The women described by Raush in “Bodies, Boundaries, and Spirit Possession” have a remarkable amount of power in a highly repressive society. The women who often endure possession themselves and undergo a very lengthy treatment process often emerge with much more power and wealth than the very men who raised them in an environment in which they were vulnerable to possession or the husbands who rejected them. For example, in the case of Naime her husband “never approved of her vocation and still tries to discourage her form practicing” however he eventually became possessed himself and Naime “has become extremely successful and owns and lets two houses” (Raush, 123). Many of the women who become Shuwaffa are able to at least live “relatively comfortably” on their own or with their children after they husband leaves them, most commonly because they do not approve of the constant liyali in the home (Raush, 122). The shuwaffa in chapter 3 also owns her own property, which from my understanding is fairly rare in this culture.
I see the fact that many of these women have more power than they would if they did not become these healers as a wonderful thing of course but I think it should not be overlooked that many of them had incredibly painful childhoods and marriages. This new power and place in society is a small reimbursement for the very traumatic suffering they endured, but it is remarkable that this power has allowed them to overcome their own past in the place of treatments or medications that would be prescribed in the identical situations in the western medical world.
