“The enemy of my enemy is my friend” suggests that two antagonistic parties should work together against a common enemy. This proverb is saying that although two people may not favor each other, they can come together as long as they have a common enemy. Mariam and Laila became friends in the face of a common enemy. When Laila first moved in with Mariam and Rasheed, Mariam despised Laila. Mariam despised Laila because she felt like Laila was stealing Rasheed away from her, she was intimidated by her. “I wouldn’t have fed you and washed you and nursed you if I’d known you were going to turn around and steal my husband.” (Chapter 31, page 226) Despite how toxic the relationship between Mariam and Rasheed was, Mariam did not want Laila to take …show more content…
Rasheed was not pleased with her having a girl, so he began to mistreat her. “Usually, the bickering ran its course after a few minutes, but half an hour passed and not only was it still going on, it was escalating…”. Rasheed and Laila began arguing often after Aziza's birth. Now Laila and Mariam had a common enemy; Rasheed. Once it was clear to Laila that it was Rasheed who was the enemy, and not Mariam, Laila stood up for Mariam. “Rasheed raised the belt again and this time came at Mariam. Then an astonishing thing happened: The girl lunged at him. She grabbed his arms with both hands and tried to drag him down, but she could do no more than dangle from it. She did succeed in slowing Rasheed’s progress towards Mariam.” (Chapter 33, page 241). After that day, Mariam started to view Laila differently because no one had ever stood up for her. Soon after, Laila and Mariam became family to each other, and that all started with three cups of tea. One as strangers, the second as friends, and the third as a family. Those three cups of tea became their nightly ritual. (Chapter 35, page 251). Facing a common enemy brought two people together and made them closer than ever. They were so close that life to Mariam seemed intolerable without Laila and Aziza. (Chapter 35, page
...attacks, and burning from flame throwers. The Germans are relentlessly hostile toward the British and Canadian soldiers, saving no lives but disposing of many. The Germans are truly enemies of these soldiers; however, in this case they definitely do not act as friends, which ultimately disagrees with Timothy Findley’s assumption that one’s enemy is their closest friends. The saying, “keep your friends close, and your enemies closer”, is truly substantiated within the text The Wars. For one’s “enemy” will not hurt them, as no trust is deposited into an enemy, however one’s friend will, since as a friend, one invests plenty of trust into another and by having this trust broken one is hurt more than anything. Timothy Findley deconstructs the concept of friend and enemy within his novel The Wars, by illustrating that one’s enemy will turn out to be their closest friend.
For her 15th birthday, Mariam asked Jalil if he could take her to his cinema to watch Pinocchio. She also asked if Jalil could bring her brothers and sisters so she could meet them. Both Nana and Jalil thought it wasn’t a good idea, but Mariam insisted on going, so Jalil said he would send someone to pick her up. Mariam did not like this idea and said that she wanted to be picked up by Jalil. Jalil reluctantly agreed. Later that day, Mariam gets the backlash and hate from her mother from her decision: “Of all the daughters I could have had, why did God give me an ungrateful one like you? …How dare you abandon me like this, you treacherous little harami!” Mariam wakes up the next day, disappointed and fed up since Jalil did not come to pick her up. She heads out to town to find Jalil herself. She makes it to his house when a chauffeur tells Mariam that Jalil was “away on urgent business.” She slept outside of his house and was awoken by the chauffeur, telling her that he would take her home. Mariam snatches away from the chauffeur’s grip and turns around towards the house, to see Jalil in an upstairs window. It was then that Mariam figured out that all she was to Jalil was a disgrace. Jalil had always been careful with the information he told Mariam. He may have loved her, but only on his own terms. Once Mariam realizes that her father allowed her to sleep on the street rather than bring her into his
Mariam and Laila face a lot of social injustice yet they do not attempt to challenge the issues because they are told to endure all forms of pain and social injustice. From a very young age, Mariam was told by her mother that all she needed to do was to withstand any pain and suffering, it’s the one skill she needed.” Endure . . . Women like us. We endure. It’s all we have”(17). In addition, Laila also suffered the injustice of society since she was a single mother it was not safe for her to live on her own so she had no choice but to marry Rasheed. The society gave women no choice but to endure and that’s the main reason why Laila and Mariam were unable to take a stand. However, close to the end of the novel Mariam decides to take initiative and fights back. She finally takes action because she is driven by the love she has for Laila and her child since they are the only family she’s had that loved her. So when Rasheed her husband attempts to choke Laila to death, Mariam reflects on how much injustice she has faced and how unjust both her husband and the society have been towards her and other women. At this point, Mariam realizes that she must end her and Laila’s suffering once and for all. So she takes Rasheed’s life. Although Mariam is executed as a form of punishment, she is very successful at taking a stand to end the oppression and injustice. Mariam knew her actions were fatal yet she still did what she knew was right. Furthermore, she sacrificed herself and didn’t regret her action instead she was pleased that “she was leaving the world as a woman who had loved and been loved back. She was leaving it as a friend, a companion, a guardian. A mother” ( 329). Her actions freed Laila and her child from Rasheed’s abuse and helped them build a better life. Thus Mariam was successful and did not want to endure the injustice or see Laila suffer, she did it by
From start to finish, one could see how much Mariam values Laila, Aziza, and their friendship. The first example is when Mariam vows to help Laila while they are in the hospital for Laila’s unborn child: “I’ll get you seen, Laila jo. I promise” (287). This simple promise is a deep portrayal of Mariam’s desire to help Laila find a doctor and deliver her baby. Additionally, one can see Mariam’s love for Laila when she protects her from Rasheed’s grip of death, “‘Rasheed.’ He looked up. Mariam swung. She hit him across the temple. The blow knocked him off Laila” (348). Rasheed was going to kill Laila, but Mariam steps in and knocks him off of her with a shovel to save her life. Mariam forms a tight-knit bond with Laila, and when Hosseini includes their relationship, one can see how Mariam values Laila enough to kill another man. The author also describes their relationship after Mariam and Laila discuss plans for leaving: “When they do, they’ll find you as guilty as me. Tariq too. I won’t have the two of you living on the run like fugitives.” … “Laila crawled to her and again put her head on Mariam’s lap. She remembered all the afternoons they’d spent together, braiding each other’s hair, Mariam listening patiently to her random thoughts and ordinary stories with an air of gratitude, with the expression of a person to whom a unique and coveted privilege had been extended” (358). The love Mariam has for
Originally, Mairma would acquiesce to Rasheed’s demands: if he said “shut up,” she would (98). If she was beaten, she would take it. She felt no hope of freedom from his brutish acts so she endured through them. Wallowing in despair would only make her marital-situation worse. Later, out of routine, Rasheed’s abuse is prevented because of Laila. She pleads “please Rasheed, no beating!” over and over until he forfeits his attack against Mariam; feeling loved, it is a kindness that Mariam cannot forget (241). In Mariam’s final resistance to the churlish man, she shows her love for others. Aiming to kill, Rasheed acts violently upon Laila, and Mariam fights back. As he once beat her, she beat him back. The scene juxtaposes how she once accepted the abuse, and now she fights back because she does not want to lose the one who makes her feels that she “had been loved back”: Laila (224). After being controlled by Rasheed for the majority of Mariam’s marriage, she takes control of her own life for once by making he decision to kill him in order to protect Laila. Mariam’s fight back shows her willingness to sacrifice to prevent Rasheed’s cruelties further. Risking worse abuse, Mariam chooses to save Laila’s life in exchange for her own. Laila brought Mariam an unmistakable happiness: “[Mariam] was leaving the world as a woman who had loved and been loved back. She was leaving it as a friend, a companion, a guardian. ... It was not so bad ... that she should die this way ... This was a legitimate end to a life of illegitimate beginnings” (224). Mariam gives Laila the opportunity to live a life sans of Rasheed’s barbarities to plague them after learning herself how inhumane he was. Moreover, the cruelties Mariam faced against Rasheed revealed her endurance as a woman. Mariam remained strong throughout her marriage and fought back against her husband, an act
In Part three, a shift in this isolation occurs when Laila becomes a part of her life. An epiphany occurs where Mariam starts to realize the injustices that surround her; The amount of her life wasted with Rasheed, the physical and emotional abused endured from him, and the injustices she knows Laila is about to endure.Then as she starts to bond with Laila, Mariam feels a sense of purpose; the kids look up to her as a secondary mother figure and she has Laila as a companion. So when Rasheed had the intent to kill Laila, Mariam had to act. She has taken justice into her own hands by responding to Rasheed’s physical injustice and the injustices of equality rights towards women at the hands of the Taliban. She later tells Laila that she was simply “acting like a
Rasheed was the man in the relationship and Mariam was the typical wife that did her wifely duties and stayed home while he goes and works and provides money. He treats her as if she’s worthless and means nothing to the world. When he eats he doesn’t look at her or speak to her, he is demanding, and tells her how worthless and uneducated she is. This then leads to him becoming abusive punching her, slapping her, kicking her, speaking rudely to her, he did this to damage her. A lot of this occurs because Mariam can get have his son and she is also considered a harami. Everything she does infuriates him and blames all the issues on her. She constantly tried to avoid making mistakes and did everything to his liking, but he always found a way to abuse her and blame it on her. Rasheed did not care about anything but himself he abided by the patriarchal stereotype ,which is being the dominant one throughout society and making women inferior. Mariam felt powerless and fearful. She was a victim of abuse and oppression. She married a man that said everything he did was normal in a relationship. Even though Mariam was in a violent marriage she became a strong women and soon she overcomed these
This quote displays a theme in the novel as Mariam gets older. Jalil moves the burden of Mariam onto Nana, and Rasheed blames Mariam for things that go wrong from there.
...tiple times that they succeeded in getting Rasheed to stop. They were willing to fight back despite the consequences and the fact that they knew Rasheed could bring out so much more anger. Even after attempting to run away and being beaten so badly, they both still showed their bravery. They were on the edge of death, but they still fought every day to stay alive. Mariam shows amazing inner strength when a loved one is involved. Sadness and evil are two things that are very evident in their lives, enough to cause anyone to lose hope in humanity. But, Mariam and Laila are both able to stand up to violence in order to find their courage, inner strength, and even happiness in the end. Life in Afghanistan has always been hard for women, but just like Mariam, women are able to take on these obstacles and overcome them, helping to make the world a safer place for others.
In the story “In Camera, Saadawi illustrated how women were treated by the legal system in Arabic country when they did something against the system. The protagonist, Leila Al-Fargani, who was a young woman on trial for calling the “mighty one”, which is a respective title for the President of their country, a stupid man. Moreover, during the time she was waiting for the court date, she was brutally beaten and raped by ten men who seem to be the guards. At the time she was in the court, she was still suffering from the pain both in physical and mental way, but she did not collapse. When the time the judge and those with him declared that ten men raped Leila and also her father’s honor got trampled. (This is the way we torture you women- by depriving you of the most valuable thing you possess”). For the response she said: “You fool! The most valuable thing I possess is not between my legs. You are all stupid. And the most stupid among you is the one who leads you.” In one hand, this quote completely showed that the man thought this sexual violence was totally right when the woman had committed a crime. In anther hand, it also showed that in the very deep of Leila, the...
lies in the depth of the friendship they form. It begins in opposition (Tablet II: 96-108),
Ahmed’s mother is the first to fall into playing her stereotypical social construct after her husband; Hajji Ahmed beats her for not supplying him with an heir, a son. “One day he struck he struck her, because she had had refused to subject herself to a last, desperate ordeal…” This act shows Ahmed’s mothers weakness, a gender normative of women, compared to her husband. However instead of lashing back she accepts the fate she has put herself into. She punishes herself similar to the acts her husband acts onto her. “She, too, began to lose interest in her daughters…and struck her belly to punish herself.” At this point in the novel, it is evident that Ahmed’s mother is adjusting her own belief to match that of Hajji. His reoccurring distaste for his seven daughters has rubbed onto his wife. This compliance to accept her husband’s belief fits into that mold that says that women are not assertive and follow with what their husbands want. The next section femininity is seen in it’s natural essence is seen at the end of chapter three when Ahmed has been attacked and his father confronts him about his girlish ways.
2. To Laila, Mariam is always close. No matter where Laila goes, she knows Mariam is there with her. But most of the time, Mariam is in Laila’s heart.
Both Laila, the lucky girl with breathtaking beauty, whose luck suddenly vanishes, and Mariam, the unlucky and illegitimate daughter, whose luck goes from bad to terribly worse, become dynamic and complex characters. This transformation is brought about by the gradual revealing of Hosseini’s motivation. In fact, Hoesseini is evidently motivated to reveal the truth, and let the emotional and physical realities of Afghani women’s lives be known to the
The film Selena, directed by Gregory Nava is a fantastic portrayal of Selena, American singer, songwriter, spokesperson, model, actress, and fashion designer. Selena is known as the queen of Tejano music and to this day she is one of the top selling Latin artists. She started out at the age of ten in her family band Selena y Los Dinos which gave her the confidence to be able to rise to stardom. Growing up Selena only spoke english but later on her father pushed her to learn to sing in spanish which made her music all the more beautiful. Tragically, Selena was murdered by her own friend and manager Yolanda Saldívar On March 31, 1995 over an argument about the theft of money.