Women of Sand and Myrrh is a novel written by Hanan al-Shaykh. It was originally published in 1989 as Misk al-ghazal and was published in English in 1992. The English translator is Catherine Cobham. Publishers Weekly chose Women of Sand and Myrrh as one of the 50 best books of 1992.
The storyline consists of four main characters: Suha, Tamr, Nur, and Suzanne. Different sections of the novel give the perspectives of the four women, making the book a story with four different narrators.
The story is based in a relatively modern society in the Middle East. Rather than having strong ties into the pre-20th century Middle East, it is representative of life in some of the more fundamentalist societies within the last few decades. Elements of the book are present in this society today:
- Women wearing abayas and using different infrastructure elements.
- Mandatory prayers at certain times of the day
- Patriarchal society; many view women as good for little except raising children.
- Implementation of desalinization plants (a large clue that the main setting is Saudi Arabia), airports, etc.
The novel addresses many issues in today's society and has a wide variety of themes. Main themes of the novel include differing gender roles, class distinctions, culture, religion, and materialism vs. romanticism. Themes include:
- Men vs. women
- Feminism
- Use and/or abuse of power in a relationship
- Class distinctions
- Structure of society
- Rebellion against the status quo
- Culture and religion
- Freedom vs. Confinement/Restraint
- Elements of traditional culture and their effect
- Materialism vs. Romanticism
- The sexual disadvantages and existing desires of Arab women
- Hidden Lesbianism in Arab cultures
- The Innate desire of Arab women to be treated better
Women of Sand and Myrrh was banned in many Arabic lands for strong content (sexual, political, etc.) and for a strong treatment of Arabic culture.
Famous quotes containing the words women of, women, sand and/or myrrh:
“The city is always recruited from the country. The men in cities who are the centres of energy, the driving-wheels of trade, politics or practical arts, and the women of beauty and genius, are the children or grandchildren of farmers, and are spending the energies which their fathers’ hardy, silent life accumulated in frosty furrows in poverty, necessity and darkness.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“Between women love is contemplative; caresses are intended less to gain possession of the other than gradually to re-create the self through her; separateness is abolished, there is no struggle, no victory, no defeat; in exact reciprocity each is at once subject and object, sovereign and slave; duality become mutuality.”
—Simone De Beauvoir (1908–1986)
“The shore is composed of a belt of smooth rounded white stones like paving-stones, excepting one or two short sand beaches, and is so steep that in many places a single leap will carry you into water over your head; and were it not for its remarkable transparency, that would be the last to be seen of its bottom till it rose on the opposite side. Some think it is bottomless.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
““Awake,
My fairest, my espoused, my latest found,
Heaven’s last best gift, my ever new delight,
Awake, the morning shines, and the fresh field
Calls us: we lose the prime, to mark how spring
Our tended plants, how blows the citron grove,
What drops the myrrh and what the balmy reed,
How nature paints her colors, how the bee
Sits on the bloom extracting liquid sweet.””
—John Milton (1608–1674)