Fatma Abdullah Rifaat - Short Story Extraordinaire

Fatma Abdullah Rifaat-Short Story Extraordinaire

Fatma Abdullah Rifaat, better known as Alifa Rifaat, has created some of the most compelling short stories out of Egypt. Since she was born in 1930, Rifaat has been exposed to the realities of being a woman in the Islamic based Egyptian culture. Her life story has been one typical of an Egyptian female and she has related the arranged marriage aspect of her life into the gripping short stories, “Distant View of a Minaret,” and “A Long Night of Winter” from Distant View of a Minaret.

Rifaat was a talented youth who began writing very early and wrote a poem by the name of “The Despair in Our Village” at the age of nine. She was furthermore punished for writing this and since had been forced to essentially give up writing as a hobby. After finishing her studies in the British Institute in Cairo, she sought to finish her education by going to college yet, her father/the way of society forced her to put her dreams on hold and fall back to the norm for women. That meant becoming an arranged marriage victim and follow the routine life of a stay at home mom. Her husband being her cousin later on had died leaving her to raise three children, and live alone which I believe she wasn’t so upset about. She continued to read works of Arabic fiction and once again picked up writing fiction in 1955. According to World Literature Online, Fatma took on the pseudonym of Alifa Rifaa in order to veil her identity and publish short stories. But once her husband asked her to stop writing, she did, and that too for over 10 years yet she was able to continue again once her husband gave her the “ok.” Rifaat’s short stories are very much reflective of this repugnant life attributable to arranged marriages.

The general idea behind her two stories is to implicitly argue the discriminatory norms of women in society. She states how the problems start from the husband who turns out to be inconsiderate of the wife and lacks any sort of sympathy. Since women in Egypt don’t have any sort of rights, men seem to believe they have the right to be selfish in a relationship. In many of her stories, the husbands end up being filthy lying cheaters that do not appreciate their wives. Both “Distant View of a Minaret” and “A Long Night of Winter” reflect the negative impact on these poor women who are forced into permanent relationships with strangers. These two short stories exemplify how a lack of love in marriage leads to a miserable life. In “Distant View of a Minaret,” the husband primarily has no sense of understanding of what his wife desires during sexual intercourse and when she suggests to her desires, he refuses to acknowledge them. He only cares for his sexual orgasm but not for hers. In “A Long Night of Winter” the wife believes she isn’t attractive and therefore her husband has to resort to going out late taking drugs and sleeping with other women. In both stories, the husbands are depicted as animals/possessed beings when having sex and depicting the self-interested mentality