ABSTRACT
Tieba is the second wife of al-Mukhtar Mahmoud. In her letters, she describes her early childhood and education, when she had to leave her village and stay in Raqqa with her grandmother in order to attend school. She emphasizes her love for school and how she was only gradually convinced by her mother and habbaba (grandmother) to accept Mahmoud’s marriage proposal when she was seventeen. She discusses her family life in the town of Raqqa, where she lives in a modern house surrounded by a garden full of fruit trees. Tieba finds it uncomfortable being a darra (second wife) and visiting Hawi al-Hawa village, and discusses the changing attitudes of women towards life in the village, as well as traditional customs of childbirth.
