The month is coming to an end, and as promised in a comment on my previous post on Fitha, this one goes to Hayat Al-Fahad’s Al-Daya.
What happened to Dalal (Mona Shaddad)? Domesticity changed her from a caring, compassionate, and smart woman to an old-fashioned jealous wife whose fear of losing her husband to another woman makes her cruel to the little girl she raised as her own daughter.
A Little synopsis for those of you who don’t watch the show:
While Moza’s husband was at sea, she was raped and died soon after childbirth (performed by none other than our Daya Hayat Al-Fahad in complete secrecy. This is pre-oil Kuwait. A woman pregnant after being raped finds it impossible to return to her husband’s house, or so the show argues). This benevolent Daya brings the baby girl to be raised by Dalal, Moza’s unmarried (as of yet), educated (as educated as a woman can get in those times), totally compassionate and intelligent sister. Dalal, loving and caring, cares for Moza’s baby and soon marries Moza’s husband in order not to allow a strange woman to raise her dead daughter’s children.
All well so far. But as soon as Moza’s baby girl grows up, Dalal turns into this wicked stepmother image, complete with a wicked stepsister.
What happened to Dalal? Or rather, what is the show telling us? That women’s compassion and intellect die when they become ‘domesticated’? I doubt that’s the message meant. But this is definitely what I’m getting out of this show. 🙂
I read a book a while back. Midwives for Chris Bohjalian. A midwife performing a C-section kills the mother by mistake and the midwive’s obstetrician daughter revisits the story and the trial. An interesting book in terms of the questions it poses, but the writing didn’t capture me that much. Worth a read nonetheless. It was interesting how the daughter indirectly justifies her choice of a traditional career as an obstetrician opposed to her mother’s strong belief in the necessity of home-birth through a midwife.
Midwives are interesting people. At least in the books I read. I never met a real one.
Hanan 