A Place for Us

“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.”

Amar has not seen or spoken to his family in three years, and he feels as much a stranger at Hadia’s wedding as he did in the months before he left home. For him, being present here means playing a role, being someone he’s not, since Rafiq told Amar he was not his son in their last fight.

“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.”

This is an excellent example of how close Hadia and Amar were as children. However, it foreshadows their later communication issues as well as the phone calls Amar makes to his nephew Abbas. Everyone thinks the calls are from him but they can’t be sure.