In this episode we continue the
drama of Abdul and his family as his mother attempts to find out who to bribe
and how in order to free her son, daughter, and husband. With Fatima dead from
an infection in the hospital, however, her husband and son were guaranteed a
place in prison, and not just their unofficial holding cell. The monsoon hits
and makes everything worse as Abdul’s brother is an inadequate sorter and
negotiator. Abdul’s mother finally gets Abdul to be charged as a child rather
than an adult via a bribe to the constable.
I imagine this is the dramatic
element Boo needed in order to make the story seem more like a fiction and less
like a semi-dramatic account of life in the slums. This family, who was on the
up and up suddenly has every catastrophe hit them all at once, leaving them
scrambling for solutions. I felt very tense while reading this and the last
part, just because I knew how tense everyone else must have felt while it was
going on. Every move they made seemed to be a wrong move and I felt for them,
not empathetically of course, but sympathetically at least as someone who’s
been put in some difficult to navigate situations. I don’t know the fate of
Zehrunisa, but I can imagine she’s only a nudge away from a full on nervous
breakdown. This section reads well I think mostly because now it’s explaining
the aftermath of the Preface, and thus bringing it all full circle and beyond.
No comments:
Post a Comment