Road to Chlifa

“When I try to understand everything that happened, I tell myself that Karim had the effect of a catalyst. Like in chemistry class when just adding one substance sets off all kinds of reactions.”

The anonymous narrator’s words indicate why the section is named “Catalysis.” However, the narrator here assumes that Karim is a catalyst, an element of a reaction that remains unchanged. It is for the reader to evaluate whether the events in Montreal do change Karim.

“I got out of the chore by telling Robert, the teacher, that I never listen to music and that we don’t have a radio or a tape recorder or anything of the kind at home…Gone the perfect young man who refused to lie. Gone forever. But there’s no one left anymore to care.”

In this diary entry, Karim reveals that he is using his classmates’ and teachers’ ignorance of his culture and religion to his advantage. He also implies that he used to care about lying, leading the audience to wonder what in him has changed.

“‘Ideally,’ she said in a shrill voice, ‘one day we’ll all look alike, pale brown, and we’ll all speak the same language, Esperanto.’”

Sandrine imagines a utopia bereft of cultural, linguistic, or racial difference—seemingly unaware that these differences may be meaningful to the immigrants in the room for whom she claims to speak.

“It’s strange, all the same, to come through fourteen years of war unscathed and then just about buy it in Saint-Donat, Quebec, where bombs and shells must be quite rare, thanks anyway.”

Karim reflects on the irony of acquiring his injuries in a “peaceful” nation when he comes from a war-torn country. This somewhat ironic statement further contrasts his experience with that of his Canadian classmates.

“Karim grew up with the war. He suffered its effects without understanding its cause. Not that the experts themselves didn’t get tangled in the threads of this unpredictable, often irrational war. No one could keep track anymore of its stops and starts, resumptions, reversals and surprises.”

This statement from Section Two’s omniscient narrator provides context for Karim’s childhood, and also highlights the difficulty of understanding the catalysis for war, as opposed to the catalysis for the racialized, high-school conflicts that emerge in Section One. The irrationality of violence is stressed.

“‘Safe, safe! That’s all anyone can talk about. But what’s the point of being safe if you don’t even have a country left?...The city’s in ruins, and yes, the country’s in ruins, but at least it still exists. Because of the people.’”

Karim, speaking to Béchir and his mother, who are about to leave for France, provides his rationale for staying in Lebanon as violence increases. Here, he demonstrates his belief that a nation is not a piece of land, but its population.

“The building in front of him is nothing but a smashed skeleton, blown to pieces, exposing in an obscurely obscene way the intimate interior of the ravaged apartments.”

The description of Nada’s house after the explosion that kills her is compared to a desecrated body. This description’s obscenity and personification, and the use of the word “ravaged,” make an equivalence between the violence of war and the violence of rape.

“It’s like a dream. As if I’ve been looking for a lost dream without ever finding it. And then, all of a sudden, the dream’s in front of me, even more beautiful than I imagined. A dream where people and animals can stand quietly together in a field of flowers without fear. One day I’m going to live in a place just like that.”

Maha, upon seeing the postcard of the unicorn, sees her dreams of peace and nature concretized in a single image. Here, we see her young hopefulness at the possibility for a peaceful world and life.

“Beirut was an oasis of peace, a meeting place, a haven for tolerance, intellectual stimulation and economic prosperity….And all that in the most beautiful country in the world—the ever-present sea, the mountains on our doorstep, an enchanting climate, breathtaking vistas, archeological and tourist sites by the spadeful, a quality of light praised by poets and artists past and present…The problem is that we who are young never knew before.”

Karim mimics the words of his elders to Antoine and Maha. This quotation gives the audience insight into Lebanon’s history and culture before the war, as well as Karim’s deep skepticism that a return to the “before” is possible.

“‘Maybe [they fight] to prove they exist,’ murmurs Karim, ‘to have the satisfaction of doing something. There are days when everything seems so unreal.’”

Karim suggests to Antoine and Maha that, in a state of perpetual warfare and the surreal quality that such a life engenders, that fighting is perhaps a logical response. Violence is a way of confirming that one exists, and that one’s actions have effects. This connects to his conflict with Dave: hitting the other boy wakes him from his vegetative state.

“Nature will always be kinder than other human beings.”

Antoine provides a piece of advice to Maha and Karim as they plan their route to Chlifa. This important statement echoes throughout the book, and frames Maha’s eventual death.

“They are enveloped in silence, assailed by strange scents. The scent of earth, water, flowers and trees. The scent of peace, Karim thinks as he breathes deeply.”

Karim, entering nature, perceives the truth of Antoine’s word and Maha’s dream of the unicorn: nature is indeed a respite from mankind’s violence.

“Over there are bombs; here are trees, rock, birds and butterflies. The two worlds have nothing in common. Maybe this is how one forgets atrocities. By acting as if they don’t exist.”

Karim continues to meditate on the difference between the city and the countryside. This time, the peacefulness of the countryside is not just an escape from the city. It also holds open the possibility that one can in fact pretend that violence does not exist, and then forget it. This is important foreshadowing for the violence that later takes place in nature despite Karim’s statement that it has “nothing in common” with the city.

“…stalagmites grow deep underground, and these stone needles have fallen from the moon. They’re orphans of the moon reaching out to her with all their strength. But the moon is icy in her indifference. She simply bathes them in her white light. She stays there, luring them, taunting them, but never taking them back.”

Maha describes the moonstone landscape lit up by the light of the moon. We see her imaginative capabilities. In addition, this beautiful, magical sight is still one with a hint of warfare and despair: Maha imagines these beautiful moonstones always reaching towards a mother who is just beyond their grasp.

“But don’t you think it’s strange how beautiful old ruins are and how horrible young ruins are, like the ones in Beirut?”

Here, Maha contrasts the bombed city of Beirut with the Roman ruins. While Karim doesn’t think of Beirut as having “ruins,” Maha argues that, one day, the rubble of the city will be viewed in much the same way as the ruins of the past. In doing so, she suggests that all ruins should be viewed as reminders of violence.

“‘Yes, I love the night when I can tell myself stories in the dark alone in my own bed. Or when everything’s so quiet, so immense, like tonight. I hate the night when bombs are going off all over. When people take advantage of the shadows to kill, rape, loot. So you see, everything’s true.’ ‘Or everything’s false,’ Karim remarks.”

Maha reveals her worldview to Karim. Here, she demonstrates her understanding of life as a series of paradoxes, an experience in which there is no absolute or final truth to be arrived at. Importantly, for her, this means that everything is “true.” At this moment, Karim challenges her interpretation, and sees the whole world as a lie.

“‘She was alive and now she’s dead. Tell me, how much time is there between life and death?’”

Referring to Black Beard’s death, Maha laments the quick transition between life and death, asking Karim to explain how such enormous change can take place in the blink of an eye. Karim will ask himself this question in a few pages.

“One sentence from [The Little Prince] suddenly comes back to him—‘It seemed to me that I was holding a very fragile treasure. It seemed to me, even, that there was nothing more fragile on all the Earth.’ They aren’t just words in a book anymore. They’ve taken form in the shivering fragile shape of a wounded young girl.”

This quotation reveals the depths of Karim’s affection for Maha. Here, she is a “treasure” to Karim.

“He can’t tell anymore whether Maha is heavy or light. Sometimes he feels as though he’s carrying a wounded bird, a light, fragile ball of soft, ruffled feathers. But at other times, the light-as-air bird grows heavy, and Karim is afraid he’ll drop the leaden body he is dragging in his arms.”

After Maha’s death, her tendency to see everything as true seems to have rubbed off on Karim. Now, he sees her as both heavy and light. This quotation also further emphasizes the fragility he associates with her in the quote just prior.

“Finally, after the collective madness of the Christmas holidays, my parents simply forced me to go to the neighborhood high school...To make me react. Boy, did I react.”

Karim’s language—that of “reaction”—here echoes that of the anonymous narrator when she refers to him as a “catalyst” that sets off a reaction in their high school. It is left for the reader to evaluate whether or not he believes that he has changed as a result of that reaction.

“What do I know of the unhappiness of others? By what right did I decide that only my suffering was worthy of interest?”

After hearing My-Lan’s story, Karim becomes more aware of the heterogeneity of the immigrant experience. He no longer sees himself as unique within his school or world.

“I choose to live because Maha and Nada are dead...I choose to live so their deaths haven’t been in vain, so they won’t be forgotten. I choose to live to tell their lives to Jad….Oh Maha, Maha, you didn’t even see Jad take his first step!”

In this quotation, Karim resolves to enter the world again so that he can tell his friends’ story to their baby brother, Jad. He also cries out to Maha, not Nada, indicating where his affections now lie.

“If I weren’t leery of making pronouncements, I’d say that Violence Just Erupted In Our Lives. A great big title in red and black letters.”

The anonymous narrator speaks again about Karim’s appearance in Montreal. Once again, she seems to imply that Karim was a catalyst for violence, without realizing the subtle violence already at work in Dave’s racism and misogyny, as manifested in his treatment of My-Lan.