66 pages • 2 hours read
Gina WilkinsonWhen the Apricots Bloom
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2021A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapters 14-17Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 14 Summary
Ally meets with Hatim, who has served as Ally’s other driver, and he shows her pictures of his two daughters. Hatim used to be a successful architect before the economy weakened, and Ally is a little ashamed of her own wealth when she is around him. She tells him that she will be eating at a restaurant and shopping on Arasat Street, but she also plans to meet Miriam Pachachi.
In Miriam’s home, there are two comical portraits of Saddam Hussein in the foyer, and Miriam leads Ally to her studio, remarking that Ally looks like her mother. Ally asks about her mother, and Miriam says that Bridget, herself, and Yusra, the nurse that Ally was looking for earlier, were all involved in the communist party before the rise of Saddam’s regime. Miriam suspects that Bridget was only involved because of Yusra. Miriam asks Ally to leave, but she does tell Ally that Yusra lived on 82nd Avenue.
Ally tries to get Hatim to take her to 82nd Avenue to look for Yusra’s home, but they turn around as they approach Rasheed Airport. Ally fears that her diplomatic status will not protect her near a military base, and Hatim asks Ally to stay in and around her own neighborhood in the future. Back at home, Ally is quick to record Yusra’s name, 82nd Avenue, and the slogan of the literary magazine that her mother was involved with: “Radical art and radical politics” (165). Ally then goes to cross-reference what she has learned and finds that the last chapter of one of her books has been removed. She becomes paranoid that the mukhabarat have been in her home and deletes Yusra and Hatim’s names from her computer.
Chapter 15 Summary
Ally arrives at Rania’s home and notices Miriam’s statue of a mother and daughter. Rania runs into Hanan in the hallway and sends Hanan to her room, thinking about how she could potentially move her daughter to London. Rania tells Ally how Scheherazade, narrator of One Thousand and One Nights, was forced to tell stories to keep her husband from killing her. Rania resolves to send Hanan back to Basra with her mother, Raghad, but Rania’s cousin Hala arrives to tell Rania that Raghad has suffered a stroke.
In the next scene, Rania sits in her mother’s hospital room and laments that she cannot properly handle her mother’s situation because she is focused on protecting Hanan. Basra was the last safe place for Hanan, and Raghad’s death removes that option. Rania meets with Kareem to try to obtain a passport for Hanan. She explains that Saddam’s son, Uday, has taken an interest in Hanan, and Kareem relates to that danger. He can get Hanan a passport for $3,000, much more than the $900 from Huda. Kareem implies that Huda may never get the passport for Khalid and notes that Hanan cannot travel without male permission.
Chapter 16 Summary
Huda and Ally eat at a deserted restaurant, and Ally thinks about how her father’s reliance on alcoholism to forget his wife’s death. Ally compares her father’s need to drown out his pain with the Iraqi focus on the golden years before Saddam and the future after Saddam. She and Huda both think that sharing food by the river would solve the issues facing Iraq. Huda recommends visiting 82nd Street, and Ally wonders if maybe 82nd Street, not 82nd Avenue, is where Yusra lives.
On 82nd Street, Huda and Ally struggle to convince residents to talk about Ally’s photo. They find an old man in a nursery selling plants, and although he initially recognizes Yusra, he then insists that he was mistaken, that Yusra does not live there and he does not know about her. Ally doubts his word, but Huda says they must leave to pick up Khalid from a soccer game.
Chapter 17 Summary
Ally is convinced that the gardener recognized Yusra and that Yusra lived there. However, Yusra’s house was bulldozed, indicating that she was a traitor. Huda tries to change the subject, but Ally mentions Rania’s mother. Huda received the news of Raghad’s illness earlier, and she tried to read her fortune-telling talismans, but they were old and broken. Huda remembers casting her talismans as a teenager with Rania while Mustafa was ill from a cut in his foot.
While Ally and Huda are driving, Ally mentions a couple of classmates in her aerobics class, and Huda takes special note of them. Ally tells Huda about Hatim, her other driver, and Huda is worried that the other driver might be mukhabarat, or that Abu Issa will be angry to learn that Huda and Abdul Amir are not Ally’s only drivers. Ally spots a missile along the side of the road, but Huda ignores her and tells her that the lemon tree they purchased from the gardener cost 10,000 dinar, double what Huda actually paid for it. After dropping Ally off, Huda pulls over to pray at the side of the road.
Chapters 14-17 Analysis
Ally’s connections to Huda, Rania, and Bridget grow in these chapters as she finds out more information about Yusra and Miriam, as well as their connection to Bridget in the 1970s. However, the limits of Ally’s abilities and protections are also shown in her refusal to go to 82nd Avenue, fearing that her diplomatic status might not protect her there. Likewise, Ally is unable to get Miriam or the nursery gardener to discuss Yusra and Bridget’s activities, marking the divide between the risks that Ally is willing to take and the risks that others are willing to take on her behalf. Ally’s protections are called into question again, this time within the supposed safety of her home, and she realizes that she cannot record the information that she has gathered so far, for she cannot risk discovery and investigation by the mukhabarat. In the context of the narrative, these tests of Ally’s protection show a tightening of the tension that surrounds her surreptitious investigations of her mother, but they also show the tension between Huda, Rania, and Ally as their relationships progress. The comparison to Scheherazade comes up yet again, but this time the literary figure is used to symbolize the need for Iraqi women to tell stories and lie to the men in their lives to prevent their own deaths.
As the women’s difficulties mount, Raghad’s stroke threatens to interrupt Rania’s focus on getting Hanan out of Baghdad, but although Rania is ashamed of her distraction from her mother’s situation, she remains focused on saving Hanan from Uday Hussein even when in her mother’s hospital room. The situation thus highlights the hierarchy of priorities within Rania’s responsibilities toward her family, for her primary responsibility is to her daughter, not to her mother, and the absence of men becomes even more notable in this situation. Ideally, the sheikh would be there to support Raghad, and Hashim would be there to support both Rania and Hanan, but both men are dead, which leaves Rania in the singular position of owing responsibility to her entire family, since her cousin Hala is only present for a few moments. Again, this independence is both a blessing and a curse, as the absence of a man in Hanan’s life jeopardizes her chances of escaping Iraq. Even so, the presence of a man is implied to be more hindrance than help in the long run, and the truth of this dynamic is evidenced both by the violence of men like Abu Issa and Malik and by the negligence of men like Abdul Amir and Tom. Rania’s note that the cleric must be happy about the recent laws regarding women’s travel permits likewise reflects a general distaste for orthodox religion, which is then contrasted with Huda’s act of praying by the side of the road.
Forced by difficult circumstances to do whatever she can to secure her son’s safety, Huda’s journey in these chapters takes an uncomfortable turn as she settles into a pattern of deceit with Ally, invoking the frequently used motif of secrets that Wilkinson employs throughout the novel. Her reluctance to tell Ally about Yusra’s home is paired with her lie about the cost of the lemon tree and her note-taking on Ally’s classmates. The build-up of her own cognitive dissonance around these actions culminates in her need to pull over and pray on the roadside, which shows her reliance on cultural forms of comfort despite the adversity caused by those very same cultural elements. As tensions escalate, the many obstacles of this male-dominated culture become ever more prevalent, and even Huda and Rania’s need to obtain male permission for their children’s travel permits indicates the resurgence of religious values as embodied in the character of the cleric. Huda’s participation in the mukhabarat’s scheme to entrap Ally is now also linked with the cleric in his and Kareem’s plan to provoke foreign intervention. As such, Huda’s roadside prayers are born of a paradoxical melding of fear and relief as she falls more deeply in line with the desires of the men who seek to control her and prays to their shared God for forgiveness. Huda’s prayers raise the question of how Abu Issa, Kareem, and the cleric might view their own roles in the intrigue; Huda is ultimately performing her role in these affairs to protect her child, but each of these men is involved largely for personal gain. Presumably, Kareem and the cleric hope to shape the new government that arises after foreign intervention in ways that will suit their own interests, and Abu Issa operates in the mukhabarat to obtain money and power.
In this section of the novel, all of the women reach seemingly impassable obstacles in their personal journeys, with Huda reaching a mental breaking point, Rania finding out that she may not be able to save her daughter, and Ally realizing that her search for her mother’s past may lead nowhere. The critical element in these situations is that each woman is alone in her realization, with Rania meeting with Kareem alone, Huda praying alone on the side of the road, and Ally deleting her notes alone at home. The isolation of each woman thus reflects the need for the three to come together and assist one another in their efforts, since all three have information and abilities that can provide mutual aid. Huda’s determination, Rania’s connections, and Ally’s diplomatic status can all be combined to collectively solve all their problems, but their respective assets can also potentially be used to hurt one another. Despite such difficulties, the dominant message contained in the hopelessness that each woman feels is the need for unity in the face of oppression, specifically male oppression, and this dynamic foreshadows the possibility of either a reunion that saves all three or of betrayals that destroy all three.
