Leila Ahmed's memoir--of her childhood on "the remote edge of Cairo"; of young adulthood at Girton College, Cambridge; of adulthood in Abu Dhabi, leading to a career in women's studies in New England--is an arresting piece of work. It reconstructs the past and its effect on the present like a song, not linear but circular, with repetition and emphasis. Themes are referred to, then referenced in context, so we proceed not quite chronologically, but almost spiritually.
             With an intensity that takes one by surprise, Ahmed recounts childhood damage stemming from a society deeply afraid for its girl children and entrenched in familial honor, while poised for revolution, political democracy, and socialism. Ahmed's house, after all, is where a picture of Gandhi is hung, where freedom is discussed with fervor.
             As a child growing up in Egypt in the fifties, Ahmed reads English novels; later, she'll read Kate Millett in the desert of Abu Dhabi. Her journey to feminism and scholarship is the story in this book. This is the narrative of a woman whose father wore European-styled suits with a fez in Egypt, a man enamored of science who fought Nasser's policies; this is the story of a woman whose mother loved books resolutely and her daughter ambiguously. Politics permeated the household, and Ahmed gives careful account of the political history of the Middle East.
             More interestingly, she offers us a portrait of a man's Islam, based on leaders and texts that stand apart from the daily Islam lived by women. Islam for women in Egypt, Ahmed tells us, is not found in mosques, from which they are barred, or in books, which are denied them, but in household problem-solving and intuition.
             Ahmed writes about how her own feminism in the US is challenged in feminist circles as that of a backward Arab, and how her ethnicity is literally spit upon in the UK. Yet the scholar in Ahmed continually examines and deconstructs motivations of suspicion and hate
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