Forbidden by her husband to work, she raised five children behind the drawn curtains of their home in Saudi Arabia. She was not allowed to drive. On the rare occasions when she set foot outside, she wore a full-face veil.

Then her world unraveled. Separated from her husband, who had taken a second wife, and torn from her children,

Yup, that'd make anyone want to grab a gun. Good for her.

Crap, second paragraph should, of course, also be in italics.

The end was so sad, though -- getting discharged for not quite making the grade on the English test?

I wonder if she can sign up again, after a little more time practicing English.

Yeah, I wondered that too, but it didn't seem to be what she was planning.

Are you kidding? It's a totally happy ending. Sign up, get physically fit, gain a ton of self-confidence, and then get freed of your obligation to serve. Win-win.

It doesn't help her with the real problem of needing a job so she can get her kids back, admittedly. But surely the new set of tools she's gotten from it will make that easier now. I hope.

I was really kind of bemused by that: I mean, really good for her, and it sounds like it was a wonderful experience for her in terms of personal development. But what was the Army thinking? Her English had to be at least functional, if she was making it through training without problems, and I thought they were desperate for translators. Wouldn't you think they'd put more effort into getting her through somehow? Maybe they did, and it's not apparent, but it seems like a peculiar outcome.

I doubt I'll ever have to do something so hard in all my life.

My neighborhood has many Muslims, and I encounter women with all levels of covering, from residual scarf to total enclosure, going about their business, negotiating the strange cold new land. What's it really like for them? what mundane things cause the most trouble? what are the solaces and compensations?

What I'm not aware of is a classic, journalistic, outsider's, sympathetic account. What my Landsman and literal kinsman Hutchins Hapgood's Spirit of the Ghetto was a hundred years ago.

It's a really interesting story. The Army was liberating for her in some ways (she stopped wearing the veil, she wore shorts) but its appeal for her was the strict, male-dominated authority.

It's not quite a feminist fairy tale, but it's quite a story.

yeah, no fairy tale. no obvious happy ending. a glimpse into a lot of misery.

but I give the sarge props for this:

"I am going to show the men I'm like them," she told him later. "I'm a man now."
"No, you're not a man" he said.
"Yes, I'm a man."
"No," he said. "You're a strong-willed woman."

should be an easy distinction, but it still cuts across a lot of people's rigid categories.

god bless her. i wish her luck.

9: I read it more not as that being the source of the appeal, but the source of a little familiarity: men always tell me what to do, but here they want me to be confident while doing it.

I pretty much wanted to thump her brother upside the head.

Oh, man, yes. "Don't do anything for yourself, a decent woman waits for a man to take of her. Oh, you want someone to take care of you? Don't look at me!"

It would be the work of a couple of minutes to locate the brother's video store; but we would need a couple of dedicated volunteers to staff the sidewalk table distributing feminist literature.

("couple minutes" is an understatement, since they do not have the same last name; but I don't think it would be very difficult.)

man, I hoping that these people are very hard to trace.

Because there is an asymmetry of crazed fanaticism in this situation; I'm a lot less worried about feminists picketing the brother's video shop than I am worried about islamists offing the sister.

hard to trace

Her real name was used in the article right? So I don't think she's very concerned about that.

Has there been an uptick in the amount of islamist enforcer squads in Queens I haven't heard of?

The right-wing blogs are unsurprisingly in love with Ms. Hamdan.

Perhaps feminists need to organise more fearsome enforcement squads.

Because there is an asymmetry of crazed fanaticism in this situation; I'm a lot less worried about feminists picketing the brother's video shop than I am worried about islamists offing the sister.

Are you kidding me? I worry a bit about possible picketing--family situations are complicated, and I'd rather let Ms. Hamdan control responses to her brother.

Tim, 11 et seq. is people letting off steam, reacting emotionally as they should to the story. Nobody here is so stupid. Right wing bloggers are another matter.

as they should

Hey! IDP is being controlling!

18: good. The more Arab, practicing Muslim immigrants they're in love with, the better.

On this part:

"Over the next 10 days, she rode the subway at night and slept on a park bench in Queens. Finally, she walked into a hair salon in Brooklyn and approached a Lebanese Muslim woman.

"She was hysterical crying," said the woman, Helena Buiduon.

Ms. Hamdan stayed with Ms. Buiduon until she found her own apartment."

It's not clear from the article whether she even knew Ms. Buiduon beforehand...I always found it striking, when I worked at the immigration court, how many people had stayed in the apartment of someone who was basically a stranger to them (or a friend of a friend, or a friend of a friend of a friend) for the first couple months. Sometimes paying some rent, but often not. Usually it would be another relatively recent immigrant from the same country (especially if there was not a large number of people from that country living near by). Americans are just not used to being that dependent on, or needing, that level of kindness from strangers.

(there's a flip side to this of course...scam artists and sleazy notarios and fake lawyers are also extremely common.)

Oops--should be "being that dependent on, or offering".

But what was the Army thinking? . . . Wouldn't you think they'd put more effort into getting her through somehow

It's not like she had 24 weeks to improve [her] English and pass the exam or that she was given a one-month extension, and one more chance. And she was supposed to be a translator, why would someone translating from a foreign language into English need to meet a higher English proficiency standard than is needed to pass basic training? Heartless bastards.

Less sarcastically, it is an inspirational story and it is too bad that in the end she was not able to pass the language proficiency exam. Contra B.Ph.D., there are some who view not having the opportunity to serve as a loss, not a win. Too bad, sounds like she would have been a good soldier.

7: Didn't they give her multiple attempts to pass the test? IME, the military works its ass off to get people to pass tests--they don't want to waste their training money, after all--but they won't cut corners if people can't. Which after all, makes sense. People's lives depend on everyone having being comptent.

9: I dunno if it's that simple. Maybe she's just more honest: it's a feminist experience, but we all of us are comfortable in our feminism only within certain parameters, no? I don't like the idea of looking icky, some women don't like the idea of being abrasive. I kinda appreciated her forthrightness about the similarites between the army and the wider world.

25: Bah, she can still serve. Bone up on her English, get a job with the State Department or something. Serve the country *and* avoid any possibility of getting killed.

27 - Given the largish population of Arabs in Houston, I was thinking that a job as a police or social services translator might be a good way for her to go. (And I kind of assumed that her problems with the English fluency exam were with written English; 25 is perfectly correct about why the Army isn't going to cut corners on passing a translator through.)

I really, really wanted to do something bad to her brother. What kind of bastard kicks his own sister out into the night? After everything she's been through? For not following the rules of the house? Jackass.

Idealist, does the army have any kind of exit counseling? Is she likely to have enough cash on hand to make it to some kind of some other future?

Idealist, does the army have any kind of exit counseling? Is she likely to have enough cash on hand to make it to some kind of some other future?

Soldiers leaving the Army likely get exit counselling, including advice on finding a civilian job. When I retired, the counselling, physical etc. took a couple of days.

When I was in, there was no severance pay or anything like that, so your financial condition was based on whatever you had, although you cashed in unused leave. And they paid for your travel back to wherever you enlisted from.

Of course, I have been retired for twelve years, so my knowledge is a bit dated (I would guess that if things have changed, they have changed to be even more supportive of the soldier).

She's in a better position, actually. If she still wants to go over there and work as a translator, now she can do so for a private contractor with slightly lower proficiency standards and a tremendously higher pay scale.

Assuming she doesn't get killed, she'll easily be able to afford to get her kids back.