er, and her grandfather that we are able to account for these changes and how the absence of a father/husband/son figure affected their lives. By witnessing all that occurred through each set of eyes, an understanding of the complexities and problems of life for a Muslim women is reached. Today we as an American society think of the women in Arab countries as people that are treated as second class citizens. I know by growing up with neighbors that were from Iran, that the wife was to stay inside and run the family, while the husband was to go out into the job world and become the bread winner. Fortunately for this family, the husband had a steady job and didn’t need to worry about his financial situation. By witnessing these things and reading the books I was able to see how different the lives of Muslim women are from the lives of the women in the western world. It can simply be stated that the place of women in Arab society as opposed to men and even compared to women in our society is quite different, because men in Arab countries and women here in the U.S consistently have more freedom than women and are restricted in all that they do. In Arab Society women are considered to be, “destined for marriage, pregnancy and breast feeding (Abouzeid 36),” not to become products of higher education and learning.Today there is a noticeable difference between the women of Western civilizations compared to that of women in Arab countries. Today when we go outside we can see an intermingling of all different cultures, but if we were to travel 5,000 miles to Iraq we would see a much different setting. For Fernea she was thrown into this different society without truly understanding what she was getting herself into. In just her first few hours in this distant land she was introduced to a whole other world, where women were to be covered. To cover themselves everyone women was to wear an abayah, which was a long black c...
