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together so their children could grow up like cousins. The skies were always bright over the Women’s Village and the river that ran through it glinted with sunbeams. There were birds and flowers everywhere, and women spent their time singing and dancing with lovely children. There was no poverty and no war, for in this lovely meeting place between real life and fantasy, women were smart enough to talk with each other and find answers to those problems. Men were admitted to this paradise only for weekly visiting hours which, I innocently assumed at the time, were for fathers to visit their children the way Baba visited us when he was home. Like all utopias, the Women’s Village probably revealed as much about the teller’s reasons for escaping the present as of any idyllic view of future, but I didn’t grasp that then.
    Bibi had hazel eyes and long, ever-so-thin wispy white braids that she wore under an abaya when she went out and under a loose white kerchief when she was indoors. She had pale, moist skin that always felt cool to me, even in summer. She would gather her grandchildren around her in her parlor with rich rugs of burgundy and gold and red—wool on the floor, silk on the walls—and we would recline on cushions embroidered with poetry and scenes from the same age-old fables she recounted. Toothless in her old age, she would transport us into ancient worlds of shipwrecks and battles and magical happenings. When I was older and decided to read the stories myself, I was appalled by the violence and misogyny I found there. But Bibi’s sibilant tellings were always captivating and romantic. My favorite was the tale of the king with three daughters who asked each daughter whether his wealth belonged to him or to God. “Your wealth belongs to you, of course,” the two eldest daughters told him, and he rewarded each with a bag of jewels. But the youngest daughter told him that his wealth belonged to God, and her father expelled her from his palace. She was taken in by a poor servant whose son was so crippled and dependent he needed someone to help him to the toilet. The princess nursed him and taught him to be independent. They fell in love and married, and together they forged a new kingdom based on faith and true love and business acumen that prospered as her father’s old, corrupt one crumbled. Bibi always ended her stories with simple teachings. Everything we have belongs to God; be grateful. Take care of the weak; we are all the same under heaven. Believe in true love; you will be rewarded.
    From these two very different storytellers, my liberated mother and her traditional mother, I learned that men were born with power and women obtained it through sharpness of intellect and good hearts. If you were kind, wise, and did good works, you could wind up being the princess who had it all.
     
    Karbalā’ is one of two holy cities in the south of Iraq. About fifty miles south of Baghdad, Karbalā’ was the site of the watershed battle in which both of the prophet Mohammed’s grandsons were massacred in 680. That battle caused the great schism in Islam. Those who believed that Mohammed’s legitimate heir and caliph was the slain father of the massacred brothers, Mohammed’s favored son-in-law, Ali, became known as Shia. Those who favored a caliphate established by the opposing Umayyad family after Ali’s murder became known as Sunnis. Over many generations, those political positions evolved into doctrines, as well as sectarian differences that are often stereotyped. Shia came to harbor suspicion of authority, believing that true justice on earth would be established only by the return of the Mahdi, a figure like the Messiah. Sunnis, in turn, developed a more accommodating attitude toward the ruling elite. In Iraq, Shia came to outnumber the Sunnis, yet the government was run predominantly by Sunnis. Today, the principal theological difference between the two sects is that Shia theologians tend to accept the