Highlights From Terra Femme Film Screening + Three Centuries of Travel Writing By Muslim Women Book Discussion

Left:  Film still from Terra Femme (Courtney Stephens, 2021)
Right: Photo from Three Centuries of Travel Writing by Muslim Women (2022), Amina Said visiting London’s Scotland Yard in 1955. © Keystone Pictures USA / Alamy Stock Photo.

A few months ago,  Tamreez Inam, a writer, literary consultant and curator shared on her Instagram account the cover of the book Three Centuries of Travel Writing by Muslim Women. I replied to her saying that I’ve been wanting to host an event that paired the book with the film Terra Femme, directed by Courtney Stephens.

The film and book both came out during first two years of Covid-19 pandemic, and for a long time I’ve been trying to find a way to host an event where I can pair them together. Fast forward to last week when Tamreez and I hosted our first collaboration, and I hope the start of many more. 

We hosted an event titled Widely Travelled Women, Home Movies and Travelogues: Film Screening and Book Discussion presented by The Culturist Film Club and Tamreez Inam at Kutubna Cultural Center and we are very thankful to Shatha Almutawa, the centre’s founder and director for letting us host the event, and I also want to thank Sarah, Moussa, Saleh for all their help in the set up, and to Bound to Read for sponsoring the night by providing the sound system. An extra special thanks to Asim Khan for being our technical guardian angel on the night. 

Photo credit: Asim Khan

Below are some of the words Tamreez and I shared on the night and some thoughts discussed between the two of us after the event. I personally found the collaboration and experience extremely rewarding, and I hope Tamreez and I can do more of this.

Introduction before the screening:

Hind Mezaina: This is a slightly more expanded version of the introduction I made before the screening.

Travelling in the UAE and generally across the Gulf region feels very normal and expected. We’re bound to know someone who is out of town, traveling for business or pleasure, for education or medical reasons, annual religious pilgrimage, or travelling back to one’s home country for a short visit. 

Travelling is also a privilege. Borders aren’t open to everyone, and with the current state of the world, will it get even more difficult for more people? The world right now feels scary, things don’t make sense, especially when it comes to the state of politics in most countries, and the genocide and collective punishment that is still being carried out on Palestinian civilians and most recently, IDF’s attacks on Lebanon. For me, it is important to acknowledge and not forget what is going on in the world when I am hosting a film screening, and I hope events like this can help us process things together. Both the film and the book show us how much has changed, but also how things have remained the same, or worse, regressed - politically and socially. 

I ended my introduction by reading Courtney Stephens’ answer to the question, What is one takeaway that you would want someone watching it to know? from an interview in The Cornell Review,

“…over my time working with these materials I started to find a whole new respect for private work that isn’t framed around the idea of being a capital “F” filmmaker, or a professional. I felt more like I was spending intimate time with intimate documents, and that was ok for me. So maybe that’s the answer to the question – that I hoped to give dignity to these women’s small gestures of attention and delight with the world. I hope the takeaway is to feel like there is value and beauty in exploration that remains private, is not posted to social media, not used to raise one’s status in the world – to be alone with oneself.”

Photo credit: Sueraya Shaheen

Synergies between book and film:

Tamreez Inam:  The synergies between the film and the book were interesting to explore. Both the film and the book are explorations of gender, mobility, perception and history. The historical experiences of Muslim women travellers offer a fascinating and understudied point of insight into the role of imperial, colonial, and global history.

Both the film and book gave rare insights into female-only spaces in historical contexts which had not been documented before. For example, the film contains the only known footage of the women’s section of a royal wedding in Bahrain from the 1930s, and in the book, there are accounts of women’s practices and conversations during their journeys, for example, aboard a ship going for pilgrimage, or inside the harems.

Both the film and the accounts in the book bring up questions of colonialism and how it affected the ways in which these travellers viewed and experienced the world. Whether they were the wives and daughters of colonial British officials travelling to India, or whether they were colonial subjects from India travelling to Great Britain, their ideas of self and the world were greatly influenced by whether they were the colonisers or the colonised. 

The book in some ways is the flipside of the film. Whereas the home movies mostly capture Western women’s perceptions and experiences of the ‘East’ or at home, the book (especially the accounts towards the end of the book), are accounts of Muslim women travelling to Europe and America. And by centering these narratives in travel writing, they form a more holistic and nuanced impression of the world as it existed at the time. 

The book attempts to “write women back into history” whose experiences seemed to have been lost with time and this is not something that was true for only Muslim women, it has been the case for women from around the world and across the centuries. Their accounts and writings were not preserved and have thus become invisible over time. It also had to do with the fact that sometimes women’s writing was not intended for a public audience – the accounts were written as journals, or letters- and thus got lost.

The book also challenges the notion of Islam as a monolith and seeks to contextualise and complicate the experiences of Muslim women’s travel and the way they saw the world. In the introduction to the book, the editors note, “Islam is not a monolith, neither are Muslim women’s experiences. Neither today, nor in the past. And so the book forces us to ask ourselves the question: what does it mean to speak of the Muslim woman?"

Photo credit: Hind Mezaina

Contextualising past and present:

HM: The book is split into four sections:
Travel as Pilgrimage
Travel as Emancipation and Politics
Travel as Education
Travel as Obligation and Pleasure

In Travel as Emancipation and Politics, Chapter 22 - AMINA SAID: An Egyptian Feminist at an Indian Conference is about her experience at the All-India Women’s Conference (AIWC) in Hyderabad that took place between December 1945 and January 1946. Amina Said focused on Palestine, and when I read her words, I found myself frustrated at how little has changed in 79 years. We didn’t get a chance to read from that chapter, but I’d like to share a short extract here.

I came across delegations from the United States of America, England, New Zealand, Australia, Sweden, Egypt, and Lebanon. This is a novel occurrence because never before had all of these countries participated together in an Indian women’s conference.

Maybe this phenomenon is due to the expansion of political horizons during the war, such that other countries could set their minds to the necessity of co-operation in order to support the pillars of much-desired world peace.

I became more content upon reading the agenda of the conference, finding that educated Indian women would address all the political, economic, and social problems of their country. I accordingly simplified my message and devised my agenda. I decided that the Palestinian issue would be the entire focus of my effort, because it is a unique opportunity to expose the Palestinian cause to Western delegations and to have them hear the Arab perspective that rarely reached their countries.

My task was not simple or easy, given the strong enmity between Hindus and Muslims that motivates each group to abandon the cause that the other group is defending. Luck would have it that Palestine was among those issues that did not get the support of both sides. Muslims declare that it is purely an Islamic issue that they ought to defend with the support of Arabs, and to establish their legitimate right to the Holy Land. Indeed, they exerted a noble effort, and Muhammad Ali Jinnah, the leader of the Muslim League, delivered a speech to the viceroy asking about the British political position in regard to Palestine. The viceroy answered with an official reply that promised that its government would not adopt a resolution without first returning to the Arabs to consult with them and obtain their agreement.

When Hindus heard of this issue, they completely abandoned the Palestinian cause, showing no interest in it. The Zionist perspectives infiltrated them, and the Hindus considered them more acceptable and appealing.

I also want to highlight that my favourite photo in the book is of Amina Said which is added at the top of this page.

Reactions to the film and post screening discussions:

TI: I found the film very beautiful and contemplative, almost meditative. At the same time, it was ironic and humorous in the ways it challenged certain ideas, such as the notion of 'female gaze', which in some ways is an interesting lens to explore content produced by women, but in other ways is arbitrary. In an interview from Another Gaze, Courtney Stephens said this of the female gaze,

"I do find it useful as a concept, but basically as something to unravel. Observing how something falls apart can reveal so much about how it was constructed in the first place, and the “female gaze” is one of those things that has a lot of layers of paint, so to speak. In the case of these film travelogues, my main interest is something like: “How did these particular women navigate and represent the world?” But I quickly found that this was tied up with other questions for me, like “Are there ways that women tend to make meaning that have some bearing on how they represent the world?” or “Who’s female? What holds the category together?” It isn’t that these questions are answerable, either, but I think they’re good questions because they’re unanswerable. Answering them would be to throw them away.”

While access to travel has become easier for women over the years with the affordability of the modes of transport and 'democratisation' of travel as well as greater female empowerment, in some ways women hundreds of years ago had more freedom to travel. For example, they were unencumbered by visas and travel restrictions based on their passports. Additionally, the rules for hajj travel were easier for women a few centuries ago than they were in the twentieth century. In the travel account of a woman in the seventeenth century who went for the hajj from Safavid Iran, who identified herself as 'the widow of Mirza Khaleel', she was able to join a caravan going on the hajj without a mehram, or male companion, which under the Wahhabi Saudi regime was almost impossible until just a few years ago. Similarly many other accounts of women setting off on solo journeys throughout the centuries challenged the stereotypical notions of Muslim women leading restricted lives.

HM: More than one woman shared their thoughts and experiences from their travels, especially how as Arab women they are still confronted by orientalist reactions and questions from westerners about what they can wear, how freely that can travel, or if they still move around on camels.

So again, more evidence that some things still remain the same. Whilst it is sadly still a struggle to change these kinds of thoughts and opinions on a macro level, maybe we just try to do the best we can individually when drawn into these outdated discussions, and hopefully feel like we can help educate someone. I shared a recent personal experience when I was in Amsterdam when a Dutch man, after finding out I’m from Dubai immediately said “nothing is real there”, implying there’s no nature, no culture, etc.  I spent 10 mins questioning his question and had a short chat about my city. 

Photo credit: Todd Reisz

TI: People from the audience also came later to share that we have all become so used to watching fast-paced content on our social media and on streaming platforms that to watch something with Terra Femme's pace and a quieter introspective and reflective narrative. Perhaps on their own they may not have watched something like this, but the communal aspect of the viewing with an introduction and a discussion preceding allowed them to appreciate it.

HM: One audience member told me she knows someone who does not know how to watch a film like Terra Femme, i.e. experimental films and/or films made of archival footage, and the format of our night makes it feel more accessible. This made me think of how much more we need to show films like this and to reach a wider audience, and how much more work needs to be done to build an audience that’s outside the 'art bubble’. Sadly, from my experience, the 'art crowd’ in Dubai are mostly interested in opening nights, or attend events with known names. 

During the post screening discussion, one audience member commented on the observations about in-between spaces from the film, and asked if there are similar observations in the book.

I highlighted chapters like SELMA EKREM’s Alone in New York City (chapter 19) where she writes about her wonder at walking in New York and ŞÜKÛFE NIHAL BAŞAR’s Three Days in Finland (chapter 20) and which contains delightful and optimistic observations on what many would consider ordinary or mundane.

This led to the final point of the discussion. It was interesting to read accounts of how some of the women in the book felt disappointment experiencing life in the west, for instance, when it came to food, social interaction and even how women in the west behaved (Europeans or women who moved from the East to live in the west).

We ended the night by reading short extracts from the book that highlight these experiences, and brings to light perspectives we are not normally exposed to in books or films. 

Tamreez read an extract from SHAISTA SUHRAWARDY IKRAMULLAH's Life in England on the Brink of War (Chapter 43), and I read an extract from ZEYNEB HANOUM A Turkish Désenchantée in Europe (Chapter 18). 


The following are short versions of what we read:

SHAISTA SUHRAWARDY IKRAMULLAH's Life in England on the Brink of War

…I would like to write a few sentences about the Indian women living in England during the war. I say with great sadness that most among them showed a lot of fear and weakness. They approached the difficulties that were created early on due to war with apathy. They troubled their husbands with endless complaints. They worried in such a way that they tired those who were with them. They showed no courage or strength. They displayed no stoicism or fortitude. There were some among them who had come to England for a visit, and no arrangements could now be made for their immediate return due to the outbreak of war. So many people were reporting that it was difficult to get a booking on a ship. But these women wanted the government to abandon everything and arrange for them to go home. They paid no attention to why there was a delay and why there was difficulty. It never struck them that the biggest war in world history had broken out. Thousands were dying, and hundreds of thou-sands would die. People were suffering huge ordeals, and to worry about minor problems is inappropriate. Those women who were living in England——and their number is large——were unaffected by such problems. For instance, it was a problem to leave one’s own home and eat in hotels instead. Or there were problems faced by those living in villages, especially in circumstances where the village administration was disturbed. It was these minor problems that Indian women could not tolerate. The women showing this weakness were old-fashioned, and their ignorance can explain this. These were supposedly educated women. I felt shame to see their fear in front of brave English women. There were, however, a few who did deal with the situation with stoicism and bravery, especially those Indian women who were in Italy and Germany and who had come to London without any resources.

ZEYNEB HANOUM A Turkish Désenchantée in Europe

The Englishmen remind me of the Turks. They have the same grave demeanor, the same appearance of indifference to our sex, the same look of stubborn deter-mination, and, like the Turk, every Englishman is a sultan in his own house. Like the Turk too, he is sincere and faithful in his friendships, but Englishmen have two qualities that the Turks do not possess. They are extremely good business-men and in social relations are extremely prudent, although it is difficult to say where prudence ends and hypocrisy begins.

But if Englishmen remind me of Turks, I can find nothing in common be-tween English and Turkish women.…A Turkish woman’s life is as mysterious as an Englishwoman’s life is an open book, which all can read who care. Before I met the suffragettes, I knew only sporting and society women. They were all passionately absorbed in their own amusements, which as you know do not in the least appeal to me. I suppose we Turkish women, who have so much time to devote to culture, become unreasonably exacting. But everywhere I have been—in England, Germany, France, Italy, and Spain—I have found how little and how uselessly the women read, and how society plays havoc with their taste for good books.

Photo credits: Asim Khan