Anita Mathias: Dreaming Beneath the Spires

Anita Mathias's Blog on Faith and Art

Sara Suleri. Meatless Days. An engaging post-colonial memoir

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SARA SULERI, MEATLESS DAYS:
An engaging post-colonial memoir


I have read this memoir twice, and really enjoyed it. 


Sara grew up in Lahore, Pakistan, the daughter of a gentle Welshwoman, and an irascible Pakistani father (who had left his first wife, and first cousin, to marry her).


Her mother taught English, and presumably Sara grew up immersed in literature. I like her style, and twisted, contorted, almost Shakespearean diction.


Her memoir is elegiac, and imbued with sadness. Her beautiful and beloved sister Ifat was murdered (rumour said she was run over by her husband), her mother was also run over and killed. Her father was imprisoned. Tragedy stalked the family much as it did the Bhuttos.


But, through it all, runs vivid memories of a vivid childhood, her camera lovingly focusing on gol-guppas, the long wait to see the first sliver of moon at Ramadan, or the obscenities of Pakistani cuisine–she discovers a favourite dish is actually the balls of goats!! Her father, gently mocked, rebelled against, but loved and admired is the most vivid figure in the book.


Her memoir loving renders a third world childhood in a prose of her own, which owes much to the stylists of the English Renaissance, Thomas Browne, John Donne, and Mr. Shakespeare, of course. It is not an easy read, since she deliberately opts for a strange, pretzel like style–but it is a delicious and rewarding read. It is one of my favourite subcontinental memoirs. 






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Thoughts on Women and Islam

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    A policeman gives a woman a public whipping for wearing trousers underneath her Islamic clothing in Sudan (YouTube)
A A policeman gives a woman a public whipping for wearing trousers underneath her Islamic clothing in Sudan (YouTube) Woman publicly whipped for wearing trousers in Sudannderneath her Islamic clothing in Sudan (YouTube)

                     I


Women in Afghanistan, even doctors, not allowed to work. Male doctors not allowed to examine women. Single female doctors forced to beg. Acid thrown in the faces of young girls who go to school. 
http://articles.sfgate.com/2010-07-21/news/21991344_1_afghan-women-women-s-rights-troop-withdrawal


Unbelievably high rates of depression among women in Afghanistan.  
“At one of the rare hospitals for women, a reporter found still, nearly lifeless bodies lying motionless on top of beds, wrapped in their burqua, unwilling to speak, eat or do anything, but are slowly wasting away. Others have gone mad and were seen crouched in corners, perpetually rocking or crying, most of them in fear”

http://www.breakthechain.org/exclusives/womenwar.html


Forced kidnappings of women, including university students on the way home, to become 3rd or 4th wives in Chechnya and Kazakhstan. If they don’t settle down happily to do the housework in their in-laws’ houses, they are taken to an Islamic Medical Centre to be exorcised.

Observe this 17 year old woman, flogged and whipped on her buttocks 34 times surrounded by a group of silent men. She screams and begs for mercy. To no avail. She had a boyfriend.

Honour killings in Turkey. A 16 year old buried alive for talking to boys.

Lifelong pain while urinating or during intercourse after female genital mutilation. Lasting psychological trauma.

Twelve women on death row in Iran, awaiting death by stoning for adultery. How does one commit adultery alone?

Women forced to wear a burkha in the stifling heat of summer in Asia, the Middle East and Africa.

Billy Graham’s son Franklin took a lot of flak for his statement, Islam is a “very evil and wicked religion”. Then in an interview with CNN’s Campbell Brown in December 2009, he said: “True Islam cannot be practiced in this country. You can’t beat your wife. You cannot murder your children if you think they’ve committed adultery or something like that, which they do practice in these other countries.”  (Verse 34 in the fourth Surah (chapter) in the Quran which says that if a man’s wife is not obedient, he is allowed to beat her.)


                                                                           II
Because of its regrettable and reprehensible role in slavery and colonialization, the West, understandably, is hesitant to criticize those with darker skins from the formerly colonized nations, not wanting to be accused of ethnocentricity, paternalism, racial superiority and racism, which have come to be associated with the uneducated and ignorant. 

But, let’s say that in Great Britain, Ireland or France, women were flogged, stoned, mutilated, buried alive, forced to wear heavy black burqas, forbidden to get an education or to work. What outrage would there be!

In my opinion, the West should be equally outraged about what is happening to women in Pakistan, Iran, Chechnya, Kazakhstan, Somalia, Afghanistan–I could go through the World Book and add dozens of Islamic nations.

                                                                   III

One should never hate. As Christians, we should aspire to follow Jesus, who taught that “God is Love” and told us God loved the world.

But we do need to take arms against a system which degrades many women, while of course, of course, not hating the victims.

For instance, it would be right for Christians to do everything they could to oppose Hitler, or Stalin,  or Kim Jong of North Korea or Pol Pot or Mao while, of course, not hating Germany’s Jews or Germans, ordinary Russians, or North Koreans, or Cambodians or Chinese.
                                                                     IV

If you see something evil in a social system or religion, it takes courage to point it out, even if when doing so is uncool and unfashionable.

However, one needs to keep a cool head, and point out the evil in the system you are opposing,  while not encouraging hatred of its adherents.

Both Christianity and Islam are exclusive religions, unlike, say, Hinduism which is wide and all-encompassing. “There is One God and Muhammed is His Prophet” Islam claims. “Jesus is the Way, the Truth and the Life. No one come to the Father except through Him,” Christians  believe. Insofar, as their claims are irreconcilable, the two belief-systems are natural opponents.

So if Christians truly believe they have a more excellent way, it is honourable and kind to engage Islam, and share their truth with Muslims. While, however, never, ever inciting hatred for the ordinary adherents of Islam, the “tired, poor, wretched, huddled masses yearning to breathe free.”

Christian activists should point out and protest and see if they do anything to ameliorate the sufferings of many women in many Islamic nations. 

However, the inflammatory way Terry Jones of Dove World Outreach Centre has chosen to go about it–burning an object as precious to Muslims, presumably, as the Bible is precious to us Christians–could incite hatred of ordinary Muslims in ordinary Christians.

And that would be a tragedy because Christians are called to dwell in God, and God is love. 

Writing and Domesticity

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Writing and Domesticity


The two are natural enemies as Cyril Connolly observed in “The Enemies of Promise”! However, since housekeeping is inevitable for those of us whose mates are not up to it, and who would rather have peace and order and fewer pages than squalor, all that can be done is use the techniques of judo, and turn the opponent’s strength against him. Use the time spent in housekeeping to think, pray, listen to books on CD.


And there are resemblances. Getting a final draft is a no bull-shit time like decluttering a room–tidy it up, find a place for it, or out it goes.


You may be interested in my long essay on Domesticity and Writing 
at https://www.amazon.co.uk/Wandering-Between-Two-Worlds-Essays/dp/0955373700/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1283982806&sr=1-1

or on my website at www.anitamathias.com
http://www.anitamathias.com/Dom_Art.pdf






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The Uses of Blogging for a Writer

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Blogging, in my experience, is the very best way to break a writers’ block. It is a little like journalling, in that you write fast, with lower standards, suspending your inner critic. You write fast, and write a lot. And the habits of writing fast, writing fluently, translate over to one’s real writing.


Milton said he wrote prose “with his left hand.” If one is both a serious literary writer, and a blogger, one could view blogging as “left-hand writing” which one does partly to keep thinking, keep writing, keep one’s fingers nimble and ready to the task. 


I do my “real” writing so much more easily and confidently because, 6 days a week, I update my three blogs, 
wanderingbetweentwoworlds.blogspot.com among them, and so have got used to writing fast, to the best of my ability. Not striving for perfection, but for a piece of writing which is “good enough.”

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The White Darkness by Geraldine McCaughrean

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The White Darkness by Geraldine McCaughrean


We listened to this on CD during our holiday in France recently. We were mesmerized initially but the tale of misadventure and extreme polar suffering did pall eventually.


Splendid description of Antarctica. I met Geraldine McCaughrean at a Writers in Oxford/Society of Authors party in Oxford a couple of months ago, and asked her if she had been to Antarctica. “No,” she said, laughing and shaking her head, as if the suggestion were ridiculous.


That’s encouraging to me–that one can write such a vivid novel, based on research and imagination. 


She is evidently steeped in the literature of polar exploration –Scott, Shackleton, Apsley Cherry-Garrard, Amundsen, Mawson. (Incidentally, all these five authors have been republished by the publishing company my husband and I own, Benediction Classics). I loved the seamless way she links this zany, doomed expedition with those of Scott, Cherry-Garrard, Amundsen and Shackleton. I particularly loved Shackleton’s quote in a letter to his wife when he turned back 97 miles from the Pole, “I thought you would rather have a live donkey than a dead lion!!”


All in all, a gripping thrilling young adult novel

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Lolly Woodward Dunlap 1/2/1922-9/8/2009

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My thoughts have been full of Lolly Dunlap who left this life on the 8th of September. We met weekly almost exactly 8 years ago during a difficult season of my life. We met to pray, study Scripture, and talk–i.e. me soaking in her wisdom and loving spirit.

She was one of the most generous people I have ever met–like Heidi Baker in Mozambique, she sought nothing from anyone, not help, or affirmation, appreciation, approval or attention, all of which were richly deserved. Her thought in all her relationships was how she could bless people. When I think of God’s promise to Abraham, “I will bless you, and you will be a blessing,” I think of Lolly who was a blessing because of her gentle, humble, loving spirit and her immersion in God’s word, a blessing simply because of who she was, over and above what she did. I do not use superlatives lightly, but she was one of the few true saints I have met in my life ( which can also be said of her brother Dick Woodward and his wife, Ginnie).

I have the sweetest memories of walking into her sunny bedroom, and of her looking up from Ephesians, or whatever she was studying, and telling me of her insights, then of looking up the verse in other translations. She rambled a bit, and I smiled to myself, for I am 40 years younger, ramble too, and that’s okay. Each sentence of my spiritual rambles with her was interesting and enriching, and the dots connected into a rich pattern.
There is life and enrichment and joy in God alone, in Scripture alone. One can have a rich inner life when there is little happening in one’s outer life, when material things do not abound. I learnt this from Lolly. She knew, to use one of her favourite Scriptures, “the river whose streams make glad the city of God, the holy place where the Most High dwells.”
She was one of those rare Christian women who acknowledged her lack of interest in cooking, and house-keeping (something I have in common with her, alas!) “I just kept a trail clear when the boys were young, and we had guests in and out of the house all the time,” she said. So saints can adopt that approach to house-keeping?! What joy and liberation!
I ask for a double portion of her spirit.
She was utterly humble, had long left self and its boastfulness behind, so what I heard of her exploits with her husband John Dunlap I mostly heard from others: establishing a mega-church in Norfolk, the spiritual mothering of many, including Dick Woodward, Bill Warrick, and her own children (Dick described her son Don, in print, as “the most sinless human being I have ever known.” (with such a mother, I am not surprised!), the establishing of Norfolk Christian School, of the Triple R Ranch, work with Billy Graham Crusades, a successful radio programme, programmes for those with learning disabilities. Did these come up in our conversations? Only slightly. Her focus was on the present, on her Lord, on the conflicted young woman who sought to absorb her wisdom and her spirit.
She knew Christ, and told me of instances when she saw him almost tangibly, when he, so to say, tapped her on her shoulder and spoke to her in the succinct one-liners He specialises in. ” The more I think of the Lord, I realise how good-natured he was. Those disciples must have tried his patience!” she said, when I grumbled on about someone getting on my friable nerves. The good-natured Christ! Lolly had a gift of making the esoteric practical :How can we love like Christ, for heaven’s sake, and what exactly is love?.
I loved her Lollyisms, ” I am all right, because He is all right.” or ” The Lord knows.”
I am rambling on in the way that inwardly amused me when Lolly did it! She often told me that she had no fear of death, and so wanted to see Jesus.
I want to, too, every day, though I am quite content to see Him in this wild, weird, wonderful, God-made, God-blessed earth for four or five decades more. But heaven will be wilder, weirder, more wonderful still, and I look forward to seeking out Lolly again!

The Good Book Blog is in at #16 among the Top UK Literature blogs.

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Top 20 UK literature blogs – September

I am pleased to be in at #16.

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