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 dˇcor, of the sounds and the smells, and of the
talking and the listening.
David R. Blumenthal
Emory
University