Erica Friedl in her book Women of Deh Koh uses portraits of a number of Iranian peasant women to suggest that their lives are not determined by patriarchy or by Islam alone but that their own reactions to and decisions regarding these and other forces shape their lives in more complex ways. The stories of several of these women illustrate this method and help reveal their minds, lives, and cultures to the American reader.
To have many children is part of our culture and part of our lives. Children carry on our traditions and help us in our work and in our old age. Children are compared among the women all the time. Children are part of the life cycle, but that cycle is supposed to run in a certain way. We marry, we have our children as soon as possible, all in a row, and then we settle into a different mode, raise our children, watch them get married and have children of their own, and help care for the grandchildren.
Having a child late in life creates problems because it says something about my private life to everyone else in the community. It tells them that I am still sleeping with my husband, for one thing. There are modern ways of preventing pregnancy, but they are difficult for us to do. When I tried, the pills made me feel sick. The importance of children is great, but we also place importance on doing the right thing and on living in a way that fits with the norm in our group. I was ashamed that I had not done this even though it was not my fault, really, and in truth I have to hold my head up and face the other women in the village because I know this.
In our village, power comes to those who are able to assert themselves and to get others to heed what they say. Life in the village is hard, and we are often called on to protect ourselves from the raids of some other village. My life has not followed the prescribed course--I have no children, and children are a source of power though sheer numbers. Ho...