"Your Eyes Hamda"

This week I read an amazing Arabic story “3ynaki Ya Hamda” which means “Your Eyes Hamda”. The story is written by Amna Al-Mansoori who is an Emirati short story writer. She studied IT in Higher Colleges of Technology.

The story talks about the discrimination against females that took place in the UAE in the 1970s.  It is about Hamda, who discovered when she was 10 years old that she wasn’t welcomed member to her father since she was born as he always want to have boys. Therefore, all the people in the neighborhood used to call her Hamad until her mother delivered a baby boy. At that time Hamda’s name changed from Hamad to Hamda and she was only one year old. Hamda has an uncle that she didn’t meet because he traveled to study in Egypt and participate in the political demonstrations that took place in 1979. When the uncle came back to the UAE, Hamda used to visit him to read books from his library and started to write her own thoughts despite opposition from her father. Hamda falls in love with Rashid who is a son for a close friend to Hamda’s mother. When she enters the preparatory school her father burns all her books as he believes that females shouldn’t read. The events of the story sour when Hamda’s mother dies and her father paralyzed in a car accident. At that stage, Hamda receive a proposal from Rsashid to marry him but she refuse since she has to take care of her father and Rashid has to travel abroad to work. After ten years, the father dies and Rashid return back to the UAE and marry Hamda.