Among the three girls, Ramla’s story was the most interesting one to me. The relationship between she and her father made me think of the relationship between Lila and Lila’s father in In My Brilliant Friend.
The blog will discuss the role of family in Impatient, exploring how does it appear as caring and as the embodiment of patriarchy at the same time.
In The Impatient, the father’s authority feels more absolute, and they keep suppressing their daughters with the structural forces. On the first page of the book, the author Djaïli Amadou Amal starts the book with the words from the father:
Patience, the most valuable component of marriage and of life,…, my father says. His voice is serious (p.1).
Then, page 4-6, she listed out the word of advice other male relatives, specifically the uncles, said to the young girls. I don’t want to paste the whole thing here because the list is sooooo long. But there is one claim from the father that I think is worth mentioning:
“Starting now, you each belong to your husband and owe him total submission, as decreed by Allah. Without his permission, you do not have the right to leave the house or even to visit my bedside. Only by following this rule will you be successful wives!” (p. 7).
From his sayings, we can see that the woman is no longer belong to her father but her husband, and the father is trying to educate his daughter to be a “successful” wife. Different from the Lila’s father, Alhadji Boubakari rarely behaves caring to his children because he has five wives and thirty children, which caused him to not have enough time to show the paternal love to his children. Ramla’s describes that “The sole proof I have of his paternal love is that I exist” (p.12). Therefore, Ramla’s father does not allow her to marry the one she is in love with, but the “most important business partner” they have (p.20).
Similar to her father, the uncles behave very much the same. As the father, being the who does not show any connections with daughters, makes some decisions like this, I totally understand that. However, it feels wrong when Ramla’s mother to not care about Ramla’s thoughts on her own marriage. Even though we cannot assume that Ramla and Aminou would be happy if they get married, marry a person who already had a wife and you don’t know as a person is bad.
But the elder relatives, Ramla’s aunt says to her that “Don’t marry the one you love. If you want to be happy, marry the one who loves you!” to convince Ramla to marry lhadji Issa (p. 29).
Therefore, when Ramla shouts out the long “O father” and “O mother” poem, I feel like my blog should be about this.
The question is: how do you like this book? The Hindou section is sooo depressing in my opinion.