Those comments about burkas stayed with me, all those years later.
I remember chatting to a Muslim friend about them. She is a GP and wears Western clothes. She said her own father encouraged education and assimilation for his daughters as well as his sons. She said the burka, in her family’s opinion, is all about control.
For instance, I didn’t know that on a burka, the head covering is tight to the scalp. This is so when I woman wants to look at something, she literally has to turn her head to it first to look through the eyeholes. That way, her husband, brother or father knows exactly what she is looking at.
Another senior doctor at the hospital I worked in for many years, told me a different, less liberal way of life, unlike that of my GP friend had enjoyed. This hospital doctor said her own brother, a consultant, did not want a Western bride. With all her exposure to our way of life. He returned to Pakistan for a while and chose a girl from the village in the mountains who spoke no English. He married her and brought her back to England. He wanted a wife well versed in the traditional ways who would bring up any children, having only limited contact in the western ways.
I shall think of these two anecdotal stories next time I read the book.
Sorry for derailing your thread Fanny.
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