Saudi Cultural Missions Theses & Dissertations
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Item Restricted Past the Gardenia Bush, Beyond the Basketball Hoop: A Hybrid Memoir and an Embedded Fictional Narrative of The Medieval Saint Rabiaa Al-Adawiyyah(Florida State University, 2024) Alharthi, Fatmah; Roberts, Diane K.Past the Gardenia Bush, Beyond the Basketball Hoop is a post-9/11 memoir of meaning-making where Sufism and literature claim agency against extremism and family relations. I use two techniques: magical realism and metafictional imagining of the life of Rabiaa Al-Adawiyyah, born in the 8th century and the first female Sufi in Islam. The nested story is a fictionalized narrative of Rabiaa that shows her enslavement, working as a singer in brothels, and her transition to mysticism. I use magical realism in allowing Rabiaa to transcend time, seeking her wisdom in a world fractured by political rifts and societal disapproval of Sufism. In a rhizomatic narration of events, the book illustrates how I found Sufism and why it resonates with my perspective on harmony. It brings forth the journey from the “false self,” seeking immediate gratification, to the “essential self” of internal peace, answering the question, “Who am I?” that has set Don Quixote on his quest. The first chapter theorizes storytelling as a way to claim an identity. In the second chapter, conflict arises between the first instance of Sufism in the narrator’s home, love of literature vs. censorship, and sympathy with the second intifada. It also historizes the root of extremism in Saudi Arabia. The third chapter introduces in a vignette the evolution of Sufism in the narrator’s life and presents Barbie as a model of cultural-in-betweenness. It compares the extremist Zainab Al-Ghazali to the medieval Sufi Abu Hamid Al-Ghazali and introduces Ibn Arabi’s “four-pole-theory.” The fourth section deepens the identity crisis at the cusp of family relations, 9/11, cultural exchange, and imaginary dialogue with Rabiaa Al-Adawiyyah. The fifth section bolts the narrator’s identity in storytelling and the world of letters. It shows the narrator’s personality through further exchanges with the imaginary saint. My dissertation answers the troubling identity question: “Who am I?” reflecting on graven images, novels, songs, portraits, and other paraphernalia the Sahwa Movement prohibited after the 1979 Grand Mosque attack in Mecca. It reflects on Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre and weaves into the narrative the understanding of how a young woman develops a sense of self. Past the Gardenia Bush makes the case that multiplicity is an option, that writing fiction and losing oneself in remembering the Divine is compatible with writing stories and interacting with people of different cultures.25 0