This is a memoir of Muslim woman, Leila Ahmed, about growing up in Egypt in the 1950s and 1960s. I really enjoyed reading about Leila's early life in Egypt and I was frankly astonished at the commonalities we shared as girls of a similar era, even though we lived in two far distant cultures, she in Egypt and I in the USA. She grew up reading and speaking and being educated in English, attending school run by the British until the troubles that forced the British out of Egypt. We played similar games, enjoyed similar friendships, family outings, sports: she did things that I had never pictured an Islamic female doing.
But still, she acknowledges that her culture is one that is hostile to and dangerous to women and that life as an Islamic woman is one of restrictions and limitations for most women. She escaped these restrictions by moving first to Britain then ultimately to America.
I was struck by how angry she is at the racism she faced upon coming to Britain. She mentions how she was spit on when riding on a bus by a fellow passenger when he realized she was not Israeli but was Egyptian. Her resentment of being classified as "colored" and therefore less human than whites appears throughout the book. But this is completely understandable.
She goes into some detail on the transition of Egypt from being Egyptian (as she was raised to think of herself) to being Arab and part of the whole Middle Eastern situation and not really African anymore. She also, towards the end of the book, traces Egypt's transformation from support of a homeland for the Jews in Palestine to being totally against the new country of Israel. This part was particularly surprising for me for I didn't know of Egypt's early support for the Jews. She also discusses how this change from pro to anti-Jew has changed Egypt's formerly tolerant pluralistic & multicultural society to an Islamic-only society where non-Islamics are openly hated and persecuted. It is a story well worth reading.
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