The Wedding of Zein
I drew this candle in honor of Zein because I remembered his character as such when I read the sotry at the beginning of the semester. At this time, I was totally unfamiliar with Islam or any themes associated with it, so I did not realize how the story was depicting authorities within Islam in this particular Egyptian village, putting the gangs, Haneen, and the Imam in juxtaposition to show who really had the power or respect in the village. I enjoyed the story though, because it reminded me a lot of the parables of the Bible that I read as a child.
In my reflection that week, I wrote that Zein reminded me of a quote by a Korean historian that goes somewhere along the lines of:
“When you love will know, and when you know you will see— thus, what you see in the moment will never be as it was before.”
The quote explains the profound nature of love in its ability to pushes one to learn more about something, and once one learns more about something, one naturally sees the true value and worth in it.
Likewise, I really found the idea of Zein’s love profound: his love—which readers likely deemed silly at first because of Zein’s silly characterization—is a light that shows the village how lovely its girls are. Despite the condescension when speaking of Zein and his constant being in love, the families of the village want Zein to serenade their daughters because Zein’s love inadvertently shed light on their daughters’ availability and loveliness. Although how Islam was practiced in the village played a large part in why the girls were invisible from the public most of the time, Zein being in love with them allowed people to truly see them. This was why I drew a candle that shed light on the word “beauty”—hopefully, the word I used was the correct translation in Arabic.
However, the story still rendered women subject to the expectations of her society, and many times in this specific one, the expectations were contradicting and abusive. For example, while the men of the village wanted their women to be chaste and pure, many participated in immoral activities with women who were at the outskirts of the city. These women, who were highly stigmatized, did not have the same expectations as women who were worthy to be their wives, a perverted inconsistent value system indeed.
Also, I liked that Zein—similar to the Good Samaritan of the Bible—surrounded himself with the outcasts of the village, from lepers to the disabled. I think this purity and untainted compassion in Zein was what made Haneen become friends with him.
Speaking of Haneen, it was clear that this spiritual man had the respect and awe of the village as one close to God, although the Imam was who supposedly held legal authority and power. I think the story showed that power within Islam or Islamic government, can easily become corrupt depending on each community’s interpretation of the faith, just as how each cultural interpretation of Islam is vastly different from others.