Um Salman
Um Salman is about 45 years old. She has eleven children. She lives farther up the mountain, farther from the center of Harūb and in an area that didn’t have an official government office or schools until the 1990s. She and her daughters and granddaughters still wear the wizra, ‘a long piece of material wrapped around the waist’, which most men continue to wear but many women have stopped wearing. She did not go to school and spent much of her life taking out the goats and sheep and bringing water and wood for her family. She loves poetry and although she is not able to perform in public, she often recited poems and songs for me because she knew I liked hearing them. She has family that lives at the top of the mountain and she often goes to visit them. Her two daughters are married and they along with their husbands live with her.
The following excerpt was taken from and interview I had with her in which I asked her to tell me about her life.
(Ex 3) US: kānat fi l-awwal il-ḥaya Ꜥiddana yaꜤni kānat zaina illī mašat guddām guddām guddām kānat zaina kawayyisa. id-dinye amṭār Ꜥalāha weš zīn id-dinyē yaꜤni nirūḥ.
nirūḥ zayy il-badu w kiḏa w nsīr w nhīš w nrūḥ. al-yawm ḏal-ḥīn lāʾ. kull wāḥid w makānu w yijlis ṯim. mā ʿa yirūḥ. w nḥin šawayya [hinā] -
J: [yirūḥ] wain?
US: yirūḥ yaꜤni nsīʾ nagūl laha nsīʾ. nrūḥ ʿīddana hōš narꜤi. kunna ntanaggal bu w nrūḥ hina w nrūḥ hina w nrūḥ hina. baꜤdain hāḏi il-ḥayā ajatna. lā lā, mā ʿa nrūḥ.
bait (.) bait xalāṣ. mā ʿa nrūḥ (…) w hāḏē mašyatī f- ḥayāti, al-ḥamdilillāh. w ani ḏal-ḥīn mirtāḥa ya uxti. māfi ayy muškila.
US: In the past our life was good one that moved [smoothly] forward forward forward, it was good, good. There was lots of rain (expression meaning life was wonderful), what a good world it was. I mean we used to move [freely]. We used to go out like the badu and the like and we used to go and shepherd [our goats] and go around. Today now no. Everyone with [in] their house and they stay there. They don't go out [anymore]. And here, [we sort of] -
J: [Where] did they go?
US: They go meaning nsīʾ ‘shepherding’ we say nsīʾ. We go, and we have animals [which] we shepherd. We used to roam around with them [the animals], we go here and we go here and we go here. Later this [new] life came to us. No no, we don’t go out anymore. House (.) house, that is it. We don’t go out (...) and this is the way of my life, praise God. And now I am comfortable sister. There is no problem.
In the above excerpt Um Salman articulates the freedom to confinement chronotope where the past is constructed positively. The women who lived in this chronotope were enabled to move around freely and shepherd the goats. Unlike the ignorance chronotope of
the past where the emphasis is placed on the subjects inability to live morally, the freedom chronotope enables her to “move freely”, “go out” and “go around”.
Analyzing this account with the stance triangle, the past is the stance object. Although there is only one subject in this excerpt, stance is always performed in relation to something (Du Bois 2007). Taking a macro view of the context, we can say the Saudi state is subject 1 and through telling a chronotope of ignorance to educated, it evaluates the past negatively and as something undesirable. Um Salman is subject 2, and she evaluates the past positively with the chronotope of freedom to confinement. These opposite evaluations position each subject in divergent alignment.
Although at the end of this excerpt she seems to be evaluating the present in a positive light too, at a closer look we can see that this is not the case. After passionately and poetically expressing positive appraisal for the past, her tone changes when she says “later this new life came to us.” In this statement life is the subject while she is the object which expresses a lack of agency. She is not the one who chose this life; life came to her. She did not choose it.
Then she contrasts the past with the present which is characterized by everyone staying in their house and not going out. Um Salman does not explicitly say anything negative about “now”, but she communicates it implicitly. First, a change in footing is signaled by a change in her voice. She speaks quieter with less emotion and her intonation falls at the end of the sentence when she says the word “house”. Second, there is less investment in her positive evaluation of the present. She repeats ten times that the past was good and five times that they used to “go” compared to only saying two positive things about the present.
Furthermore, Um Salman uses double voicing at the end of this excerpt. Double-voicing is when a person speaks with “a heightened awareness of, and responsiveness to, the concerns and agendas of others, which is then reflected in the different ways they adjust their
language in response to interlocutors” (Baxter 2014, 3). Double-voicing is often used in situations where someone feels threatened. This shows her awareness of the possible conflict that criticism of the present could instigate.
The religious discourse marker “Praise God” is also placed strategically like in her daughter Fatima’s account earlier. She says it when she begins to speak about the present positively. It comes when referring to the new life. Here is seems more dutiful than alignment with her daughter.