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Five Women of Sennar: Culture and Change in Central SudanPublisher:Long Grove, IL: Waveland Press
Copyright:2004
Pages:ix + 237
Review:
Two decades after her research for the first edition of Five Women of Sennar, Susan Kenyon returned to this regional market town in central Sudan in 2000 and 2001 to follow the lives of the five women of varying ethnic backgrounds, social situations, and occupations who appeared in the first edition (Clarendon, 1991). In this new book, Kenyon updates the chronicles—exploring the social lives, families, work, and ritual activities of the women, most of whom speak again in their own words—after a generation of rapid change and globalization.
The stories of these now-older women are affectionately told in the context of a broader analysis of women’s roles in Sudan, illustrated by numerous intimate photographs of smiling mothers, student midwives, wizened elders, market sellers, and tombura zar (a type of spirit-possession ritual) practitioners. Kenyon skillfully writes about much more than the individuals, braiding into their stories vivid accounts of Sudanese women’s traditions and joys—beautification, weddings, cooking, midwifery, faith healing and folk medicine, genital cutting, spirit possession, religious devotion, and child rearing—as well as their vulnerabilities—divorce, economic struggles, and challenges of the more conservative political and religious climate. The tales challenge stereotypes of Muslim women. After failed marriages, Halima supported her three children by working as a hairdresser, braiding clients’ hair in the traditional cornrows. That style’s popularity has dimmed, and she has retired, supported by her children. It is a happy old age: Not only did her son provide for her pilgrimage to Mecca, but with the help of his contacts in Saudi Arabia, her family also achieved the honor of building a mosque in their home village. Fatima was a successful market woman who also devoted herself to a 14-year part-time career as a midwife. Because of the conservative Islamist pressures of the early 1990s, the women’s market was destroyed and the repression of women in public occupations made earning a living difficult for Fatima. She became increasingly dependent on her children when they insisted she stay home. Deprived of independent income, she has become a sad, sick, and powerless old woman. The third woman, Zachara, a divorced mother of nine children, worked as a government-employed district midwife. A religious woman who also practiced zar spirit possession, Zachara now enjoys the status of one who has made the pilgrimage to Mecca. She happily presides over her large and successful family, including university-educated daughters and international migrant sons, and lives in a spacious home in a prosperous area with children and grandchildren. The fourth woman, Bitt-al-Jamil, was a happily married mother who worked as a faith healer, an unusual occupation for a woman. Kenyon was able to observe and record some of her healing sessions, reported in the book, involving a male spirit helper who came to her and treated patients through her. Differentiated from zar spirits, this spirit was considered to be a servant of God, and Bitt-al-Jamil, who believed herself to have been chosen by God for this role, was considered a holy woman or seer. She made a good living on the basis of her reputation for helping her clients, but before she died in 1998, she and her generous husband distributed most of her wealth to the poor. Kenyon uses the chapter on the last of the women, a tombura zar leader, Naeima , to explore the variations in spirit-possession practices in Sudan. Kenyon provides a glimpse of how zar practitioners have managed to preserve and adapt the practices, despite increasing political and religious opposition from the Islamist movement. The persistence of Islam as a central feature of the society is, in a paradoxical way, enhanced by the zar, the practice of which “epitomized the confusion” that “foreigners” bring, but in which “it is still possible to control those alien challenges and bring them within acceptable bounds” (p. 224). Nevertheless, one also sees clearly the effects of globalizing Islam, as the influence of outside experience leads Sudanese to challenge their traditions, like zar, that the Islamists consider un-Islamic. When the news of the September 11, 2001, attacks hit the airwaves, Kenyon was in a Sudanese home in Sennar. Surrounded by care and sympathy in the first days, Kenyon observed the unfolding of changes in people’s sympathies as the news of the U.S. attacks in Afghanistan developed and Sudanese saw on television the poverty of the Muslims under attack, whose lives were similar to their own. These were fitting images to highlight the global context of the changes and continuities of Sudanese women’s lives today. [glossary of Sudanese Arabic terms, references, photographs]
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