The Impatient follows three women, Ramla, Hindou, and Safira, as they navigate life inside a polygamous marriage in northern Cameroon, Africa.
In this novel, every time a woman tries to stand up for herself or say that something is wrong, the fault is always put on her behaviour rather than what’s actually being done to her. What Amal is showing is that the most effective way to keep a system going is to attach it to something no one can argue with, and then make the women who’ve already been through it the ones who pass it down. For example, Hindou’s mother was forced into marriage at 14 to replace her dead sister with one week’s notice. Despite that, she sends Hindou back to her abuser anyway, fully knowing the fate her daughter awaits.
Building on this, it’s also worth noting how little the men actually have to do to enforce the systems and traditions that entirely benefit them. As an example, the aunties are the ones steering the brides into the wedding cars. Goggo Diya is the one telling Hindou her screams during her assault were indecent and disgraced the family. Lastly, Safira spends most of the novel scheming against Ramla, not the man who has wronged them both. However, we cannot say that any of these women are acting out of pure cruelty either. After all, they’re just doing what they’ve been taught their whole lives to do. It just shows that over time, they become conditioned to take part in the same system that was used to break them. The system reproduces itself through the people it has already damaged, which is what makes it so hard to dismantle in the first place.
This novel was a hard read, especially compared to other books in this course. Even though the characters themselves are fictional, child marriages, domestic abuse, and misogyny are still very much alive and happening all over the world. It is also the fact that Amal herself lived through a version of this that makes it even more disheartening. Women shouldn’t have to survive something before anyone takes it seriously. For my last read of the course, I hesitate to say I enjoyed this book in the usual sense, but it reminded me that reading can bring you into lives and realities completely different from your own.
Discussion question: Was there anyone in this book who was ever really free to make a different choice?
6 replies on “Thoughts on The Impatient”
“What Amal is showing is that the most effective way to keep a system going is to attach it to something no one can argue with, and then make the women who’ve already been through it the ones who pass it down”
Totally! The continuing of the violence cycle is one of the key aspects of the novel.
See you on Wednesday
Julián.
Yes, I agree with you for “how little the men actually have to do to enforce the systems and traditions that entirely benefit them.” The women in this book are the “willing participants,” which is kinda sad though.
Hi,
That’s a really good question. It feels like no one in the book is truly free to make their own choices. Even when the women make decisions, they are influenced by fear, pressure, and what they’ve been taught their whole lives. It shows how hard it is to go against the system.
I really liked how you explained the idea of the system basically sustaining itself through the women who’ve already been hurt by it because that honestly felt like one of the most disturbing parts of the book. It’s not just the men enforcing control, it’s how normalized everything has become to the point where even the victims are pushed into continuing it. To your question, I don’t think anyone in the book was truly free to make a different choice. Even when it seems like they have options, those choices are so limited by fear, culture, and expectations that they’re not really choices at all. It feels more like survival than freedom, which is what makes the whole situation so heavy.
Hi Fiona, Reflecting on your text, “Even though the characters themselves are fictional, child marriages, domestic abuse, and misogyny are still very much alive and happening all over the world” I also touched on this in my blog post, I think a reason that we are so disturbed by this book is because this same thing is happening as we read this book, thinking about how we are reading someones life situation for a class leaves us with an uncomfortable feeling. Thanks for sharing!
Hi Fiona, I really enjoyed reading your blog, to answer your question I honestly think it feels like nobody in the book is truly free because the system is rigged to punish anyone who tries to step out of line. Even characters with a bit of status, like the men or the older women, are just following a script that’s been written for them for generations. So i guess at the end of the day no one is free, some (ofc the men) just have luckier scripts. There are expectations and proper positions that at the end of the day everyone in this book is trying to “fit” in, as if there was only one right way to live, or one “proper” role.