a book reflection

This is a reflection of two books I just finished and loved.

Unaccomstomed Earth by Jhumpa Lahiri
Reading Lolita in Tehran by Azar Nafisi

I recently finished reading "Reading Lolita in Tehran," by Azar Nafisi. Before that I read a book of short stories in "Unaccostomed Earth," by Jhumpa Lahiri, author of "The Namesake." They are strikingly similar - both have a strong feminine perspective of nostalgia yet painful realization of neglect or limitations from their beloved home countries, Iran and India, respectively. Both are renditions of women in the twentieth century with one foot still at home and the other in the freedom ringin' USA. Both women (or narrators) are passionate lovers of their native countries.

Unaccostomed Earth is a series of about ten short stories of Bengali emigrants to the U.S. Lahiri creates different narrators for each story. Some of the stories are connected and others are different, but they all convey an image of middle class West Bengalis coping in America in every crevasse of life - food, school, adolecense, love, profession, stay at home mothering, a parent's death, a new baby. Lahiri really harps on the every day life nuances and how wonderful they can be, especially the nuances coming from India. She misses India, and she especially misses the female details - the virbant cooking and the female space of the kitchen, the ornate saris worn by her family. She doesn't miss the arranged marriages or the lack of encouragement to be professional and independent in her matriarchal society, though.

Her short stories are wraught with anecdotes of women in the kitchen attempting to cook like their mothers - effortless and artistically. This kind of feminine role doesn't carry the same connotation as the American, domesticated woman, but it's more of an esteemed talent in the Indian tradition. Of course, it goes unnoticed that these Indian women could care for their families without stress. Lahiri writes of a first generation mother who hosts her father for a week in her new home in Portland, Oregon and wants to cook him the food he is used to, the food her mother cooked for him before he died. She ends up cooking for days before his arrival while watching her one year old son and trying to move into the new house, and none of the food nor the house satisfies her. The time it takes to make these meals does not allow the time it takes for the mother to care for her child and carry on a Western style life - whatever that entails - successfully.
Another story depicts two Bengali middle class women who moved to Massachusetts while their husbands were studying at Harvard. The women help each other cook for their families all day while sharing tips for each other on how to cope in the Western civilization they were thrust into - a supposed platform for them to break out of their strictly domestic roles but also a clash of tradition and culture that didn't allow for either to do that well. One woman abandons the Bengali meal tradition and just eats out at Italian restaurants with her family, which gives her the time to read the newspaper, shop at modern boutiques, and 'sophisticate' herself. The other woman held onto her Bengali cooking, which doesn't giver her much time for other things and doesn't let her integrate herself or her children into American society.


Azar Nafisi writes of her true intense identity crisis and trouble love for her country as she is forced to leave it after the Islamic Revolution. She starts writing in the 70s before the Revolution took place and continues to describe the lives women lead or did not lead as a result of the Revolution. She taught at the University of Tehran and quit when she was not allowed to teach how she wanted. She was extremely conflicted with either not offering her students her class and not succumbing to the regime's idea of an English class. She describes so painstakingly watching her female students being forced to veil themselves and their intellectual and emotional selves so as to keep men from being sexually tempted by their beauty. She laments over the lost female souls of her generation that made Iran 'human,' or gave it the decency of being a country by allowing the female sex to contribute to life itself.

She read American classics - Lolita and The Great Gatsby are two - in a covert reading group made up of only females from her classes. They met at her house and discussed banned topics such as sex and adultery and 'decadent' American dreams. They talked about how the female, or oppressed, was driven undergound but the power and the emotion was still there, lurking. They used Lolita and Nick in Gatsby to talk abuot the power and tragedy of the subtle hero combatting the relentless, imprisoning antagonist (Humbert Humbert in Lolita, or desire for wealth, in Gatsby).
Nafisi, as much as she hated abandoning Iran when she moved to the states, did not punish the West or even dislike it. Neither did Lahiri. Both women explained the intense personal freedom and lack of freedom that the West meant for them as victims of their own cultures.

"I went about my own way rejoicing, thinking how wonderful it is to be a woman and a writer at the end of the twentieth century." Nafisi.

Reading this quote gives me chills of excitement. I feel this kind of excitement when I walk around a town or city that I have spent a few days in while I am here in Asia. I feel capable and comfortable and excited. I feel a wave of accomplishment in this basic feeling of getting used to a place. I thank these women for what they've done and for putting it into words so well.
For the sake of freedom with Nafisi or circumstance and progression with Lahiri these women forsake all they know to be free, teach, write, and live. In doing so they never fully belong to either country. They create a new personal culture or identity for themselves - of sacrifice and lov for writing and freedom to write. They liberate women by giving them such an independent and unique voice and counter-voice to any overarching culture. As I walk around these foreign places as a white woman, trying to defy stereotypes of Western women and trying to respect women in their own countries, I feel a little confused myself. I wear what I want because I don't feel like I have to hide myself for the sake of others. But I also see the women here, working hard, walking along in their ankle length sarongs, long hair tied back, and I don't really know what I think! I just respect them for what they do and how they deal with Western women invading their space and looking so different, inevitably catching the attention or the gaze from a tuk-tuk driver or a passerby.
Anyway, these writers are only two who have made it easier for women like me to do what I am doing... so I want to thank them!

Mekong Water Festival...and more of Luang Prebang

After about 4 full days of travel, Caroline, Carrie and I made it to Luang Prebang, Laos. Carrie and I took an overnight train from Bangkok to Chang Mai which totaled 16 hours.















We scooped up Caroline in Chang Mai and headed to a border town on the Mekong River, and the next day we climbed aboard the slow boat that took us down the Mekong River to Luang Prebang in two days.














The Mekong is wide, slow, and muddy. There wasn't any development on it - just a few people getting picked up by the boat every so often. There was lots of silt on both sides of the river and the hills rose up right from the river into the low clouds. It's the end of the rainy season here. The night we arrived in LP it happened to be the first full moon after the rainy season. The Awk Phansaa water festival marks this occasion with thousands of tiny little floating lanterns that people push into the river upstream by a big Wat (Buddha statue) from town. They were also lighting lanterns that worked like hot air balloons and lifting them off into the air. Fireworks were going off on all sides of the river and kids were running around with bottle rockets, even shooting them at tourists!


This is kind of what it looked like.












A boat that some monks were lighting up with candles.
















This is a street vendor selling some fruit- mangoes, apples, dragon fruit, banans, lime, leechy things that are furry on the outside and taste like grapefruit, and more.















Luang Prebang looks very French still in architecture. There are old colonial mansions scattered throughout the town - white walls with black or red shutters. These buildings have all been turned into restaurants, cafes, book stores, and boutiques. It's over run with swankiness, which is too bad because 4 years ago when my sister was here she said it was empty.


We decided to rent some bikes and bike 32 km south to the Tat Kuang Si waterfalls. It was a beautiful and hilly bike ride into the countryside. We passed tons of waterbuffalo basking in the river, rice paddies, gardens of herbs. The waterfall was beautiful and the water itself was bright blue green and pretty cold. The park also housed some Asiatic black bears, rescued from hunters who cage them and sell their bile on the black market as herbal medicine to solve just aches and pains. There were about 10 bears who all looked healthy and playful in this park.


On the way home we stopped at this Minority Weaving Center, where women were weaving cotton into shawls and scarves. They were actually separating the cotton seeds from the cotton with a small wooden wheel, then threading the cotton, and then dying the cotton with dye from the flowers in their organic butterfly farm! She had indigo, marigolds, lotus, anatto for orange, Indian trumpet for green, and even some wild almond. The Center teaches other women around Loas how to dye their own cotton and sell their own product.

Northward... from Bali to Bangkok

The last day of my and Isabel's motorbike trip we stopped at a water palace of Balinese royalty from the 20s. An earthquake had destroyed it in the 70s.

This photo is taken from one of the buildings on the top looking up at a central mountain.


















This is the view to the right. Manicured ponds dotted a courtyard all the way to the sea.


I loved my time in Bali. It is a really unique island; a rich Hindi anamoly in an archipelago of Muslim tradition and oppression in some places (Aceh, Java has approved shariah law - stoning and lashings for adultery and prostitution), and environmental disaster as of the last week. Projections of 1,100 Sumatrans in the death toll from the earthquake two days ago. Sumatra is an island close to Bali. (http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/03/world/asia/03quake.html?_r=1&hp).

I will definitely go back to Bali. I think I would like to go back for a month or two and road bike around the island.





September 29 I arrived in Bangkok to meet Carrie, an old friend from Memphis, and immediately started the process for getting my visas to Laos and Cambodia. The city is big and smoggy, so I am very excited to get out of it. I walked around this market early in the morning with Carrie, the pungent smell of fish, humidity, and exhaust. The market borders this canal, and these canals run through the city.

on the road 'round bali...

Isabel riding on the bemo, the public bus, to the Bukit Peninsula. The doors never shut. Coconut.




- 5 days at Balangan Beach, Bukit Peninsula, South Bali (surfing much too big a wave, nose dives and reef scrapes)
- 2 nights in Kuta, Bali (waiting for friends to arrive and surf the smaller stuff...way too many tourists here)
-----rented bikes-----
- 2 nights in Medewi, Bali (good beginners' wave)
- 1 night in NW national park (snorkeling)
- 1 night back in Anturan (on the road to the east for a complete loop of the island)
- 2 nights left in Bali.


Isabel and I just left Balangan where we stayed with a family for 5 nights in a thatched bungalow on stilts above the beach. This was interesting when one morning we woke up to an earthquake, we looked at each other in disbelief and 20 seconds later it was done and we feel back asleep. This earthquake did make international news however, my friend Topher in Australia heard about it.
It was one of the prettiest beaches I have ever seen. At low tide a huge reef was exposed with vibrant green moss coating the volcanic looking rock. It was a true surfer hangout, if they weren't surfing, then they were staring intently at the waves, almost nervous to think they could see their perfect wave go by. Isabel and I rented boards at a beach on the other side of a cliff that has bright green grass on it for a golf course. The whole area is being encroached upon as resorts fill up the once rustic style beaches. You can hear bull dozers working as you sit in the water trying to catch waves. Surfing is really hard and pretty scary for me. The first wave I caught I nose dived into a reef, the board so long it awkwardly flailed on the end of my leg, and me so worried about getting thrown under water that I managed to keep my head above the wave the whole time!

After basically camping for 5 days (the home lost power almost all the nights because the family hadn't paid the electricity bill) and asking a member of the family to drive us to an ATM because we had no money to pay for anything, we made it back to dreaded Kuta to meet some friends flying in from Jakarta (teaching English). Kuta is just full of Australian and Europeans ready to club. We stopped at ground zero for the night club bombing in Kuta in 2002, and saw how the names of all those who died, a vast majority being Australians. It was nice to see a memorial and not another night club like there was talk about.

We met up with Nick and Heather, rented 2 motorbikes and started driving westward to Medewi, a wave that supposedly is good for beginners, not too big or fast and a beach landing. Turns out that post-Ramadan's vacation Idul Fitri was just ending and thousands of vacationers were driving back on the same road as us to the ferry in Java. That was a lot of traffic. We travel slowly with two people and a pack per bike, so it was a slow-going day of travel.







We drove right by Medewi at first because it wasn't a town, it was just a tiny alley street ending on the rocky beach. It reminded me how purely these random breaks around Bali sprang up little villages into money-making surf beacons for people from all over the world. Families who have lived here and fished here for ages are now barraged with surfers who need meals and rooms and boards.









These are the volcanoes in Java.















From Medewi we went to the Bali Barat National Park in the northwest. We stayed here a night and indulged in a mangrove bungalow and a half day snorkeling adventure off the coast towards Java. It's amazing how cheap things like this are here - $36 for the snorkel and lunch on the narrow wooden boat, in a protected national park.


















Nick and Heather have gone back to Kuta, and Isabel and I are driving on the north coastal road all the way to the east coast. It's so fun being on a motorbike. We stopped today for a Coke on the side of the road. The Muslim owner of the stand asked us the usual..."where are you from, where are you going, have you been to bali?" which is not intrusive, it's just a getting to know you routine. We said we were from the USA, and he immediately said back, "Good, Obama, (with a thumbs up). Muslim, ya?"
We said no, he wasn't Muslim. (Btw, I had a dream last night that I was Obama's babysitter because their old one was kidnapped. I hang out with the girls all day and then he asked me if he could put my number on the fridge for later. I said sure and realized then that every surface in the kitchen was covered with chaulk boards and dry erase boards...for parents on the go! Strange.)
Then we asked if we could go see the monkey temple that was up some concrete steps on the side of a cliff by the road. He said yes and as we crossed the street he said "ten thousand!" (rupiahs, which is a dollar). I yelled back, "we're just looking!" and he waved his hand. People are extremely nice here and not resentful or conniving, and sometimes they try to see how much they can get out of you. Since we are American we immediately seem rich.







Scene as we are stopped on the roadside taking a break.

Ubud - Balinese dancing and a midwives' clinic

The past 2 nights we spent in Ubud, "the cultural center" of Bali. It used to be a strong arts and market town, with local painting and traditional Balinese dance ceremonies. That attracted a strong expat community, and now the place is very commercialized and full of boutiques and stalls of people selling beautiful traditional batik-woven sarongs and cloths, wooden sculptures, and trinkets and chic Indonesian fashion.


We went to a Legong Dance at a temple last night that was incredible. The dances were shortened because they are so repetitive and long in real ceremonies for the Hindu gods or for traditional Balinese life. The girls were made up in ornate gold, dark green, and dark red costumes. They danced more with their eyes than their bodies, opening their eyes really wide and ominously moving them back and forth, and then relaxing their eyes. The women were bound up tight in their costumes so they couldn't move too much. They shook their hands really fast. I thought the dance seemed like a combination of indulgence and being morally alert.

This morning we walked through rice paddies and fields to a midwifery clinic called Yayasan Bumi Sehat (www.bumisehatbali.org). This place was started in 1994 by an American woman and has virtually ended infant and maternal deaths due to births on the island. While we were there there were 2 day old babies and their mothers doing reiki with some other people from he neighborhood. The place was very impressive - clean, orderly, humble and sweet. Another branch of the clinic moved to Aceh shortly after the tsunami and provided lots of relief there.

We've started playing rummy 500.

Musings from Anturan

from 9-13

We've been at the Gede homestay in Anturan for 3 nights now - it's so serene and idyllic here. I feel rather spoiled. It's a tiny street with 2 stores and 3 beachfront restaurants. The tuna and mahi mahi have both been grilled in banana leaves and seasoned in balinese spices. Isabel and I have been reading all day - getting lost in our books, ignoring the sweat on our stomachs and the burns on our thighs.

Chickens peck at specks on the black sand, and finally the cluster of women has stopped heckling us with their tacky jewelry and sarongs. Days pass so quickly while we've done little. I ask myself why I come so far away from home to sit on a beach and read, but I know it's not this simple. The challenges and idiosyncrasies run deeper than surface and will stay with me.

The contentness of the women on the slow-moving beach, under trees, scoping up and down for buyers. The old woman, skinny and flexible, with a large white tshirt and a small straw bag, washing her mouth out with water and spitting. Speaking to a male companion. A rooster crows. Wooden chimes, unrelenting and cliche. A lone German eats a lunch at noon in the restaurant. He just returned from the book shop to re-amp for the day-lazing.

Isabel and I dined with 2 German girls last night...proud to show them our fresh-thinking yet not unique American perspectives on public transportation in cities. An urban planner and a freelancer for graphic design at The Daily Mirror of Berlin, interested and goofy and almost middle-aged.

Isabel and I got a ride on a motorcycle offered up by a passerby and scooted slowly home, getting surpassed by truckloads and fast motorcycles. Our driver prided himself on his slow and careful pace - now that he had 2 livs behind him.

Isabel's enraptured in Prince of Tides now. I have a $3 massage in an hour. Class, Isabel would say. Only 200 meters inland the main road bustles with bikes and bemos - smog and heat rising from sewers - produce markets getting flushed with exhaust and smoke.

I look at a white couple who has just planted themselves at the cafe where I am supposed to have a massage. Blonde ponytails, big sunglasses.

Now the only lady has sauntered over to the French couple who woke up late and looked grumpy at breakfast. They sit under the sun and reject her proposals, "sarongs...cheap price. massage..cheap price. " The woman's tempted, the man, a techno DJ, unaware completely.

Success! The blonde runs to the shade while the old woman snappily sets up a massage station in the sand. Smiles, glances to her husband who just panted up to the shade where I sit, feet scorched from the black sand.

Bali

Bali is throbbing with tourists, Balinese, flowers, and old and crumbling temples and stone walls throughout. So far I have landed in Denpasar, spent a night Seminyak (right outside of Kuta), 2 nights in a central town called Bedegul in the mountains, and 3 nights in a northern beach town called Anturan (right ouside Lovina). Today I have finally found internet! I didn't think an island so used to tourists and catering to tourist needs would lack internet and I was happy to learn that it did.

Bali is awesome - it's paradise. It's filled with big beaches and giant surf in the south, quaint quiet towns in the north, where I am now, and mountains in between. The southern central coast is swamped with tourists in skimpy bathing suits "showing more than I'd like to see!" one German friend put it. So Isabel, a friend from high school, and I immediately drove north to the mountains first to get out of the crowds and see some of non-coastal Bali. Regardless of where you are on Bali, the locals are used to tourists and trying to make a dime. Since the Kuta bombings of a night club in 2006, tourism here has slowed down, locals have told me. They are eager to drive you to guest houses and hotels of their friends, who then give them a commission, and then recommend tons of tours of temples and waterfalls, or places to rent motorcycles and cars, and the list never ends. Each town there is a monopoly of people connecting hostels to tours to restaurants and taxis. It takes a lot of willpower to turn them away and do things yourself! The locals can easily convince you that you can't do something alone, like walk 10 minutes to a temple on the water! You start second-guessing your skills and then paying for a boat ride to get there! This actually turned into a really fun boat ride from a Hindu temple to the middle of the misty, magical looking lake for a swim and making a new friend from Germany, Helgue.

Bedegul, this mountain town, was a little eerie though and lacking many tourists, it felt like a place out of time beacuse the fog hung down so lowly and the air was chilly and grey. The people were a little poorer but much more honest-seeming than people on the beach capitalizing.

Now we are in a tiny village named Anturan, right outside the larger Lovina. It's a black sand beach littered with fishing boats all quaintly painted different colors. Chickens, dogs and cats scavenge the beach though and there are trash piles every so often and strings of rustic beach shacks along the coast. Beautiful flowers pink red and orange grow everywhere and overflow into corridors through the towns and even grow out of the gutter. The local people seem happy and slower paced here, true island time. Women sit on the beach and try and sell sarongs and bracelets and massages for $5 an hour. Men orchestrate the monopoly of tourist services. Nights in guest houses are about $5 for me and $10 for the room. Dinners are about $8, and chartered taxis from town to town (2 hr rides) are $20 total.
There is a large dead reef here because in the 90s locals would bomb the water for fish. Now the fishing boats leave around 4pm and go fish for mackerel. They bob up and down at night like lanterns on the water and don't come back until 11 or so. December will bring the tuna and maybe some marlin.
I had some really good mahi mahi yesterday grilled with spicy greens and cabbage and a big pile of rice and tempeh. It's refreshing to find light and good flavorful food. A lot of places are not so good and try to westernize themselves with pad thai or even spaghetti etc.
isabel and i are getting along great. we both like the quiet but are also itching to start surfing so we will have tomove to the more crowded beaches.

Bali is 5% Muslim and about 60% Hindu. Ramadan is happening now so the Muslim are fasting. In a week or so, for Ede, Bali anticipates large crowds from Java or Jakarta coming to vacation. The call to prayer in the early mornings is waning and beautiful and long. Besides the traditional professional roles of women and men here, the women seem to share priveleges. I see women driving on motorcycles everywhere along with men. Both sexes speak a lot of English, at least enough to sell the latest tourist gimmick or have a short conversation!

So far I have met lots of Germans, Austrians, some French and Dutch, and no Americans, which isn't that surprising as America is so far away. Surprisingly most people are reserved when asked if they like Obama. They respond saying I don't know yet. Then there are some bars or restaurants with big pictures of his face right next to Bob Marley's. I thought they would have liked him a lot, but people aren't so easily impressed with America it seems!

I would like to post more than this, but I don't know how available internet will be. For now, these are my impressions of Bali. I don't know where I am going next so I will post as things unfold.

---lucy