In the Shadow of the Sphinx

Rating:
Summary: Women and Islam
Review: I gave this book 5 stars because it gave me a clear picture of women and Islam in Egypt. The author is the wife an Egyptian doctor who was a friend of mine, recently deceased. It is about their ten years in Egypt during the 1950's. One can be told that Moslem women are not permitted to do this or that, but hearing about this in the context of everyday life gives a much clearer picture of the situation. The following are some of what showed up in this book: a woman's going to a restaurant unchaperoned was frowned upon, women were not permitted to enter the Al-Azhar Mosque, the husband walked three steps in front of his wife while she carried the shopping bags, a man divorces his wife by simply saying "I divorce thee" three times and thereafter the divorced woman is treated like a leper, if they divorce the man gets the children, and during a wake men and women were separated and women could not attend the burial rites as they were considered to be "too emotional". I imagine things have not changed too much there in the last fifty years. The major fault of this book was the difficulty of figuring out what was fact and what was fiction. The author's name is Lisa, although the main character is named Laura. I know that her husband's name was not Mounir. The pictures drawn of her Egyptian relatives may have been fictionalized so as not to alienate them - I don't know. At any rate, I think the reader can assume that by and large the incidents are factual. I consider this depiction of life in an Islamic country to be much less biased than "The bookseller of Kabul" and so I found it very educational in addition to being enjoyable to read.