Mideast tour: a related note from Molly Crabapple, who wandered around Morocco alone as a teenager

"In Arabic, the word for alone is the same as the word for lonely. Fatima Mernissi, a Moroccan feminist writer, said that freedom seemed synonymous with the nuclear family, which removed women from the dictatorship of their mothers-in-law and allowed romance between spouses. I wonder what Western feminists would make of that."