The Ordinary, the Awful, and the Sublime

A ten minute drive from Bethlehem, Beit Sahur is a labyrinthine village of solid new concrete structures rising out of a deep valley with terraced hills. Its fifteen thousand, mostly Christian, residents inhabit a universe poised between the traditional and the modern, the balance moving tentatively but steadily towards the modern, however. A married woman is still expected to live with her husband's family and give her full attention to them; but, the marriages are not arranged and she is not expected to wed until her early twenties (women in the last generation were often married off in their early teens). Nidal's father-in-law was visibly shocked that I was still not married and didn't even live with my parents. But, who makes them breakfast in the morning? he wondered. A married woman's first responsibility is still the family hearth but more and more married women are joining the workforce along with unmarried women. Seeing me do the dishes one night, Nidal's six-year-old son Bassam remarked that it was a sin for men to do housework (at least, so said his grandmother), but on housecleaning days he happily joined in with his mother and sisters. The career ambitions of the teenage girls and boys in my English class were nearly the same doctor, lawyer, chemist with virtually all the girls believing that husbands should assist with domestic chores and fully fifty percent of the boys agreeing (only a few of their fathers did help out, however). Women wear bikinis at the beach but their husbands still anxiously watch for furtive leers. It is not a hyper-libidinous culture, but not an exceptionally repressed one either. Women and men sport the most stylish, if not the most titillating, fashions. Men do not typically ogle women and women do not typically primp for men. Teenagers are paired off but they are not yet sexually obsessed or jaded; there is about them a salubrious innocence, a refreshing wholesomeness. A husband working abroad may allow an unmarried male to be the guest of

Art · Literature · Sublime · Islamic Studies and History · Jewish and Middle Eastern Studies · Middle East Politics and Society

• Language of political socialization

  Janette Habashi•Children s Geographies•2008

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