Tradition and Love

There exists an intricate relationship between tradition and true love that implores to be explored. “My Grandmother Washes Her Feet in the Sink of the Bathroom at Sears” (2003) by Mohja Kahf and “Marriage and Love” (1910) by Emma Goldman both examine the interaction between tradition and true love. Tradition and true love should not exist in isolation from each other.

Kahf tells the story of a granddaughter witnessing her grandmother perform a religious rite in a public department store bathroom. When the grandmother washes her feet in the sink of the Sears’ bathroom, she is demonstrating a respect for her belief in the face of a disapproving audience.

“Respectable Sears matrons shake their heads and frown

as they notice what my grandmother is doing,

an affront to American porcelain,

a contamination of American Standards

by something foreign and unhygienic

requiring civic action and possible use of disinfectant spray” (Kahf in Shaw & Lee, 456)

Sears is a department store that sells home appliances, lawn and garden equipment, apparel, mattresses, sporting goods, and various tools used in the building of the inside and outside of a home. Overall, the store is a symbol of Western consumerism and secluded home life. By disrupting the customers from their shopping stupor by her Islamic religious act, she is awakening them to the existence of a culture outside of their own.

“‘‘We wash our feet five times a day,’

my grandmother declares hotly in Arabic.

‘My feet are cleaner than their sink.

Worried about their sink, are they?

I should worry about my feet!’” (Kahf in Shaw & Lee, 456)

By performing the ritual in the context of a Western department store, she is serving as a bridge between the Middle-Eastern and Western cultures. Like Feminist reinterpretation of organized religion, the grandmother’s non-traditional display of traditional act is better serving the goals of religion than tradition by itself. Wuḍū is an Islamic procedure of ritual purification or ablution. Rules are ascribed for the proper execution of the procedure. One of the rules is that the ritual be performed with a permitted water type such as clean pond water, running water, or well water. The grandmother use of the Sears’ bathroom proclaims the cleanliness of the Sears’ bathroom while simultaneously questioning the routines of the establishment’s customers and employees. Some Muslims would see the execution of the ritual as unorthodox and unacceptable. From this perspective, the grandmother is stirring not only the ideas of Western citizens, but the Islamic institution itself. The grandmother is offering a Middle Eastern practice within a Western setting, ministering as a link of true love regardless of convention.

Both Kahf and Goldman believe that tradition and love should not exist in isolation from each other. They both search for a harmony that cannot spring from pure tradition alone. The second article disentangles the idea of love from the institution of marriage. Most people believe love and marriage to be intrinsically linked, but this is in fact false. “On rare occasions one does hear of a miraculous case of a married couple falling in love after marriage, but on close examination it will be found that it is a mere adjustment to the inevitable. Certainly the growing-used to each other is far away from the spontaneity, the intensity, and beauty of love, without which the intimacy of marriage must prove degrading to both the woman and the man.” (Goldman in Shaw & Lee, 418) Marriage has ceased to become about love and become a governmentally sanctioned contract devoid of true meaning. Nowadays, marriages are often implemented out of financial reasons for the legal benefits. Marriages made in pure respect of the culture’s religious institution are devoid of true love. “Small wonder if she becomes a nag, petty, quarrelsome, gossipy, unbearable, thus driving the man from the house. She could not go, if she wanted to; there is no place to go.” (Goldman in Shaw & Lee, 419) If love grows within these forced marriages, it is in despite of and not because of the existence of the marriage. The institute of marriage is steeped in patriarchal tradition that can seep the relationship empty of real value. Fortunately, the act of marriage is not completely without value. If a character like the grandmother were to enter into the contract of a marriage, as a bridge between the tradition and love, she could transform into a role model for the proper interaction of the two.

Love is a daily act that cannot be summed up in a single legal document or institution. Love is about connection between people, and familial affection that results not from one aspect of a person, but an interaction of every part of a person’s soul to every part of another person’s soul. Only once we realize this can we understand the grandmother’s prayer and the meaning of marriage.

References:

Goldman, Emma. “Marriage and Love” 1910.

Kahf, Mohia. “My Grandmother Washes Her Feet in the Sink of the Bathroom at Sears” 2003.

Shaw, Susan M. & Lee, Janet. “Gendered Voices, Feminist Visions: Classic and Contemporary Readings.” 7th Edition, Oxford University Press, 5 July 2019, pp.40 and pp.182-189.