Tomorrow, God Willing: Self-made Destinies in Cairo

ISBN: 0226898342

Author: Wikan, Unni

Condition: New

From Booklist Those of us lucky enough to live financially secure lives harbor certain assumptions about abject poverty, especially the sort found in Third World "megacities" such as Cairo. Wikan, a self-styled "anthropological investigator," wanted to challenge stereotypical assumptions by documenting the reality of specific lives. To that end, she spent more than 10 years in the poorest section of Cairo with a strong and wise woman named Umm Ali, her sometimes brutal husband, and their six children, studying every facet of their days and nights. In her novel-like chronicle, Wikan vividly describes the congested streets of Cairo, and Umm Ali's struggling household, tracking the myriad frustrations of their battle to earn money, buy food, and stay together. What emerges is a portrait of a resourceful, competent, spiritual, loving woman resistant to all the bitterness of her circumstances and grateful for the healing honesty brings. As Umm Ali says, "Talking together makes wise," and so does reading Wikan's noble narrative. Donna Seaman Product Description "I, without earning a penny, have to be the provider!" Thus Umm Ali sums up the nearly impossible challenge of her daily existence. Living in a poor neighborhood of Cairo, she has raised eight children with almost no help from her husband or the Egyptian government and through hardships from domestic violence to constant quarrels over material possessions.Umm Ali's story is amazing not only for what it reveals about her resourcefulness but for the light it sheds on the resilience of Cairo's poor in the face of disastrous poverty. Like countless other poor people in Cairo, she has developed a personal buoyancy to cope with relentless economic need. It stems from a belief in the ability of people to shape their own destiny and helps explain why Cairo remains virtually free of the social ills-violent street crime and homelessness-that have eroded the lives of poor people in other major cities.Unni Wikan first met Umm Ali and her family twenty-five years ago and has returned almost every year. She draws on her firsthand experience of their lives to create an intimate portrait of Cairo's back streets and the people who live there. Wikan's innovative approach to ethnographic writing reads like a novel that presents the experiences of Umm Ali's family and neighbors in their own words.As Umm Ali recounts triumphs and defeats-from forming a savings club with neighbors to the gradual drifting away and eventual return of her husband-she unveils a deeply reflective attitude and her unwavering belief that she can improve her situation. Showing how Egyptian culture interprets poverty and family, this book attests to the capacity of an individual's self-worth to withstand incredible adversity. From Kirkus Reviews The ordinary life of a resourceful woman of Cairo makes for an illuminating and unexpectedly engaging study of women, poverty, and Cairene life. Wikan (Ethnography/Univ. of Oslo) has spent 25 years visiting and living in the poor quarters of Cairo with a woman named Umm Ali and her husband and eight children, chronicling their predicament-filled life. As members of the lower class, they know that life is relentlessly difficult: Money is scarce, space is cramped, violence to women is customary. Yet the family members' common refrain of ``Tomorrow, God willing'' suggests a hope for the future built on a link between God and their own initiative, an ``encouraging message . . . that by helping yourself, and only by helping yourself, life will bear fruit.'' Umm Ali is proof of such belief, constantly generating money for family necessities through loans or savings clubs, preparing her children for marriage, and enduring the self-destruction of a son and the beatings and lack of support of her husband. As Umm Ali sees it (Wikan is smart and caring enough to set the bulk of the book in her words), these incidents are part of life, and life, while it is often painf