Nine Parts of Desire, The Hidden World of Islamic Women

By Warren Bolon Sentinel Staff

NINE PARTS OF DESIRE , The Hidden World of Islamic Women is one of a handful books on Islam that gained sudden relevance and new readers after September 11. As I finished reading Geraldine Brooks's look behind the veil into the hidden lives of Islamic women, a phrase from Sentinel founder Mary Baker Eddy's Miscellaneous Writings came to mind. She wrote that our prospects for progress present both "a full-orbed promise, and a gaunt want" (p.355).

First the promise. Brooks tells of going to a beach near her parents' home in Sydney. She shares her space with a Muslim family. "It made me sad that the woman's tiny daughter, splashing so happily with her father and baby brother, would be, one day soon, required to forgo that pleasure.

"Every now and then the little girl's mother fiddled with her headscarf as it billowed in the breeze. That woman had made her choice: it was different from mine. But sitting there, sharing the warm sand and soft air, we accepted each other. When she raised her head to the sun, she was smiling."

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