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There have been several references in songs and poems from naval stories to memories of life in Minor Asia that unleash fantasies of Muslim women and women of the Orient. In the last thirty years, what is more prevalent is questions around the headscarf (hijab) and the clash between the traditional and the modern. In Greece, Islamophobia or Muslimphobia is very much linked to the legacy of the Ottoman Empire and the geopolitical relationship between Greece and Turkey, although not only restricted to that. Most recently, the fear of immigration, like in many other European states, with the arrival of people from Muslim-majority countries, has intensified this phobia.
From the mischievous mysterious to the asexual and submissive
Going back to the image of Muslim woman in Greece, how are the ways she is portrayed in the popular culture of the country throughout the years ?
A remarkable example is “Misirlou”[1]. The word derives from the Arabic word for Egypt (Misr or مصر), and it is translated as ‘Egyptian girl’. The song is said to be recorded for the first time in the 1920s and falls under the genre of rebetiko, a genre affiliated with Greeks who were displaced from Minor Asia.
My Misirlou, your sweet gaze has ignited a flame in my heart, oh يا حبيبي , oh يا ليلي
your two lips drip with honey, alas.
Oh, Misirlou, magical exotic beauty, madness will come to me, I can no longer bear it, oh, I will steal you from the Arab land.
The next rebetiko song by Vamvakaris, called “Maroko”, shares a similar sentiment and expresses the deep longing the sailor feels reflected on a female Other that personifies the feminine East.
In her book Sex, Sailors and Colonies: Narratives of Ambiguities in the Work of Pierre Loti, Hélène de Burgh emphasizes the dichotomy between heterosexual man and sexually and racially inferior woman who he will dominate.
With a fishing boat
A night with sirocco
I want to come, my Arab girl
to hang out in Morocco
I’ll take you for company
in my boat
and we’ll head both
towards Piraeus
Similarly, in Kavvadias’ poem Kasbah, the narrator is a sailor seeking erotic companionship on the shores of Algeria. Unlike the previous examples, this woman reveals power and wisdom.
Inside the number “Talaat”
a woman’s body in an all-black couch
In her hands she artfully plays a knife
And she reads an old thick book.
She greets me with an Arabic wish
and speaks to me from every language a few words
which she learned from those of different backgrounds
from sailors who with her have slept
So far, it has been easier to find sources from the last century where the Muslim woman has always been associated with the Arab world because of the country’s historical relationship with this ethnic group. It is important to mention that in Near East and North Africa, other ethnic groups are disregarded and put under the umbrella of Arab.
A semi-mythical subject
In the fantasy of the Greek male sailor, the woman from the East is a semi-mythical, different (or exotic), and inferior subject. This picture is directly consistent with the relationship between East and West and how the Orientalists depicted the οriental world. Western artists presented the East as a timeless (and backward), irrational, and mystical landscape lacking the Western progress. According to Edward Said, this belief justified the imperialist plans the West had and still has for the East.
In the last few years, the only series I could recall with a Muslim female character as one of the protagonists is ‘TAMAM’ (2014-2017). As in other Greek series and TV shows where Muslim women are depicted, there is always a reminder of the Ottoman past and the Muslims are of Turkish background. TAMAM itself focuses on the family of Christidou-Öztürk, their everyday life, and the cross-cultural differences between the Greeks and Turkish.
Dilek is one of the siblings and is portrayed as a pious Muslim girl wearing the hijab. Regardless of the probably good-intentioned attempt of the series to explore how Dilek navigates her identity in a predominantly non-Muslim society, there are still some elements of orientalist portrayal. The series, first of all, is based on the binary of progressive Greek women and reserved Muslim women. There was a quaintness and awkwardness in many episodes, from the way she prays to the episode where Dilek accidentally eats pork served to her by her father’s wife, which leads to the rejection (even temporarily) from her own community. This awkwardness might also derive from the fact that Greek actors were playing the role of the Turkish characters. When it comes to traditional values, gender roles, and cultural differences, the series inadvertently reinforced some of the stereotypes about Eastern societies.
The media, as well as the political and social discourse, must transcend the dichotomy of victimhood and resistance, recognise the agency, and respect the multifaceted identities of Muslim women. It is important to ensure that the voices of Muslim women are prominently featured in discussions and offered a platform of their own to tell their stories.
Notes :
The song is widely known with Dick Dale’s surf rock version that has been played in the film ‘Pulp Fiction”. A sample of it is in Black Eyed Peas’ “Pump it”.
Cover image credit: A Christian woman from Prilep, a Jewish woman, and a Muslim woman from Thessaloniki by Osman Hamdin Bey and Victor Marie de Launay after ‘Popular Costumes in Turkey 1873’.
This investigation was carried out with the support of the AGEE – Alliance for Gender Equality in Europe.
