Questions about "Maps for Lost Lovers"

p. 249: "Surely she could not have lied about the pregnancy? Perhaps she wants to hurt him—plant pain in someone—for the injustice she has suffered in recent months."

Could this theory be true? If so, why would Suraya choose Shamas to take her emotions out on? Does Suraya like Shamas or is she bitter towards him?


p. 258-259: " 'She told us in passing that she was devastated when Mah-Jabin left her husband, despite the fact that like every other decent mother she had told her daughter that the house you are going to—the house of your husband and in-laws—is Heaven but you are not to desert it even if it becomes Hell, that as far as the parents are concerned a daughter dies on the day of her wedding.'

The second of the new arrivals says, 'Your wife did not want you to know about the fact that she had visited us obviously because you don't have a mother's heart in your breast and wouldn't have understood. A mother misses her children when they run away so she wants them back.' "

These two lines provide extremely conflicting views that Kaukab allegedly had: she demands that her daughter vanish from her world and live with her in-laws and becomes upset when she doesn't, and yet she tries to go to such drastic measures to bring her children back to her. Which one of these two views is Kaukab's priority? How does this conflict relate to the overarching inner conflict she has between her faith and her family? Is this scenario a case where she puts her family first, something we rarely see her do?


p. 267: "She'll make some rice pudding for Shamas this afternoon because he has asked for something sweet, and goes to check that there are pistachios in the cupboard. And maybe she should taste Shamas's food—despite the fact that it is Ramadan and she's fasting—to make sure that the things like spices and salts are in proportion. Allah—ever kind, ever compassionate—says that if you are a slave, a servant or a wife, and your master, employer, or husband is a strict man, you are allowed to taste the food you are cooking for him during your Ramadan fast to see that the salt and spices are according to his preference, to prevent a beating or unpleasantness. Shamas doesn't mind, but—since he is not well—perhaps her violating the fast would fall into the category of wifely devotion and love, and be excused."

Another case of Kaukab choosing between family and faith, but in this instance, she argues that her faith excuses the needs of her family. What is she prioritizing here? This passage also arises questions about the relationship between Shamas and Kaukab. Is this really what Kaukab's perception of "wifely devotion and love" is? How has Aslam portrayed Kaukab as "a slave" or "a servant" and Shamas as "a master" or "an employer"? Is "preventing a beating" just continuing the slave analogy or referencing the times that Shamas beat Kaukab and triggering a small fear or recollection in Kaukab's mind, or both?



p. 272-273: "A pious woman cannot bear the thought of letting a man other than her husband touch her—so in Paradise, where there is nothing but ease and satisfaction, why would she be put through the torment of being groped and fondled by strange men? In Paradise everyone will have at least one companion, for there is no celibacy in Paradise, and so the pious woman would be happy just to be given an eternal place by her earth-husband's side after Judgement Day."

In her thoughts, Kaukab specifically notes that it is okay for her husband to touch her, just not other men, and yet she refuses to let Shamas touch her. If her faith is not the reason why she essentially is abstinent, then what is the reason? Also, Shamas and Kaukab are constantly fighting with each other, angry at each other, and Shamas even beat Kaukab throughout the story. Would Kaukab really want an eternal place by her earth-husband's side, or is this desire something her faith is telling her she wants?


Why is the section titled "Autumn" so short? Why does "Winter" repeat itself twice? How does the winter imagery connect to the events of the story?

Three Passages for 11/2

p94-95: " 'It is a pity about this,' she says. 'Perhaps I could make you a kameez of this, but you probably don't wear Pakistani clothes these days.' The words are spoken with the back turned; the listener is being tested, to see if she can guess what expression of the face accompanies the words, as a lover would suddenly close both eyes and demand to know what color they are: the right answer would be a proof of love."


p103: " 'Yes I know, you've told us. But I think there is a thing called a 'griddle' in Britain that resembles Pakistani baking-irons, and of course the Mexican tortillas are cooked on—'

'If we'd had you to guide us during those early years we would have done things differently, and I apologize if I repeat something I've already told you but I don't lead a life as varied as yours.' It wouldn't tip the scales on a pin, the amount by which a comment has to fall short from the ideal in the listener's head for it to be regarded an affront, an offence—a crime. 'If I tell you something every day it's because I relive it every day. Every day—wishing I could rewrite the past—I relive the day I came to this country where I have known nothing but pain.' Immediately after taking it off the iron, Kaukab polishes the chapati with a pat of butter that melts and is propelled forward on the hot surface like a snail secreting the lubricating slickness to move on as it goes."


p112: "Equipped with that knitting needle she had shut herself in here after discovering herself pregnant—the smell of rust in her nostrils and the taste of iron behind her teeth and the gums seeming to grow richer every second, as though chains to bind her were being forged within her—and had realized only then that she did not know how to proceed. How exactly was it done? In the end her courage had failed her and she had sat trembling. A legal termination at a clinic was an impossibility: her only source of money was her parents and they would not have allowed her to have an abortion, and would have used the pregnancy to renew their efforts to make her return to her husband."

Passages from Maps for Lost Lovers

There were some really cool descriptive paragraphs at the very beginning that I thought I would share. I find in class discussion that we tend to congregate towards the middle of readings, so I thought adding content from the beginning would vary it up.

"The snow falls and, yes, the hand stretched into the flakes' path is a hand asking back a season now lost."

"The sound of the doorbell runs through him like an electric current, jolting him out of his funk."

"Kaukab knows her dissatisfaction with England is a slight to Allah because He is the creator and ruler of the entire earth - as the stone carving on Islambad airport reminds and reassures the heartbroken people who are having to leave Pakistan - but she cannot contain her homesickness and constantly asks for courage to face this lonely ordeal that He has chosen for her in His wisdom."

Questions:

Do the "seasons" in this book refer to time periods of their lives? Is that time period now lost?

Does her loneliness include a lack of Allah's presence?

Nobody Knows Your Name Comments

"Perhaps seeing ourselves as descendants, in blood or in spirit, of historically oppressed peoples is an important step towards aligning ourselves with our brethren in this country."

I have heard people refer to America as a "melting pot," a giant vat of diverse ingredients stirred together into one giant soup. Americans come from all over the world: Western Europe, Eastern Europe, Africa, Asia, the Middle East, etc. People of all different races, cultures, and ethnicities fuse together to form the single American identity that America represents today.

Biss begins her essay by discussing the historic oppression of the Irish. In this discussion, she mentions, "They were thought of, and thought of themselves, as a distinct race." This line brings up the idea that race is a social construct. What defines a race? What is the difference between white and Irish?

Like Biss, I have a diverse ancestry. My mom's ancestors were poor Jews in Lithuania and Russia, bareky finding a way to immigrate to America around 1900. My dad was born in Canada, and his ancestors were in Canada for quite a long time, though if they are traced back far enough, allegiance to Ireland, France, Germany, and Ukraine can be found.

"Perhaps I will tell them that your race is like your name - it is a given, and you must define your own name so that it does not define you," Biss conjectures at the end of her essay. And at least for whites, there is no question that race is a given. In "Relations," Biss addresses this in her anecdote about the census taker with her and her cousin, noting that he marked "white" for Biss without even asking and then took the time to have a discussion with her cousin about what race she felt like she was. I have found this inflexibility in my own experiences too, having been always called white without any doubts even with my extremely diverse heritage.

But why is my heritage so important to me? I am almost sure that it is because my heritage puts a wall up between myself and the oppression that whites before me are known for. Like Biss identifies with her Polish side more than her English side, I always identify more with my Eastern European roots over the Western ones. As Biss says in the quote I opened this post with, it is easier to identify with the oppressed than the oppressors.

I Never Really Think About It Much

"Write about the inconsistent standards in a community or neighborhood to which you belong."

I felt chills run through my spine when I read this promt. I was walking out of the dorm going to dinner, planning to write this post when I finished. I thought dinner would be a good time to formulate my ideas so that when I sat down, I could just write the post and submit it by the deadline. Thinking about it got me nowhere.

I'm white. I'm male. I'm straight. I never really thought about it much. Not until I came to Andover. When I started hearing Andover community members using terms like "inconsistent standards" and "privilege," I thought these were terms of the past. I thought of racism as Jim Crow laws, as cops arresting blacks for sitting in the front of a bus, as nineteenth-century plantation owners forcing innocent people to do manual labor for no pay. I don't think I ever stopped to wonder if racism occurs today.

When I was in fourth grade, I was one of two Jewish students in my class. There were two Jews, two Muslims, and a roomful of Christians. I was an intellectual kid, so I always loved when our teacher would ask us to get in front of the class and explain our religion's traditions. Whenever there was a Jewish or Muslim holiday, our teacher had the two Jews or the two Muslims get up in front of the class and teach everyone what the holiday is about. I guess that is what people consider "inclusion."

Freshman year, I flipped out when I heard the term "affirmative action." To think that I could have the exact same qualifications as someone else for a board position and be denied it because I am a white male really bothered me. Over the course of my time at Andover, I have been on four club boards (not simultaneously). Two of the boards were all girls except for me. This exclusivity was never a concern, and the club functioned normally. The other two were all guys on the board. Both clubs were scared out of their mind at the thought of lack of female involvement, and in both instances, there was a huge push to try to find specifically girls to join those clubs in a desparate effort to diversify the board. In one of those clubs, a girl was given a position of leadership over a guy who was arguably more qualified for the job.

I never thought about that part of fourth grade again until this evening. I remembered those presentations we gave because I enjoyed giving them. I loved educating others about my family traditions. But is that inclusion? Were those presentations tools for us to make ourselves equal members of the community, or inconsistent standards we were expected to live up to so a room of Christians could gain some cultural exposure and feel like they were in a diverse classroom?

I have a deadly peanut allergy. In fourth and fifth grade, our school's method of coping with it was making me sit at the one peanut free table in the cafeteria. I was allowed to invite a maximum of three friends to come sit with me. The peanut free table was in its own corner, far from the rest of the tables. I always sat in the same seat: the one that faced the rest of the cafeteria such that I could see everybody else in the room sitting at a big table with all their friends enjoying their food, most of which contained no peanut butter. Is telling the little nine-year-old that he can invite three friends to sit with him the best way to include him in the community? Is it an "inconsistent standard?"

If there is one thing Andover has taught me about privilege, it is that I don't get it. I don't get what it is like to be non-white, I don't get what it is like to be female, I don't get what it is like to be homosexual or bisexual or transsexual. I'll bet you're waiting for me to slap down a concluding sentence that ties all of my anecdotes together and connects them all to the words "privilege" and "inconsistent standards." Well, you're out of luck. Because as a white male, I don't understand the privilege I have been given. I try my best, but I also know that it is impossible. The only way people can understand privilege is if they have been denied it. All the anecdotes I told are just my feeble attempts at understanding what it is like to be deined privilege and consistent standards.

Do I understand what it is like? No. There's no way I could possibly understand. I'm white. I'm male. I'm straight. I never really think about it much. Not until I'm prompted to.

Goodbye to All That Plagiarism

In my past high school English classes, one of my favorite assignments we would receive was adding a few pages to the text we were reading. I loved it so much because we got to attempt to mimic the author's writing style, which I found to be really fun (and an opportunity to make fun of the author). I attempted to write in the advanced prose of Dickens, the iambic pentameter and Early Modern English of Shakespeare, the detailed stage directions of Arthur Miller, and the descriptive short sentences of Paul Yoon. This recurring assignment is one of my fondest memories of past English classes, and part of what made me realize that creative writing is one of my passions.

The Andover Blue Book defines dishonesty as "including, but not limited to tying, cheating, plagiarizing, misuse of sources, or dual submissions of academic work; fraud of any kind, including, by way of example, deceit regarding permission forms or class excuse notes; or falsifying sign-in." While there is a long list here, it is still extremely general. What falls under plagiarizing? Does the fact that I ended that quote with a period and end-quotation mark as opposed to a footnote or parenthetical citation make it plagiarism? Is saying where the quote came from sufficient?

The first three essays I mentioned above were in my freshman year. The fourth, inspired by Paul Yoon, was part of my tenth grade spring final. We read his book Snow Hunters and were asked to write a few papers, one of which was a three page personal essay. The only criteria was that it had to be clear how it related to Snow Hunters. It could be on any topic we wanted. I chose to write about my great-great-grandparents, highlighting both the struggle they experienced as Jews in late nineteenth century Russia, and the hardships they faced when trying to immigrate to America. Paul Yoon used both intriguing time leaps and short syntax to tell his story, so I used these tools to tell mine. It also reminded me of the main character of Snow Hunters and his journey immigrating from Korea to Brazil.

I had a teacher who once told me that citing work wasn't enough. She would tell our class, "If you go to the store and steal a pair of headphones but then tell all your friends the name of the store you stole it from, is it still stealing?" We would all nod our heads, most of us rolling our eyes in the process. "The ideas have to be yours. You can't just take them from someone else."

After reading Joan Didion's essay titled "Goodbye to All That," I read Eula Biss's version of that same essay, which she called "Goodbye to All That" as well. It was really cool how Biss was able to tell her experiences in New York City in a writing style similar to Didion's but also maintain her own voice and creativity. She told her own story using techniques and inspiration from another author. It made me think of my paper on Snow Hunters.

Would my teacher have called Biss's essay plagiarism? Based on her headphone analogy, I think she might have. But maybe her headphone analogy was too basic. What if you go to a hotel and take the little shampoo bottle home with you? Is that stealing? Are you taking an idea or a bottle of inspiration? You can use the hotel's shampoo or your own shampoo and people will still see the same hair on your head. You can use a writing style inspired by a different author or a writing style you come up with yourself and people will still read the same story. Maybe your hair smells a little different from the shampoo and maybe your story has a different feel to it, but it is still your own hair and still your own idea.

Are the essays I wrote for class plagiarism? I think that as an academic exercise in learning about authors' writing styles, those are okay. What about the blog post I am writing right now? I am currently writing in a style greatly inspired by Eula Biss's essays, telling two separate stories and converging them into one. I wasn't required to do that in the assignment. Does that make this post plagiarism? While I am biased towards not getting reported to the Dean of Studies, I would argue that it is not.

Eula Biss took a wonderful essay and told her own story in the same manner, crediting that essay the whole way. She agreed with parts and disagreed with parts, but still gave it the recognition it deserved. I would hope that Didion would be flattered to hear that her story had such a deep effect on Biss's outlook on the world.

Our Parents Teach Us

Your parents wouldn't lie to you. When they tell you Santa Claus is real, you believe them. When they tell you they decided to bring the dog to a farm in the country, you believe them. When they tell you eating vegetables makes you grow, you believe them. Why wouldn't you? They are your parents.

But this open-mindedness to all spoken by your parents extends past innocent lies and tooth fairies. Your parents teach you how the world works. To say that more correctly, your parents teach you how they think the world works. Concepts like religion, race, politics, even the proper method to prioritize your classes and hobbies, are passed down from your parents.

"This is how so many different religions continue to be popular," my dad frequently explains to me. "When children are told by their parents that the earth is 6000 years old, evolution is a lie, the climate isn't changing, etc, they believe it because they trust their parents."

My mom's family is Jewish. Growing up, we always went to my step-aunt's house for Rosh Hashanah (the Jewish New Year), my aunt's house for Yom Kippur (the day of atonement), my Grandma's for Hanukkah (the most overhyped holiday ever), and my Grandpa's for Passover (the celebration of the Jews' exodus from Egypt). Personally, I like to go by what science tells me, making me pretty atheist. Most of my family is atheist or agnostic as well. But these holidays and their traditions have been passed onto me, and I always have a certain appreciation for these holidays.

My dad isn't religious at all, and likes to go by what science tells him. If scientists say there was a giant explosion thirteen billion years ago that created a bunch of quarks and atoms that formed the vast universe we live in today, he'll believe it. Scientists use a scientific method to make sure their conclusions are factual, not opinionated. And he makes sure that everything is a fact before he believes it.

When I have a question about how the world works, I always go to my dad. I know he knows how the world works. My dad wouldn't lie to me.