Readings for the Day

The reading we had for today really intrigued me. I found the writing style to be very readable as well as enjoyable due to the sarcastic nature of the authors tone. At the same time though, that sarcastic nature made it hard for me to truly understand where on earth she was coming from. It also created some confusion for me in regards to how strong her anger was.

The main example I struggled with was when she brought her first dog, Antar, to the vet to get her rabies vaccination. The exchange when the vet was asking questions in regards to Antar's breed is where my struggle is founded. When asked what breed is the dog, she replied "Can one consider a baladi a dog breed?". Now I understand that term to be negative in connotation and so from my perspective, Saud was making just as much of a derogatory remark about the nature of her female dog as the vet did. The anger that she then expressed seemed to be one sided since she originated the negative perception of the dog in my mind.

I cannot discount her experience as a female in Palestine though. It saddened me to not only hear of the situation related to the "gas masks" that she told in the first chapter, but moreover how women are treated in Palestine as a whole. The other article we read made logical sense to me in that there is such a strong patriarchal heritage to Jerusalem and the Middle East as a whole that with out a doubt makes being a woman in those regions difficult. That being said, I cannot blame her for her anger and frustration with the vet as stated in the previous paragraph, even though under those circumstances it may not have been well founded. It truly saddens me to hear how a woman's heart can be so sensitive to the words of a man and it is all based on how society views her.