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Book Review
MALAYALAM
Social novel
K. KUNHIKRISHNAN
BARSA — Novel: Khadija Mumthas; DC Books, DC Kizhakemuri Edam, Good Shepherd Street, Kottayam-686001. Rs. 90.
THIS POWERFUL novel is about haunting and agonising questions of a devout and educated Muslim lady, a doctor, who spent six years in a hospital in Saudi Arabia. She quotes Abdul Karim Sourosh to highlight the different interpretations of the status of women in Islam.
The life of the Indian doctor couple in Saudi Arabia is full of circumstances where the narrator is driven to question the plight of women in conservative Islamic society.
The novel strongly urges reforms for women emancipation and for a more practical approach. In the best-seller, Girls of Riyadh, Raja Al Sanea brings out the futility of societal restrictions from the viewpoint of young girls, whereas this novelist questions the male-centred social structure through her experiences in the hospital with other doctors, staff and patients from different parts of the world. The story which begins at the airport ends there and occasionally slips into a travelogue. But the journeys of the protagonist are experiences which have been moulded into introspective probes evoking the empathy of the reader with Sabitha, the affable and amiable doctor from Kerala.
The novel also brings out the exemplary harmony that exists for centuries in Malabar between Muslim women and other families. It is far above any feminist writing.
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