but in those pages the reader is drawn into the lives and personal struggles of ordinary, likable people. It's easy, interesting reading, and I was sorry to reach the end of the 116 pages.