On Al-Rawabi School for Girls, female friendship, and trauma
My own reflections on the show and it's correlations to my personal experiences
Al-Rawabi School for Girls (2021) / مدرسة الروابي للبنات
***spoiler alert
By now, most people (who have a taste for non-Western film at least) have watched the show Al-Rawabi School for Girls. A show that is almost immediately reminiscent of some form of an Arabized Mean Girls (okay, some people are saying not to call it that, but I will for now just to put into perspective the setting of the show for those who don’t plan on watching). Al-Rawabi School for Girls is set in an upper-class part of Amman in an all-girls private school where obviously only the creme de la creme of society could ever attend. The setting screams Jordanian aristocracy, with the girls of the school wearing all pink uniforms, the entire school is painted pink and we see the girls boarding the school bus as they leave their grand villa homes. They even have the sharply pampered principal who looks like an Arab Jeanine Mathews. I had taken a series of summer-long virtual Arabic courses based in Jordan and initially decided to watch Al-Rawabi to refresh my language skills, but I ended up immediately triggered on the first episode.
Triggered because the show opens with a scene of Mariam, the girl who gets bullied throughout the show, being beaten up by a squad of mean girls (Layan, Ruqqaya, and Rania). Sigh, I hated this stuff because it reminds me of how much damage girls are capable of in institutions like high school where the social community is very enmeshed and girls are mutually encouraged by toxic norms to exert that type of harm towards each other. I always say that bullying is upheld by our social customs, it is revitalized through everyone’s silence. I think it is because in high school a lot of factors can be manipulated, like concepts of friendship, class, betrayal, gender, romantic relationships, etc. Really it was triggering because when I was in high school the girls who bullied me would threaten to beat me (like they did Mariam). They knew the routes I’d take to class and the route I took home, and so they would threaten me by specifically outlining my daily routes to intimidate me, which constantly made me feel watched or surveilled. Of course, I was not a Mariam, I was not as socially alienated as her, and my girl battles in high school did not have life-threatening consequences like the ones displayed in Al-Rawabi. But witnessing some of the patterns of the interactions in Al-Rawabi helped me unpack the way that high school had permanently restructured the way I conceived friendship or any remotely intimate friendship I was to form with women.
From this opening scene, my loyalty to Mariam’s character was established. No matter what she did I would root for her, her anger, her pain, her vengeance, it was all justified to me. I think the resonance I felt for Mariam as I watched Al-Rawabi taught me a lot about myself. It sort of reminded me that a lot of the trauma (and also rage) I held towards the girls that hurt me in high school (and other bad apples I stumbled upon and continue to come across) was very much present and even active. I realized I may still be letting that same hurt navigate my social relations today. That same pain still lingers and lives in the back of my head like an automated navigator every time I interact with a woman in my age group, my internal radars go off trying to read each instance to recognize whether I am safe with this female person. It isn’t easy living with that every day, especially as someone who only has one brother, no female cousins (in close proximity), or as someone who avoided female friendships for as long as I did. This isn’t necessarily in an “anti-women” way either, which many would like to paint it out to be after I express this — it’s just my own candor expression of the emotions attached to female friendship for me. There is some valid PTSD that is developed after experiencing female betrayal from friend figures and that is okay, I don’t think I have to perform fake sisterhood when I am still reeling in heartache. There is nothing to be read here, I am not festering some deep animosity for female connection, I am just accounting for the life-changing obstacles I’ve faced throughout my encounters seeking this “connection”.
Anyways, Mariam attends Al-Rawabi School for Girls alongside Dina (her best friend), Noaf (the new kid who ends up getting closer to the Mariam-Dina trio), and the mean girls (Layan, Rania, and Ruqqaya). The alleged mean girls, who are led by Layan, go on a rampage and bully all of those who dare to undermine their authority in the social universe of this high school — and classically so, Mariam is the one girl who does dare to respond to their tyranny. This warrants for Mariam a harsh response from the mean girls, the response being getting brutally beaten up in the back of the school which leads to Mariam going unconscious after the girls push her to the ground and the back of her head hits a rock. No one sees Layan and the Crew commit this act other than Noaf, the new girl who is alienated due to her gawky and dark personality. Mariam spends some time in the hospital and returns to school as the administration continues to look for the culprit of this crime. When the school holds a parent-teacher conference with all the students to identify those who injured Mariam, something strange happens. Layan confesses— except she justifies her actions by stating that she was only defending herself because Mariam was a perverted girl who touched her inappropriately and she was threatened by this. Of course, this was false but Layan was smart enough to activate a trope that could gain her the support of even the King of Jordan, homophobia. The mothers and administrators were obviously abhorred at the thought of Mariam being queer, even her own mother became her biggest adversary. Layan was weaponizing homophobia to silence Mariam into submission and it was working. Many viewers didn’t see this as harmful enough for Mariam to establish an entire revenge procedure, but I am of the opinion that they are undermining the impact of homophobia in a conservative society like Jordan. Many disregarded what being outed can mean for everyday queer people in the Middle East, which often results in death in regular cases. But sure, yeah, it was not “that” difficult right. Just in 2020, an LGBT activist from Egypt, Sara Hegazy, died by suicide after being arrested and tortured by Egyptian authorities for 3 months just for flying the rainbow flag at a Mashrou Leila concert in 2017.
Al-Rawabi School for Girls (2021) / مدرسة الروابي للبنات
What’s more important to look at is that the other girls in the Al-Rawabi school volunteered as witnesses to strengthen Layan’s claims against Mariam, girls who did not witness anything, complete fabricators. They were volunteering to be enablers of injustice and abuse, or even worse, some girls who knew Layan’s accusations were false didn’t say anything. People like Layan’s enablers are not only detrimental at the communal level, but they can damage entire nations. For example, mass atrocities only occur under the condition that nobody stops the perpetrators, instead, they watch silently. The bystander effect can be deadly, but it also implies that those very same bystanders are subordinates to the one imposing harm. The girls at Al-Rawabi would rather remain silent and follow Layan, than salvage Mariam’s remaining shreds of reputation and dignity. A western reader may watch Al-Rawabi and think who cares about reputation, but for the average woman who comes from an honor-based society, the value of a spotless reputation operates like a credit score — except the part where you could potentially build back your credit is almost nonexistent. Shakespeare wrote in his play Richard the Second “My dear dear lord, The purest treasure mortal times afford Is spotless reputation—that away, Men are but gilded loam, or painted clay. A jewel in a ten-times barr’d-up chest Is a bold spirit in a loyal breast”. I think that perhaps one of the biggest negatives of communal societies and the traditions that immigrants bring with them when they migrate is the concept of reputation, shame, and honor, of which women are the primary couriers. This is exhibited more precisely throughout the show as Mariam strikes back at Layan. Carrying the baton of honor for your parents, your siblings, your family, your tribe, and sometimes your country is not an easy feat and operates as a relentless limitation of the basic freedoms of expression and movement of women. Even though I don’t live in a country where this is the norm, like Jordan, remnants of these values have been instilled in my own immigrant community and they continue to dictate how I live my life every day. Still living my life under the sovereignty of the “invisible jury” as Alya Mooro writes.
Anyways, Mariam developed anger management issues and anxiety as a result of the attack. She goes to therapy for it and even gets prescribed medication. She also journals her rageful thoughts as she ponders on what Layan and the others had done to her. In her rageful solitude, she conjures up a revenge plan to compensate Layan and her cronies for their bullying campaigns. Mariam believes that the only possible way for justice to be restored is for her to conspire a grand scheme that would ruin Layan and Co. for good. Mariam is naive and acts spontaneously, she is thinking pretty straightforward and technical and has removed all nuance from her interactions with Layan and the others. We view clips of Mariam constantly having flashbacks of specific moments of Layan’s bullying, replaying in her mind throughout the day. Her anger flourishes. She believes in an eye for an eye, and at the end of the show, we see why this plan malfunctions because Mariam fails to consider that sometimes as victims, we are not always capable of reinstating full justice in this world. Even in my case, I could never possibly give my high school bullies what they truly deserved no matter how hard I tried, if I even did bother to put up a fight. It just doesn’t work that way. What Mariam did, and even I did to a certain extent, is internalize the harm she faced and let it consume her. After experiencing extreme social abuse (ex. public humiliation, threats, gossip), she allowed their cruelty to become the very filter through which she viewed the world.
Sometimes, when we experience such drastic feelings of betrayal and pain, our outlook of the world and even ourselves can become highly skewed as the trauma is solidified. For Mariam, her best friend, Dina, and eventually her close friend, Noaf, both cease talking to Mariam at her most challenging times, and at a certain point, they exhibit sympathy to Layan — of which Mariam’s traumatized brain perceived as betrayal, naturally so. I think that Mariam’s character fails to realize that she could never possibly make equal the intensity of Layan’s actions to whatever she had planned. Mariam takes down Ruqqaya and Rania, first by exposing Ruqqaya’s hijab-less photograph on the internet, resulting in her family withdrawing her from school as her mother laments that her name (i.e., honor) is tarnished for good. She then manages to get Rania caught with a boy, which their teacher finds out, and tells Rania’s father, who responds with physical violence which leaves Rania bruised for days. Layan was the final target. Mariam didn’t only want to level the playing field; she wanted to detonate it. The success of her previous aspirations with Rania and Ruqqaya’s demise inspired her to finish the deed for good. In essence, I think Mariam wanted them to cease to exist, for their power to be entirely stripped so that they could never hurt anyone again. Mariam’s plan for Layan was to expose to her family that she has been skipping school to meet with a young man, her boyfriend Laith, and she happens to choose the day that Layan does skip school to go on a date with Laith to his family’s vacation house. Layan’s older brother gets a tip from Mariam of her location; he drives to the vacation house enraged as he pulls a pistol from his glove compartment *just in case* — only for him to find Layan’s pink school uniform drying on the outdoor clothesline, which drives him mad in a matter of seconds. Her brother begins to bang the door, Laith and Layan, who were cuddling, start to panic upon hearing her brother’s roars. “I can talk to him,” Laith assures Layan, but Layan’s face says it all. She knows that the beginning of her end is near.
Jordan is notorious for being home to many honor killing cases in the Middle East. It is reported that the country has about 15 to 20 cases annually though these numbers are only of the cases that *do* get reported.
Layan’s brother breaks down the door before Laith can even twist the knob. He sees his baby sister wearing Laith’s shirt, and his mind spins even more. Layan tries to reason with her brother, maybe explain that she only changed clothes because she swam in Laith’s pool, but her brother begins to tremble — almost afraid of what he is about to do. He pulls out the pistol, points it at Layan, then the screen goes black as we hear one single gunshot. We could assume that Layan is one of the 20 cases of honor killings that occurs in Jordan annually; who knows. The closing scene shows a satisfied and vengeful Mariam walking the halls of Al-Rawabi as if she has now been declared the new queen, with the old monarch having died at the hands of her older brother. Was Mariam satisfied? Is Layan’s death what she intended to happen? Could she have managed her revenge better?
It doesn’t matter; Mariam allowed for Layan’s despicable behavior to shape her entire livelihood; she internalized the pain of Layan’s actions so profoundly she could never see beyond it. Of course, I don’t think it is Mariam’s fault that Layan was killed; it is beyond her means to determine whether or not Layans brother would kill her — but she essentially failed the second she began to conjure up this plan. There is this quote from Confucius which goes “Before you embark on a journey of revenge, dig two graves.” This can have many meanings for each case, but for me, a victim of severe bullying in high school and as someone who has had more bad experiences with friends than good ones, it means that no matter the cruelty I was faced with, I had to choose the higher road. The one that leads to solitude, self-empowerment, and love.
Doctor Who (2005–) 10x12: The Doctor Falls
I am not saying that I never wished the people who hurt me never got what they deserved or that I’ve forgiven them. In fact, I am vehemently opposed to the idea of forgiving those who have wronged you when they aren’t even mildly regretful of what they’ve done — it makes no literal sense, only metaphorical sense for those who believe in a higher being and the systems of justice this higher deity will operate to hold wrongdoers accountable. Forgiveness should always be optional. I don’t know why the faithful insist that you forgive when the wounds are still fresh. Why? Because the wrongdoer is sorry? No, because that sure isn’t the case. You don’t have to forgive someone who has wronged you to move forward and do better, and the conception that it is a necessary step towards healing is unfair. I am angry, bitter, even resentful, rightfully so, but this anger doesn’t have to consume my life, and that is how I move forward. Those who I deem unforgivable might go on and change and become different people, but I am also entitled to having autonomy on whether I forgive them or not. Actually, we all earn the right to be hurt after being inflicted. In the Holy Quran, in Chapter Abraham, God says, “And never think that Allah is unaware of what the wrongdoers do. He only delays them [i.e., their account] for a Day when eyes will stare in horror “(14:42).
That being said, my ability to accept that people may be cruel to me but not necessarily be bad people and that I can take control of my narrative has helped me navigate the turbulence of what comes with recovering from the trauma that is based in female friendship. People are multidimensional, and your encounters with them don’t define them as much as we’d like to see it that way. These cruel people are people nevertheless. This is the reality of life, it is in your hands to decide how you are going to handle being met with these circumstances.
I was re-watching Dear Zindagi (2016) over the winter break since I was going through a nasty friendship breakup and the Gauri Shinde film is quite literally a balm for the heart in the form of theatre. It is a light-hearted movie starring SRK and Alia Bhatt, which explores a young woman's journey who decides to get to the bottom of her unhappiness and behavioral patterns through therapy. SRK plays a great therapist who uses nontraditional methods with patients, such as taking the woman (Alia) to the sea and letting her channel her inner child. Still, he drops several gems that I hold dear and happened to help me overcome my obstacles at the time. In one scene, Alia has her first breakdown and apologizes for her teary outbursts. SRK then responds: if you don’t cry wholeheartedly, how can you laugh wholeheartedly? He is right; how could I revel in contentment and happiness if I didn’t embrace the betrayal and ache. There was so much to gain in every loss. SRK’s words helped me realize the blessing of the departure with this friend. I felt less burdened, more like myself, and even more empowered — so what was it that I really lost? What did I learn? More than anything, I was proud of myself for letting go, dictating that enough was enough and that I deserved more. Sometimes the mere acknowledgment that you will not allow yourself to endure unkindness any further is in itself a powerful action. To recognize that you are worth more than what you are being faced with. SRK once says to Alia, “When we understand ourselves, then what others think doesn’t matter”.
Dear Zindagi (2016)
So why should I let one bad friendship experience define all the friendship experiences that were to come? Did one negative cancel out all of the positives? Does one person not loving me disqualify the many that do? I will admit that continuously encountering dreadful female friendships has made me skeptical of fostering close connections with women in general. I am warier, more cautious when it comes to getting to know women — because I know that betrayal hurts more coming from someone you consider a sister rather than a lover, or male friend (mostly because I expect incompetence from men so all of their failures are expected). For me, I never had a sister, so I sought to make up for this lack of sisterhood in strangers. Most attempts have been failures, but that doesn’t mean I should stop trying. That doesn’t mean there haven’t been some successes. My recent fallout reminds me of a quote from Aracelis Girmay, “I am amazed by how much people can survive, endure—and how they can go on living, laughing. After thorough devastation, indescribable loss, people’s hearts still beat. People can, still, live. This is perplexing, bewildering news to me. Defies all sense and gravity to me. And yet. When I see people living—and we do! we do everyday!—in and through and around all kinds of circumstances, I am in love and want to know, how, how?.” I guess, this too shall pass and the waves of life will come crashing in and I’ll be long gone, off to my next destination. But I want to cherish the lesson that had come with departure or the opportunity per se. I remember reading June Jordan’s “resolution #1,003” during the last days of December, it was always customary that this short poem resurfaced on the internet before the New Year. I was also etching out my NY resolutions during this time, or really just mental “pathways” I was hoping to follow for the new years — an idea I had adopted from Anas Bukhash’s videos. I had clipped the June Jordan bit to my NY idea board, it read:
I will love who loves me
I will love as much as I am loved
I will hate who hates me
I will feel nothing for everyone oblivious to me
I will stay indifferent to indifference
I will live hostile to hostility
I will make myself a passionate and eager lover
in response to passionate and eager love
I will be nobody’s fool.
So in this new year, I have decided that I won’t be anybody’s fool. Here is an outline of friendship conditions I read from Nedra Tawwab’s “Set Boundaries, Find Peace: A Guide to Reclaiming Yourself, The Six Types of Boundaries” that I hope to follow as I make my way through 2022, and I hope you find this beneficial as well. I will seek healthy friendships: friends who want to see me grow, who are mutually supportive and beneficial, who evolve as I evolve, who aren’t threatened when I set boundaries, who are happy for me to be myself, who understand how we can support each other. I will not make room for friendships that are competitive, that force me to exhibit worst behavior when I am with them, that make me feel emotionally drained, that try to embarrass me in front of others, that don’t have anything in common with me (i.e interests, ethics, etc), that aren’t reciprocal, that don’t respect my boundaries.
A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara
The Chinese believe that the Year of the Tiger (2022) is about making big changes, taking risks, and embarking on new adventures. This is the year that I hope to channel my courageous side and take great leaps. I’ve never really undertaken a mission to prioritize my needs, and sometimes to make that step can seem scary. Putting up boundaries is daunting, but it can also be the most significant proclamation of self-love. I hope that by accepting my sole responsibility that is dictating the order of my life, I can grant myself this emotional autonomy which has more rewards to harvest rather than risks. Sometimes, when we are on the cusp of radical change, we feel fired up, impassioned, even angry. Remain angry; you should be inflamed for what you have endured, what you were made to put up with. This is a positive sign that you have reached a point where you’ve developed enough courage to take back your own narrative, reigning in your life and mustering up enough self-love to uphold healthy standards of respect for yourself.
Anger is a constructive feeling; embrace it.