Note to Reader: The following tale is centred on the Al-Nablusi family, who are Palestinian-Americans, and it follows them on a journey through love, sex, spirituality, tradition versus modernity. The father Faris Al-Nablusi, whose family originate from Nablus in the West Bank but he was born in Haifa, is a professor of Cognitive and Neuroscience at Berkeley and has been granted tenure. His wife Samira Hamoudi, who is from Nazareth, and is a lecturer of comparative literature at Berkeley- they have three children together. Two daughters Yasmin and Lina and one son Yacoub.
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Faris told himself that he was okay and he could handle it, but upon entering his local connivances store and heading towards the magazine stack, he suddenly felt a rush of nerves. His heart was beating so fast that he was afraid it was going to jump out of his chest, his brow was sweating excessively. Be careful, he thought, people around him might become suspicious and call the police.
He finally reaches the magazine stack and although he doesn't want to look, he fights with himself and forces himself to scan the shelf. And there he sees it.
Samira settle down at her desk and like Faris is quite tense, but being stronger than Faris, remains composed and calm. She is able to deal with the staff in her usual manner, she turn her computer on and scans the desk and sees it sitting there.
Lina who is visiting her older sister Yasmin wakes up and heads out of Yasmin's apartment and heads downstairs to pick up the mail. While scanning Yasmin's box's she sees it has arrived, she quickly grabs it and runs back up to the apartment to show Yasmin.
Faris stares at the fashion magazine and does feel a little embarrassed, he picks a copy up and goes to the check-out to purchase a copy. He then heads out to his car and once inside, removes the magazine from the bag. A woman with smooth, light olive skin with a glow and wet light brown hair stands on a beach. She is topless and using her hands is pushing her breasts together and covering them. Her black leather shorts are all the way up, but they are unzipped and you can make out fate lines of her underwear. Her high heel leather boots looks authoritative.
Samira flips through the pages until she reaches the spread, the same model in a series of different poses and an interview to accompany it. The first page contains images of her naked in a bathtub, with the high rising bubbles obscuring her naked flesh, except for her head and shoulders and the end of her legs. The model answers question about her wardrobe and favourite food.
Yasmin rushes out and along with Lina starts to go through the magazine. Images of the model sampling bikinis and swimwear- but of particular interest- is the massive black and white poster of the model wear leather shorts, but with her back turned away from the camera. Her round butt sticks out, but her head is facing the camera and she is sniffing her finger. The phone rings and Yasmin goes to pick it up.
"Hello." A brief pause.
"Hi, how are you? I'm good, very good. Did you see it? How do I look? Do you like it? I know I am so happy with the way it turned out, I was worried it would be horrible, but they were very professional and got me looking my best." While Yasmin talks away on her phone, Lina continues to look through the magazine pictures of her sister. She has finally made it.
Faris looks at the pictures and feels his heart sinking, how did it come to this? His beloved daughter, bright and intelligent, who had been brought up in a rational, liberal and accepting household, naked in a magazine for thousands of cretins to gawp at. This was not the American Dream, Faris had dreamed of for his daughter and yet he was responsible for creating this situation. In truth, the day Yasmin had told him, that she wanted to become a model triggered an emotional response and a longing in him. Faris had left Haifa as a young man and was happy to do so. But now, he felt, as if he had abandoned his culture and tradition by leaving and Yasmin's public nakedness was a reflection of her rootlessness.
The seeds the gardener sows eventually grow, but when planted away from its natural soil, the plant may never grow. The earth is sacred, the soil is spiritual and the land is wise and this gives root to morality. The land remember those who have trod on it in the past and its experiences give rise to tradition, which is passed onto future gardeners, and for the gardener the land gives a sense of connection to the past and timeless wisdom, that is the basis of spirituality. Each gardener leaves a presences and this presence stands in defiance of temporal modernity and dialectical materialism. Indeed the land is a connection between the physical and the metaphysical, between the material and antimatter; it's a space where the divine and profane come together.
Thus the land creates a space of equilibrium, but when Faris left the land is search of a new field, this equilibrium was disrupted. Tradition died and a grave in-balance ensued, the act of leaving was an exogenous moment or a moment when the cycle of life was disrupted and Yasmin's nakedness was the result of the imbalance of the new cycle in the new land. Yasmin's world is the material without the spiritual, her world sees eroticism stripped of its metaphysical forms and prizes nudity and orgasm above intellectual satisfaction. Sex is a physical act and is about instant pleasure and gratification, her world is one of hedonism and sees pleasure as the only virtue. Nakedness provides quick pleasure, so what's wrong with it?
Yasmin is gossiping very loudly, "Oh that guy. He's such an ass, I mean really. He struts around like he's got a large one, but in reality, he may as well be a eunuch. When he pulled it out, I was so disappointed and I was like, how am I gonna orgasm with that tiny thing? I don't even think he can reach very far into me. Anyways, I was a trooper and I faked it."
For Lina, her sister's sexual confidence paled in-compassion to her own inexperience, for Lina was still a virgin. Lina had a boyfriend called Max, who was the stereotype alpha male jock, but for the fact they had never slept together was the only affront to his image. Lina was no prude, but did not like the mechanical, heartless and pornographized sexuality, that Yasmin's sex life seems to represent. Lina likes Max's muscular body and masculine image, but she wants deep and meaningful sex and not to be a procreation machine that churns out babies.
Indeed, Lina recalls an essay she wrote in creative writing class called 'deflowered', in-which she imagines a series of scenarios in-which she loses her virginity. Although told through the first person, each scenario entails a different guy and different situation, in-which Lina loses her virginity. The stories embody real women's experiences with virginity loss, which Lina picked up from friends and the internet and the essay was an attempt to embody these different experiences and women, through the prism of Lina's own body. Physically Lina is yet to be deflowered, but psychologically she has been deflowered many times.
Samira tries to look at the positives of her daughters public lewdness, she has inherited her families good genes and by taking part in such pictures. She is defying both the Orientalist stereotype of the formless, passive and voiceless Arab woman, who is often depicted by wearing the veil in contemporary American society. And she is defying the ancient customs and precepts of Mediterranean, Middle Eastern, Asiatic and Levantine culture and asserting her individuality. This attitude of individuals don't exist, only collectives exist, is a world view more keenly felt in rural towns and villages.
Often Western feminism misunderstands the attitudes of immigrants from the Levant, they often argue that everything from 'honor crimes' and enforced chastity of women is rooted in the Patriarchical notion of ownership. Women are property, but the trouble with this concept is that it's rooted in ancient Roman and old European culture before the arrival of Christianity. The 'civilised' Romans weren't sure if women were full human beings and quite often classed them as higher forms of cattle. It was only the arrival of religions like Christianity and Islam that these attitudes changed- because both holy books- talked extensively about women, which was unheard of at the time.
By talking about them they were implying female humanity, which flew in the face of the cattle theory, and this gave them seats at the table. The real debate between Feminism and religion in the modern period, is should women enjoy an equal number of seats at the table and how much should their voices be heard. The attitudes of people from the rural Levant is that the individual does not exist, my children are me and I am my grandfather, we identify as family units. Thus, if my son and daughter do bad, than I have done bad and their crimes are my crimes and I share in their guilt.
Collectivised thinking is how people who live in harsh conditions survive and it allows for order to form for people on the edge of existence. Hence why 'honor' crimes happen, people of the edge of existence cannot afford 'weak chains', and one person can disrupt the fragile order established and it's the duty of the family unit to police its own members. Individuality and human rights are really only established after long-term stability and general formed in urban and not rural settings. Yasmin was thus striking a blow for feminism and the modern Arab woman, Samira concluded.
