Joyce
Burkhalter Flueckiger, In Amma's Healing Room:
Gender and Vernacular Islam in South India, Bloomington, IN, Indiana
University Press: 2006. Pp. xix + 294. *
As
I read this book I thought, 'I wish someone would do a study like this of my
community' for Joyce Flueckiger's study of a Muslim
woman healer in a poor district of Hyderabad, India, who heals men and women,
Muslim and Hindu alike is loving, sensitive, remarkably observant, patient, and
consistently attentive to gender issues at the intersection of two patriarchal
cultures.
Flueckiger[1] is a specialist in performance
studies and, so, she diligently tells the reader what she saw and heard,
systematically avoiding the theological and philosophical categories to which
those trained in texts are accustomed. As a result, the reader had a wonderful
picture of Amma, of those who come to her for healing, of the prescriptions she
gives, as well as of Abba (her husband), of celebrations that are his domain,
and of the very subtle negotiation by which Amma asserts her presence amidst
the authority of Abba while he garners his followers among her patients.
In
chapter one, Flueckiger describes Amma's healing
room, her patients, and her prescriptions. One can almost see the bright green
flagpole, the horse carrying an open human hand, the colorful posters, the
plethora of photographs, and the green and orange Sufi flags -- images common
to vernacular Islam in India. One can
almost visualize the people, hear the noise, and watch them look at Amma as she
tells stories and writes prescriptions.
Chapters
two and three describe the healing system. This is not a western, sterile
clinic; it is a semi-public space in which patients share their troubles,
listening and talking. It is a space where infertility, stomach cramps, unfaithful
husbands, misbehaving children, failing businesses, problems with neighbors,
and lost goods are diagnosed. The causes of these illnesses include the evil
eye, sometimes caused purposely and sometimes inadvertently; spells cast by the
shaitan (evil spirits) or other human beings;
and possession, mental illness, and restlessness. The diagnostic technique
consists, first, of listening carefully but also of assign numerical values to
the letters of the name of the ill person and, then, doing a very complicated
numerological analysis (abjad), together with complex dream
interpretation. The cures consist of amulets -- words written in Arabic -- on
leaves to be burned and whose smoke is inhaled, or on leaves which are washed
with water and the water is drunk, or on bread which is eaten; of fruits or
vegetables to be cut and squeezed or eaten; of animals to be whirled about the
ill person; of verses to be recited; and, of course, of herbs. Often patients
are given many amulets and, as a result, the prescriptions are very, very
detailed, almost impossible for the reader -- and the patient and his or her family ! -- to follow. Sometimes, laying on of hands and
prayer is used; sometimes, exorcism is needed. Always, there is the telling of
the narrative and the comparing it with other similar stories. Always, the
patients come to get Amma's barkat, to be in
the presence of her blessing.
Amma
says that there are only two castes: male and female. Women bring their own
cultural burdens which are dealt with in chapter four: menstruation,
childbirth, household duties, segregation, and veiling. Flueckiger
also deals with Amma's status as healer, as a woman healer, and as a piranima (spiritual teacher) whose status is,
however, very much dependent upon the status of her husband as a pir. This status, which Flueckiger
finds unique, must be continually renewed by narrative and spiritual
discipline.
How
do both Muslims and Hindus come to a Muslim healer? In chapter five, Flueckiger proposes that, while gender boundaries are
impermeable, religious boundaries are the opposite. Thus, Amma's clientele
accept that there is a common cosmological and ritual universe; that Muslim
amulets work for everyone; and that a Hindu can even be a disciple of Abba,
though full discipleship would require a gradual conversion to Islam (chapter
six). The stories and dialogues confirm this very Indian view of Islam.
Chapter
six is another wonderfully thick description of the sama`,
the public ceremony in which Abba is the center, as well as an accounting of
the nature of discipleship to him.
During
the course of Flueckiger's work, first Abba and then
Amma died, severing the intense personal relationship they had with her. Flueckiger handles this marvelously throughout the book,
sharing with the reader her own evolving relationship with Abba and Amma and
the sense of loss she felt on their passing. She mixes past and present tense
in the narrative with great skill.
I
conclude as I began: 'I wish someone would do a study like this of my
community' -- of the clothing and the dcor, of the
sounds and the smells, and of the talking and the listening.
David R. Blumenthal
Emory
University
*
Reviews in Religion and Theology 14:3 (2007)
407-08.