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Into the Wadi
Book by Drouart, Michele
376 pages, Paperback
First published February 1, 2000
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
July 30, 2023
Into the Wadi is a memoir written by Australian author Michèle Drouart about her time in Jordan. She met her future husband, Omar, while at University in America in the 1980s and followed him back to Jordan.
The memoir describes her love for Jordan and the close knit family, but also its strangeness to her as a Westerner, an outsider. She struggles with the inability to find any time either alone, or with her husband. “Those were the moments when they felt homesick, as I did now, stifled, almost gasping for breath among these voluminous women.”
She also poignantly describes the gradual deterioration of her relationship with Omar, and of their ultimate inability to “walk together as one.” Of her struggle with his authoritarian masculinity and unapproachability, so different to the persona he had first portrayed. She reflects honestly on her own thoughts and motivations, acknowledging the role of her own romanticism and fascination with the exotic. She describes her conflicting emotions and responses:
“By day the colours are brighter, the contrasts stronger. They remind me of other contrasts, of the strange way opposites come together for me in this country, without melding or blending. No compromise. All I love most and least like about this world constantly appears at one and the same moment it seems, so that I can hardly tell them apart. Or they follow on so quickly from one another that the impression is the same….Anger and caring, pleasure and embarrassment, affection and suffocation, generosity and secrecy, these and other things all seem perversely paired.”
This was an honest and thoughtful memoir, giving an outsider’s view of a culture and way of life, while attempting to retain a balance and a positive outlook. The timeline seemed somewhat confusing, moving back and forth between Michèle’s various visits to Jordan in a somewhat haphazard fashion. Overall I found this an interesting read.
The memoir describes her love for Jordan and the close knit family, but also its strangeness to her as a Westerner, an outsider. She struggles with the inability to find any time either alone, or with her husband. “Those were the moments when they felt homesick, as I did now, stifled, almost gasping for breath among these voluminous women.”
She also poignantly describes the gradual deterioration of her relationship with Omar, and of their ultimate inability to “walk together as one.” Of her struggle with his authoritarian masculinity and unapproachability, so different to the persona he had first portrayed. She reflects honestly on her own thoughts and motivations, acknowledging the role of her own romanticism and fascination with the exotic. She describes her conflicting emotions and responses:
“By day the colours are brighter, the contrasts stronger. They remind me of other contrasts, of the strange way opposites come together for me in this country, without melding or blending. No compromise. All I love most and least like about this world constantly appears at one and the same moment it seems, so that I can hardly tell them apart. Or they follow on so quickly from one another that the impression is the same….Anger and caring, pleasure and embarrassment, affection and suffocation, generosity and secrecy, these and other things all seem perversely paired.”
This was an honest and thoughtful memoir, giving an outsider’s view of a culture and way of life, while attempting to retain a balance and a positive outlook. The timeline seemed somewhat confusing, moving back and forth between Michèle’s various visits to Jordan in a somewhat haphazard fashion. Overall I found this an interesting read.
April 5, 2017
Well constructed and written with real affection for village life in Jordan and its people.
December 16, 2019
Beautiful, lyrical writing. A delight to read. Fascinating insights into a different culture and way of life.
June 3, 2016
Amazing recount of an Australian woman falling in love with a culture and then a man whose family showed her what life in Jordan encompassed. The loneliness of her relationship with her husband, the distance in relationship with her family and the struggles she was faced with in loving a man from a different culture. Michele is a strong, amazing, intelligent woman. Her story is of survival in cultural conflicts.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews