35 pages • 1 hour read
Fatima Farheen MirzaA modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
“I am not to speak to you, I am to think of you when I sit alone, / or wake at night alone, / I am to wait, I do not doubt I am to meet you again, / I am to see to it that I do not lose you.”
This Epigraph serves as both foreshadowing and as a guiding force in the narrative, as Rafiq’s loss of Amar and inability to communicate with him resonate strongly with the poem’s sentiment. Rafiq is determined to see his son again, either before he passes from this life or in the next.
“[Amar] could convince them all—the familiar faces, his mother who he sensed checking on him as he moved about, his father who maintained his distance—he could even convince himself, that he belonged here, that he could wear the suit and play the part, be who he had been before, and assume his role tonight as brother of the bride.”
“One summer they had pushed out their screens and connected their rooms by a string attached to Styrofoam cups at each end. Hadia assured [Amar] she knew what she was doing. She had made one in school. He wasn’t sure if he could hear her voice humming along the string and filling the cup, or carried through the air, but he didn’t tell her this.”