Wow. What a sad, affecting story so far. I think the author does an amazing job of making the reader feel Firdaus' potential, along with her sadness and isolation, along with the degradation and control she's experienced.
I want to deviate from the prompt (I think I remember hearing that that's okay), and talk about the part of the story that's struck me the most. I want to see what other people think of it.
When Iqbal finds Firdaus sitting alone in the courtyard (28-30), and Firdaus begins to cry, Iqbal asks her what is wrong, and Firdaus tells her "nothing" . . . then, looking into each other's eyes, Firdaus see's Iqbal's eyes light, shine, and go out, twice, before Iqbal begins to cry. As Firdaus continues to watch her, Iqbal's eyes become more distinct, the whites whiter, the blacks blacker.
I am wondering, what do people think was the source of Iqbal's tears? I have an opinion, which I can't support from the text. It's just a feeling. But I think that Iqbal, who, as a teacher, already knew something of Firdaus' potential, finally saw something in Firdaus' eyes of the loneliness and emptiness of her past and existence. I think that Iqbal was crying in sympathy for the Firdaus' hopeless future, realizing that the girl is missing too much of herself - not to mention her total lack of support - ever to really make it in the world.
I do think Firdaus' feels something of her own loneliness when she touches Iqbal's hand, and feels a "deep distant pleasure . . . like a part of [her] being which had been born with [her] . . . but had not grown . . . when [she] had grown" (30). How sad to think that this exchange with Iqbal, when Firdaus is a teenager, is the first time she's ever had a kind or loving touch (excepting maybe her jaunts with Mohammadain the fields, but that's a different kind of thing), and that Iqbal holding her hand in the courtyard is the closest she's ever had to anyone ever reaching out to her.
I still don't know what to make of the eyes.
Then, of course, we return to the theme of the eyes, when Iqbal saves Firdaus from having to accept her school certificate alone (33-34). All Firdaus sees around her, in the crowd, are harsh circles of black and white, until Iqbal's eyes stand out from the rest.
What do people think?
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As a side note, it's the little things in this story, that stuck in Firdaus' mind as she's telling it, that also stuck in mine reading it. It really hit home just how isolated she'd become, when she tries to address the group of secondary school girls, and they comment on how she must be crazy talking to herself. They can't even tell she's trying to talk to them (sorry no citation).
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BTW, I'm writing this before reading the other blogs, so my apologies if some of these things have already come up. I sometimes like to do things back-asswards.
Going to just riff here, on the repeating themes and flow of language and how they make me feel...picking up on comments already made. The repeating language -- of the intense eyes (whether black ringed by white, or green like the river Nile), the experience of pain/pleasure deep within and expressed in carbon copy language whether the result of kind touch (Iqbal) or of sex with johns in the luxury of Sharifa's apartment (p. 60) -- and the intense need not to be interrupted (p. 9) lends the narrative a sense of fierce psychosis. Sharp minded and insightful and even wise but profoundly disconnected from self if not from surroundings. Weird that even as she feels pleasure Firdaus asks why she doesn't "feel anything" (p. 60) only to be told by her Madame that work should not be confused with pleasure. It seems that, with perhaps the exception of Iqbal, every show of human kindness or generosity shown to Firdaus by others is veined through with predatory need and/or greed. She gets used and used and used to the point that her experience of choice and pleasure and independence comes through her own experience of being abused as a human being. She makes smart and reasonable and sometimes brave choices within this context, but she's achingly vulnerable and...so...screwed...up.
ReplyDeleteThe first experience the reader has with Firdaus explainng the emotions she is feeling via this transcendent moment is intense. As you read on further and see that these important moments are repeated in the same emotional fashion, word-for-word. I found it powerful, but with a hint of schizophrenia (which my grandmother had). It can be lucid at times and manic at others. These moments said to me that Firdaus is deeply troubled. She related to Iqbal as her mother and desperately wanted to believe that it was her that she projected those memories of her mother onto her teacher. Those are my thoughts anyway.
ReplyDeleteI would like to comment on the prompt too. It is on page 109-110 that Firdaus speaks openly, confidently, and calmly about killing Marzouk, frightening the prince she escorts right after and what it is she knows inside of her as the truth.
" 'I am a killer, but I have committed no crime. Like you, I kill only criminals.'
'But he is a prince, and a hero. He's not a criminal.'
'For me the feats of kings and princes are no more than crimes, for I do not see things the way you do.'
'You are a criminal,' they said,'and your mother is a criminal.'
'My mother is not a criminal. No woman can be a criminal. To be a criminal you must be a man.'
'Now look here, what is this you are saying?'
'I am saying that you are criminals, all of you: the fathers, the uncles, the husbands, the pimps, the lawyers, the doctors, the journalists, and all the men of all professions.'
They said,'You are a savage and dangerous woman.'
'I am speaking the truth. And the truth is savage and dangerous.' "
This is her pinnacle, her moment of understanding herself and everything around her: her life, her actions, her future.
"I was the only woman who had torn the mask away, and exposed the face of their ugly reality. They condemned me to death not because I killed a man--there are thousands of people being killed everyday--but because they are afraid to let me live" (109-110).
I fell that when Firdaus is executed she will be freed of everything for the first time in life--into afterlife. She deliberately thwarted her appeal and went to the gallows a stronger, prouder woman for having finally stood up to all the men in her life embodied in Marzouk.
The first mention of the eyes regarded her mother, from then on the eyes were mentioned whenever she found someone who seemed reliable, or seemed to care about her. Perhaps the eyes stood out to her so much because it was more of a rare thing for her find. Perhaps a bit alien. Also, the quote regarding deep distant pleasure that was missing regards clearly her circumcision, and reoccurs when she realizes she can no longer feel pleasure, with both moments in the book where she is sexually harassed and in moments where she feels close to people.
ReplyDeleteThe eyes may represent her hope to find her mother, someone who truly cares about her. She seems to start mixing what love is and what sexuality is-- that is what I took from the reoccurring quotes referring to the eyes and the lost pleasure.
I agree that Firdaus had a great deal of potential but was born into a world that would not allow her to become what she could have; it may be that Iqbal saw this and this caused her tears, or it may just be that they connected to each other in the experience of the horrific world that surrounded them both. When she asks, what happened, she was looking for some specific event, but Firdaus' response that nothing happened, there was no specific event that she was crying about, meant that she could only be crying about life in general, and this, the conditions of life for women, was an event that was happening to both of them even though they didn't know what each others specific experiences were; once it became clear that it was life she was crying about, Iqbal related to the feeling and began crying herself, because of the fact that they live in a place where a woman like Firdaus, with so much potential and intelligence, doesn't need a specific reason to cry and neither does she.
ReplyDeletedoes that make any sense? what i wrote yesterday was clearer i think, but when I hit the post button there was an error and I lost it. I had written more too, but I forget now.
I just noticed the use of the word "violence" in the description of the intensity with which she holds Iqbal's hand on page 30. I don't really know what to say about this, other than it's interesting in juxtaposition with all the actual violence in the rest of the story (maybe intensity equals violence to her?), but I thought it was worth pointing out. If anyone hasn't posted yet maybe you can comment on that.
anyway, see you guys tomorrow!