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Her “Green Gang” has amassed more than 1,000 members over the years, vowing to “take on men who do wrong to poor women, especially those from the upper castes,” and who are “as obedient as cattle.” He turned girls into women who were as stubborn as bulls. But Dahaliya does not ignore the violent and humiliating tactics she and other women have faced over the years. She punishes a corrupt engineer who she believes is overcharging her customers for electricity by making him wear a sari petticoat, put red lipstick on her mouth, and put bangles on her wrists. On one occasion, she and other gang members beat a 17-year-old girl for having an affair and forced her to marry a strange man as punishment “as a lesson to other girls.”
By the time we get to the frock section about Zibo, she’s testing the limits of our empathy. Here, violence is not done for self-defense, but rather for political ideals. In 2013, at the age of 17, Jibo joined the Women’s Protection Unit in northern Syria, excited to defend her Kurdish homeland. She said she was “so happy” when she killed her first ISIS fighter, and is known for her groans (a common cry at her wedding celebrations) during airstrikes and ambushes. It became so. Djibo and her fellow armed women dream of creating an autonomous state in Rojava based on feminist principles. One commander told Mr. Flock that the goal was not just for women to have guns, but to “recognize” their rights. But in the end, for many Syrians in the region, battered by years of war and facing an economic crisis, “the promise of a democratic, egalitarian, feminist revolution becomes foolish when the bread is gone.” It started to seem strange to me.”
In “The Furies,” each woman’s story takes us on a journey farther afield, from the kitchens of small-town Alabama to villages, refugee camps, and training bases in Syria. Although Flock’s scope is ambitious, her subject’s narratives are unsteadily held together, and important observations are sometimes quickly obscured. Flock suggests that Rojava is “probably the best place for women in the Middle East.” That is, unless the person is queer. ” However, this claim remains unexplored, despite Jibo developing a deep, seemingly romantic bond with one of his commanders.
At the same time, the juxtapositions in “The Furies” are thought-provoking. We tend to think of violent women as deviants, but Flock shows us how wrong this notion is as she tells the stories of Smith, Dahaliya, and Jibo, their longings and indulgences, fears, motivations and shortcomings. indicates. The women who commit the acts of violence in her book are, in many ways, quite ordinary women, whose sum total is “worthy of causing events that can subsequently change the world.” Although I may not agree with the point that “it has become a thing,” Flock made a contribution by portraying the human complexity of his subjects.
The Furies: women, revenge, and justice | Written by Elizabeth Flock | harper | 293 pages | $32
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