100 pages • 3 hours read
Atia AbawiA Land of Permanent Goodbyes
Fiction | Novel | YA | Published in 2018A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more. For select classroom titles, we also provide Teaching Guides with discussion and quiz questions to prompt student engagement.
Summary
Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Character Analysis
Themes
Symbols & Motifs
Important Quotes
Essay Topics
Tools
BetaPart 1, Chapters 11-14Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Part 1, Chapter 11 Summary
Only two days after arriving in Raqqa, Fayed, Tareq, and Susan leave. They bring Musa with them as well as Shams and Asil, two neighbor girls. Their parents want them brought to safety, worried that Daesh will take them and marry them off to fighters because they are young and beautiful. They get out just in time: Weeks later, Daesh closes off the city. They pay for seats on a small bus driving them and others to Aleppo, a Syrian city by the border with Turkey. A trip that used to take 2.5 hours now takes 24, as they pass eight checkpoints.
As they drive, Tareq internally says his goodbyes to his homeland. He doesn’t want to leave Syria or his deceased family: “What kind of person abandons his family?” he thinks to himself (78). He has an internal conversation with his brother Salim, telling him that he doesn’t want to leave the family. Salim urges him to go, reminding him that he must take care of Fayed and Susan.
They finally make it to the border, but then it’s a question of whether they will be let into Turkey. They are relieved when they all make it across, “but relief was short-lived, and they had to say goodbye again. This time to each other” (80).
Part 1, Chapter 12 Summary
Four months later, Tareq and Musa are in Istanbul. Fayed and Susan are in Gaziantep, closer to the Syrian border. Shams and Asil left them to join relatives—another permanent goodbye. The plan is for Tareq and Musa to make money in Istanbul—enough to get them all to Europe. However, Tareq and Musa are among many Syrian refugees trying to make a living. Since Turkey won’t give the refugees work permits, they must find black market work, which is severely underpaid. Tareq speaks to Fayed on the phone and glosses over their hardships, not wanting his father to worry.
In a neighborhood known as “Little Syria,” Tareq and Musa have a coffee. They speak with the shop owner, Rami. Rami is opposed to the Assad regime and blames Daesh for what has happened to Syria. He says “That family [Assad’s] has destroyed the country from his father down. I can find a way to live with Daesh but never him” (85). Tareq finds this strange, given how brutal Daesh is. Rami even says he doesn’t believe in the hijab for women, which Daesh strictly enforces.
Rami invites the boys to stay for the open mic night that is about to occur, giving them free coffee and carrot cake. Shayma, a girl who works in the café, serves them. She explains that Rami feels so strongly about Assad because the men in his family died in the Hama massacre 30 years prior. Rami’s mother was able to save him, but Hafez al-Assad’s men raped her and left her for dead. Tareq feels guilty for having judged Rami.
The boys stay for the open mic night. Tareq find feels pride as his fellow Syrians share their talents. Then Shayma shares a poem she’s written, called “Goodbye, Syria, Please Forgive Us.” The moving poem leaves Tareq and many others in tears. Amidst the applause following the poem’s conclusion, Tareq gets a text message from a Syrian number he doesn’t know. It says: “Tareq? Is this you? I need to know if this is you” (92).
Part 1, Chapter 13 Summary
One week later, Tareq still doesn’t know who sent the text message. He responded but didn’t get a reply. He and Musa work odd jobs, getting underpaid and even cheated outright by the people they work for illegally. The boys are adapting differently to life in Istanbul. Musa is learning Turkish and trying to make himself at home; he can see himself settling down there, in part because he’s fallen in love with Shayma, the girl from Rami’s café, and is texting with her frequently. Tareq, on the other hand, has learned almost no Turkish and is frustrated—he wants to get to Europe. He’s convinced that they will be treated better there.
Part 1, Chapter 14 Summary
One month later, Tareq has saved the equivalent of 1,000 US dollars. He hopes this is enough for him, Fayed, and Susan to pay a smuggler to take them to Greece in a boat. He meets with a smuggler in Istanbul’s “Little Syria” and they tell him this is far too little; the man demands at least 1,700 US dollars for the three of them. Tareq begins to lose hope—but then a Turkish shop-owner tells him to go to Izmir, where there are “better deals” (106).
Part 1, Chapters 11-14 Analysis
The last chapters of Part 1 live up to the “promise” that Destiny made in Chapter 10, laying out the hardships of life as a refugee after the homeland has been left behind. Tareq and Musa struggle to make ends meet in Istanbul. They are among thousands of Syrians looking for black market labor in the city, and as illegal workers, they are exploited for their cheap labor.
The book makes it clear that the women are exploited even more severely, however, implying that some turn to prostitution or are forced into it: “Tareq almost felt grateful his mother was not there with them, as he witnessed how poor Syrian women were being treated by men who exploited their desperation, poverty and beauty” (83). Within its treatment of the refugee experience, the book will continue to carve out a niche for the female refugee experience. This also appears in the case of Shams and Asil, for instance: Their parents made them leave Syria, worried that they would be forced to become brides of Daesh militants.
Within the cutthroat atmosphere of the enormous city—Istanbul is home to some 15 million inhabitants—Syrians like Tareq and Musa find comfort in Little Syria. Here, they find a piece of home in the people, language, culture, and food. Destiny explains, “As people migrate, they bring with them their languages, foods and cultures. And as the years pass, they adapt what they’ve brought to fit into their new lives and countries” (103). The shared sense of community among those in Little Syria becomes apparent when Shayma reads out her poem. It begins, “Goodbye, Home—never leave us. / We didn’t want to go…” and ends with “Hello, Strange Land, please take care of us. / Hello, Strangers, please don’t hate us” (90-91). The emotional listeners share the sentiments.
Musa and Tareq’s interactions in the coffee shop also attest to the fact that, although refugees share a common trauma, no two refugee stories will be identical. As in any context, each person is an individual. Musa manages to learn Turkish quickly and feels more at home in Istanbul. Tareq can’t imagine staying there and sees Europe as offering more promising opportunities. Ultimately, Musa feels comfortable enough in Istanbul to stay there—especially after Shayma catches his eye.
The topic of language comes to the forefront during Musa’s and Tareq’s time in Istanbul. Language contextualizes the story as it progresses. While Tareq was in Syria, the narrative included Arabic phrases in the otherwise English-language text, grounding the reader in the setting. Now, in Istanbul, Turkish phrases appear. Later, in Greece, the author will add Greek phrases. Through diction, the reader is brought on Tareq’s journey. The book’s glossary provides translations for common terms like “Yallah” (Arabic for “hurry, come on”). The fact that a reader, who doesn’t speak Arabic, would have to look up such terms also aligns the reader with Tareq in that the reader is confronted with something unfamiliar and foreign. This is a conscious choice on the author’s part, as these words could just have easily been in English.
The author makes another noteworthy decision with the failure to reveal the person behind the text message Tareq receives at the end of Chapter 12. Technically, the omniscient narrator Destiny could reveal who is behind the text—Salim, Tareq’s brother. However, this truth will only be told at the book’s end. By not revealing this fact, the author builds some added mystery into an already suspenseful tale.
