ABSTRACT
This study, researched in 1997 and written in 2000, has been re-contextualized. It stands in an entirely new framework, at least for Americans. I suspect that the subjects of this study see the context as part of a much larger pattern-one they understand very well and have been living with for some time. We Americans, on the other hand, have been decentered by force and by tragedy, and our elected government has reacted by making wars to put us back at the center of our perceived world order. What this means for some women in Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, and the Maghrebian diaspora is that members of their families, and perhaps they themselves, have joined or will join organizations like alQaeda. Some have seen or will see their cities bombed because of their countries’ perceived sympathies with the United States. What it means for American women is that some of us have died or will die, or have family members who have died or will die, in the tragedy of September 11, 2001, or in Afghanistan, Iraq, and other countries on our administration’s list of nations that support terrorism against the United States.
