Another posting from Ariela Rutkin-Becker:
A few months ago I bumped into a friend’s mother. She started talking about plans to go abroad in the upcoming year, and how her daughter, Sarah, had initially wanted to go to Morocco. Sarah’s mother Donna, however, had heard reports of “female travelers who were told to go to hell” simply by walking on the streets; females who were hit by virtue of not covering themselves up in public. Her talk almost exactly mimicked Nigel Summers’ concerns about Julie on page 98: “and as for women: you, you to whom independence, freedom, mean so much...there women are treated like slaves.”
When I chirped up that I’ve always wanted to go to Morocco and was strongly considering that as an abroad destination before I chose Egypt, Donna said: “so I guess you want something exotic.”
Exotic, I thought, hmm. That’s not quite it.
From my point of view, Donna (at least at this point in her life) has the same fundamentally flawed understanding of my choices as Julie’s friends and family, epitomized by her father, have of hers. She mistakes my wandering soul for a constant search for excitement, a constant longing for exotic adventure outside of home. To me, I travel to create that home-my own mosaic of what home means out of my experiences. A home that rests somewhere outside of any country I know- “another country/not yours or mine.”
When the idea of one singular home, one specific country to label “mine” is unsatisfying for us, we are compelled to move around, learning every step as we go. We are compelled to see the situation that Nigel Summers and my friend’s mother describe with our own eyes; to digest it through our own personal lens and not anybody else’s.
This is why I admire Julie. And this is part one of why I felt that I related to her experience throughout the book.
Comments