Iranian Peasant Women

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 faul

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inherited form their father. I did not know of the many problems this had caused when I first arrived, including the medical problems facing Tamas and other sin the family at the time. Moving into this house was difficult, and I was afraid for all that this would mean. I really did not know Avdal at all, and even if this is the common custom, I was afraid and fought against being violated. Afterwards, though, I knew that I was a woman now and became part of the family group as a matter of course. I spent most of my time with the women in the compound and saw little of the men. Avdal and I had the good room, though Aziz tried to get the room back and failed. The family compound becomes both a home and a place of politics and tension as different members of the family fight for what they want. I felt victorious when we kept the good room and was pleased that we had not had to enter this fight directly. I fit into the family because I can do things and make myself useful. I learned how to fit in, how to please the other women, how to understand the roles taken by the men, and saw how the different medical problems changed the dynamics of power in the family group and produced change over time. Life changed for me when I g

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