inappropriate way, for example by openly seducing him with her feminine charms.89
Everything rises and falls with a woman’s appearance, as Elif Shafak summarizes with the metaphor “Modesty is a woman’s only shield” (15) in her novel Honour. Modesty is also a recurring topic in the works of Yasmina Khadra. He provides insights into the lives of Algerian women, claiming that they are often victims of a man’s abuse (sometimes related to a demonstration of male honor), a major reason for heartbreak and a source of frustration.90 Where the male protagonist Younes in Ce que le jour doit à la nuit comes from, every adult female wears a headscarf to protect her honor. His obedient mother, who rarely opens her mouth, is “hidden behind a veil, barely distinguishable from the sacks and bundles” (10) and is used to disappearing completely when her husband shows up with other men in their home. This is how women in the rural regions ←66 | 67→have to behave, following certain gender-related codes: “In our world, when men meet, women are expected to withdraw; there is no greater sacrilege than to see one’s wife stared at by a stranger” (11).
Men like the broker, for instance, announce themselves by loudly clearing their throats, giving women enough time to get out of sight: “[The broker] asked us to wait in the street, then cleared his throat loudly to let the women know to disappear – as was the custom if a man was about to walk into a room” (21). In the village as well as in the slum community of Jenane Jato, such honor codes continue to exist, defining what is right and wrong. Here, people are not pardoned for their inappropriate conduct. Once they have lost the respect of their community, they can no longer show their faces in public and hope for forgiveness. The greater the poverty, the more a man’s self-esteem depends on the intact honor of his female relatives. Once again, one of the most important virtues of a woman is her “modesty” (in French “pudeur”), an expression that is frequently used in Khadra’s novel, especially in contexts that might endanger female honor and thus the reputation of the whole family.
However, while the lives of rural women are full of restrictions, including strict dress codes, those in the city are rather free in comparison. In Algeria’s second biggest town Oran, a woman’s honor is not in danger just because she shows her hair and face: “This was Oran […] Curiously, I saw, the women in the city did not wear the veil. They walked around with their faces bare; the old women wore strange headgear, but the younger ones went bare-headed, their hair on show for all to see, seemingly unperturbed by the men all around them” (17). This description is very similar to a paragraph in the novel A Thousand Splendid Suns, where Khaled Hosseini depicts women’s emancipated behavior in Kabul before the rise of the Taliban, contrasting them with the oppressed ones living in the countryside. To make a clear difference between both kinds of women, Yasmina Khadra uses the expression “city girl” who, in general, is “not like the girls round here” (295; see also 230). The mother of one of Younes’s friends, Madame Scamaroni, is obviously an independent urban woman who “lived by her own rules and was the only woman in the whole district to drive a car. The wagging tongues in Rio Salado constantly gossiped about her, but Madame Scamaroni didn’t care” (131). These city girls or urban women do not seem to know anything about the values and rules that need to be respected in traditional communities. Apparently, they also do not always have to fear punishment if they behave in an “inappropriate” way, maybe because of the anonymity in big cities, which makes the spreading of gossip more difficult.
In little towns like Río Salado (today El Malah), however, the importance of the public eye and judgment can be felt in every context of daily life on which the ←67 | 68→reputation of a family depends. The question “what would people say?”, i.e., what the people of the village and friends might think if they witnessed a violation of certain codes is an omnipresent one, for both men and women alike. Any act that might be “outraging the whole village” (245) and become a source of gossip must therefore be avoided by all means: “This is a small town, mademoiselle, people talk” (236). As a consequence, the person who does not live according to certain traditions can “lose face” (“perdre la face”), an expression Yasmina Khadra uses a few times to highlight the loss of a man’s honor. Being surrounded by one or several “impure women” (43) immediately leads to a man’s bad public reputation. A woman can easily cause a sensation of shame in a man, also diminishing his sense of pride and honor, as becomes clear in Younes’s description of his mother: “I was ashamed by her greed, ashamed of the unkempt hair she had clearly not brushed for ages, ashamed of the tattered haik: draped like an old curtain round her shoulders, ashamed of the hunger and the pain that distorted her face, this woman who, once, had been as beautiful as the dawn” (128). This link between a woman’s honor and her appearance highlights the frequent dependence of this concept on superficial criteria which are not answered by empathy. All “taboos and propriety” (189) are passed on from parents to children, which explains why “[…] in Rio Salado generation followed generation and nothing ever changed” (190).
In Zülfü Livaneli’s Bliss, Meryem complains about the “punishment of being a woman” (9) who has to cover herself and hide away from the public eye, who must serve men and respect all honor codes which follow Meryem around since her early childhood.91 In Parinoush Saniee’s The Book of Fate, which depicts the submissive life of the female protagonist Massoumeh, we find the rule that “when a girl laughs, her teeth shouldn’t show and no one should hear her” (7). Those who do not obey have to endure severe punishment, which can range from being beaten up to being stoned to death. The female protagonist in Saphia Azzeddine’s Bilqiss, who is also one of the novel’s three narrators, is imprisoned and accused in court of inappropriate behavior, or more precisely of approximately 20 infractions of “good conduct” which are first described from her perspective: “Un expert en droit islamique avait répertorié une vingtaine d’infractions au code de bonne conduite” (17). Among the offenses (“délits”) that are listed, ←68 | 69→we find the possession of make-up, high heels, feminine underwear, a man’s portrait, journals, Iranian poetry, ginger, a scented candle, recordings of songs, a toy, perfume, tweezers and other inappropriate things (“choses inappropriées,” 17) which make her suspected of wanting to seduce men. She is considered a toxic woman (“femme toxique,” 41) and a sinner (“pécheresse,” 124) who never wears her headscarf correctly and thus distracts the men on the street, also with her painted nails and a bracelet on her foot ankle. Moreover, she is known to buy vegetables of phallic shape, but not asking the vendor to cut them before taking them home (see p. 92). At the age of 14 she was seen talking to a foreign photographer (in itself already a proof of her inappropriate behavior) and taking off her burqa to pose for him, which is also regarded as a sign of disrespect. Having been married off at the age of 13, this kind of immoral conduct endangers the reputation of her husband.
Especially Bilqiss’s act of not entirely covering her head and behaving in a provocative way is a recurring topic that leads to arguments between her and the judge Hasan in her prison cell. In the second part of the novel, in which the judge becomes the narrator and protagonist, this issue is explained from his male perspective, underlining the protective aspect of the veil. Like Rasheed in Hosseini’s A Thousand Splendid Suns, Hasan explains to his wife Nafisa, who does not want to cover her head, the protective function of the veil: “C’est pour vous protéger, vous, les femmes, que nous faisons cela” (71). We also come across another observation in the same spirit, making it clear that women should, among other behavioral guidelines, never question the necessity of the headscarf: “Ce sont des choses qu’il ne faut jamais remettre en question. Le voile, c’est la protection de la femme” (56). A different approach is presented in Azzeddine’s novel, when the American-Jewish journalist Leandra Hersham is introduced as a representative of a dignity culture. She is investigating Bilqiss’s case, and highlights the aesthetic aspect of covering garments like headscarves, hijabs or burqas, which she herself enjoys putting on because of their exotic touch.
Being the novel’s third narrator and protagonist, Leandra adds a detached and more superficial perspective to the interpretation of the veil. In this intercultural clash between dignity cultures and honor cultures, there is a focus on Western ignorance concerning honor-related codes, reducing the situation ad absurdum with Leandra’s
