Diverse Reads Annotation

Author: Rajia Hassib

Title: A Pure Heart

 

Genre: Literary Fiction

 

Publication Date: 2019

 

Number of Pages: 343

 

Geographical Setting: Most of the book is set in Cairo, Egypt, some in New York City, New York, and one chapter is set in West Virginia, where the protagonist, Rose’s husband, Mark, was born and raised.

 

Time Period: Modern-day (2016)

 

Series (If Applicable): Not applicable

 

Plot Summary:

 

The Gubran family—Ahmed, Nora, Rose, and Rose’s husband, Mark—are mourning the loss of their youngest daughter, sister, and sister-in-law, Gameela, killed in a terrorist attack in Egypt. Before her death, Gameela’s strict adherence to her religion and expectation that her family members follow her lead caused a rift in her relationship with her parents and sister. After Rose leaves her parents in Egypt and returns to the United States with her sister’s belongings, she sorts through Gameela’s possessions, learning about the aspects of her sister’s life she did not know, trying to understand the events leading up to and grappling with her guilt over Gameela’s death. Simultaneously, Rose struggles to maintain her marriage to her husband, Mark, figure out her identity as a Muslim woman from Egypt living in the United States, and worries about how her parents are coping with Gameela’s death. Rose’s husband, Mark, is also trying to reconcile his guilt and feelings of responsibility surrounding Gameela’s death. The political unrest in Egypt and how Egypt is different from New York, where Rose and Mark live, and West Virginia, where Mark was born, also play a significant role in the plot of this novel.

 

Subject Headings: 

 

Sisters—Fiction

Muslim Women—Fiction

Suicide Bombings—Fiction

Egypt—History—Protests—2011-2013—Fiction

 

Appeals:

 

Frame/Setting:

 

The setting of this novel is important because of the cultural and religious differences between Egypt and the United States, New York, and West Virginia, more specifically, which influences each character’s personality traits. However, I will cover this aspect in the section on the characterization appeal. As for the general importance of the setting, Egypt, where Gameela and her parents live, where Rose used to live, and where she met Mark, stands in stark contrast to New York and West Virginia in terms of how the atmosphere, even years later, affects the characters. As the chapters switch, primarily between Gameela and Rose, as well as Mark, though always remaining in third-person omniscient, Gameela recalls a past moment in time listening to her best friend, Marwa’s father, discuss what Egypt was like during the revolution: “the tens of thousands flooding Cairo’s streets, demanding the end of then President Mubarak’s thirty-year rule; the antiriot forces trying, and failing, to hold protesters back, teargas canisters flying in the air everywhere; that one antiriot van that got toppled over by the sheer force of the protestors’ hands” (Hassib, 2019, p. 268). Although Hassib only sets a singular chapter in West Virginia, mention of the state is made multiple times in the novel, and when Rose and Mark visit Mark’s parents there, how Rose perceives the natural beauty there is not only beautiful in terms of its linguistic composition but also, important to the setting because she compares Egypt, as well as New York, to West Virginia. Rose finds herself drawn to nature in West Virginia, trees, in particular, “because Egypt has so few of them” (Hassib, 2019, p. 216) and because, as she phrases it, “[t]he trees belong here with an authority that the Central Park trees can never boast” (Hassib, 2019, p. 216).

 

Language/Style:

 

Hassib’s attention to descriptive language is quite deft. At the novel's opening, Rose has returned to Egypt to assist her parents and, secretly, to collect some of her sister’s possessions to help Rose make sense of her sister’s death. As Rose searches through Gameela’s belongings, Hassib describes what seems, at first, to be a collection of random, even uninteresting items in such a concise and fragmented way, using semicolons to list out what of Gameela’s possessions her sister takes back to New York, that the reader questions what drew Rose to “the cup of fine china with the butterfly motif; the newspaper article featuring the boy with dark, piercing eyes; the turquoise stone on a delicate gold chain; the stack of unopened mail; the notebooks filled with scribbles; all the photos she can find” (Hassib, 2019, p. 27). As another example, Hassib employs language in the novel to paint the reader an image of the various settings where the characters live and visit and emphasize the thought processes and internal emotions different characters experience. Shortly after Rose returns to New York from Egypt, her grief still fresh, she sits under the trees in the park and thinks to herself that “she wishes they would all fall, rain gently down on her, bury her, hide her from sight for a millennia, until some anthropologist finds her, digs her up, examines her bones, and perhaps, theorizes about her life and death, publishes a narrative in a magazine where people can read her story and pretend to understand something about her” (Hassib, 2019, p. 59). I also found this quote interesting because of how Hassib portrays public perception to stories that archeologists write about the deceased, that the public “pretend[s] to understand” (Hassib, 2019, p. 59), the statement directly influenced by Rose’s grief and frustration that despite holding a similar job title, she cannot find the answers that will tell her about the parts of her sister to which she, not privy.

 

Characterization:

 

As I previously stated, each character has their own unique personality, and subsequently, I could write about Hassib’s characterization of everyone in this novel in detail. However, I will focus on Rose and Gameela, as their relationship, or lack thereof, is central to the story. Hassib implies, through both comments from Gameela and Rose’s parents, how Gameela perceives herself and how Rose perceives her sister, that Gameela is naïve and easily susceptible. Her religious views were a direct result of her susceptibility, for “during her first year in college, [Gameela] brought home cassettes carrying sweet, syrupy voices of men telling her that she needed to cover her hair, as God required, asking her why she felt it was okay to deny God such a small request . . .” (Hassib, 2019, p. 135), voices that she not only fully believed but also, complied with wholeheartedly. Rose experiences a lot of guilt about her sister’s death and their strained relationship throughout the novel. As she examines Gameela’s belongings, deciding which items to take back with her, she is reminded of the story of “Osiris, the ancient Egyptian god whose brother, Seth, trapped him in a coffin, nailed it shut, and sent it floating down that same river. Osiris’s sister and wife, Isis, sought her betrayed husband ( . . . )[,] collecting Osiris’s dismembered body, sewed him together, and brought him back to life” (Hassib, 2019, p. 34). Rose applies this story to her life after her sister’s death, self-identifying “as both Seth and Isis, killer and redeemer. She imagines that by collecting Gameela’s possessions, she will put her sister together again and then instate her as queen of the underworld, empress of resurrection” (Hassib, 2019, p. 34). Hassib’s imagery when describing Osiris’s murder helps the reader to better conceptualize of the depth of Rose’s grief when she compares herself to “both Seth and Isis” (Hassib, 2019, p. 34).

 

3 Terms that Best Describe This Book:

 

1) Emotionally fraught

2) Informative

3) Family dynamics

3 Relevant Non-fiction Works and Authors:

1) Egyptology: An Introduction to the History, Art, and Culture of Ancient Egypt by Putnam, James

The protagonist, Rose, in A Pure Heart, is an Egyptologist. She credits her interest in Egyptian pharaohs (p. 74) for her career choice; additionally, the novel briefly explains one part of her job, similar to archival work. However, I presume that a career in the study of Egypt is even more varied in terms of roles, responsibilities, and topics of interest than solely what the reader sees concerning Rose’s job. Therefore, I chose this nonfiction work because it provides more background into the history of Egypt, which may interest readers for whom the historical elements of the novel were of interest. 

2) The Muslim Brotherhood: Evolution of An Islamist Movement by Wickham, Carrie Rosefsky

The divisive politics of Egypt play a significant role in A Pure Heart not just on a broad, country-wide scale but also on a smaller scale within the Gubran family. A central conflict between Gameela and her family is how starkly her political views differ from her parents and her sister. For example, during a phone conversation about the tension between her and her parents, Gameela tells Rose, “[i]t’s like I’m living with Al-Sisi’s personal propaganda machine” (Hassib, 2019, p. 129). Unlike her mother, who referred to Egypt’s previous leadership, the Muslim Brotherhood, using the term “extremist” (Hassib, 2019, p. 127), Gameela, while not necessarily a supporter of the Brotherhood’s regime, is more critical of the new leader in power than her parents. This disparity in views is one reason I chose this nonfiction work. According to the book summary, “the implications of the Brotherhood’s rising power for the future of democratic governance, peace, and stability in the region is open to dispute” (Goodreads, n.d.-c). Despite this political contentiousness, Rosefksy’s nonfiction text seems to take a more neutral approach to covering this subject. This book is not only well-researched, but also, Rosefsky “draw[s] on more than one-hundred in-depth interviews as well as Arabic language sources not previously accessed by Western researchers” (Goodreads, n.d.-c). That the author incorporates “Arabic language sources” (Goodreads, n.d.-c) in this nonfiction work is important for two reasons. For one, these sources provide a non-Western perspective on the topic. Two, Egypt is an Arab nation. 

 

I do want to mention that in a 2004 interview with the Emory Report, the newsletter for the university at which she works, Wickham self-identified as “fluent in Arabic” (Rangus, 2004) and has immersed herself in Egyptian culture for a significant amount of time, residing there “for three years” (Rangus, 2004); however, Wickham “is Jewish” (Rangus, 2004), born in the United States, and, perhaps most importantly, not Muslim. 

3) Do Muslim Women Need Saving? by Abu-Lughod, Lila,

Although gender is not the central focus of A Pure Heart, Hassib provides information about gender roles in Egypt and through the lens of the Islamic religion. For example, when Mark asks Rose to marry him over dinner, she initially responds by reminding him of the legal barrier they face: “Muslim women [are] not allowed to marry outside of their faith” (Hassib, 2019, p. 87). If Mark were not to convert to Islam, “[this] alternative would be equal to living in sin—not a big deal to any Westerner, but in Egypt an offense that still warranted honor killing in some parts of the country” (Hassib, 2019, p. 87). In addition to strict marriage requirements, Egypt also enforces a particular gender presentation for females. Gameela ascribes by the belief that “a woman’s dress needed to be modest by the standards of her society” (Hassib, 2019, p. 267); her ideology runs counter to many in the Western hemisphere, the United States specifically, who believe that dress codes and other attempts to control what women wear are sexist. Lughod-Abu’s nonfiction text presents an interesting counter to the stereotypical Western belief that women who wear hijabs are being oppressed. The summary for this nonfiction text describes the author, Lila Abu-Lughod, as “an anthropologist who has been writing about Arab women for thirty years” (Goodreads, n.d.-a). In this book, she argues against this stereotypical Western belief, “delv[ing] into the predicaments of Muslim women today, questioning whether generalizations about Islamic culture can explain the hardships these women face and asking what motivates particular individuals and institutions to promote their rights” (Goodreads, n.d.-a).

3 Relevant Fiction Works and Authors:

1) Where Jasmine Blooms by Holly S. Warah

Although the plot of Where Jasmine Blooms is quite different from A Pure Heart, it does contain similarities to its companion fiction work. Outside of the United States, Palestine, Syria, and Jordan, where the summary for this novel says the novel is partially set, are all Arab nations, as is Egypt, where Rose and her family are from in A Pure Heart, according to a Google search. Furthermore, both novels explore Muslim identities, intercultural marriages, and the complications that can arise and feature a female protagonist. Rose and Mark’s marriage in A Pure Heart is fraught, partially because of Mark’s inadvertent role in Gameela’s death and partially because of the cultural differences between the two, with Rose having been born in Egypt and Mark in the United States, more specifically, West Virginia. In Where Jasmine Blooms, Alison, daughter to Margaret, also has a complicated marriage, with the book summary stating, “her American education and Syrian background are of no use when her new marriage begins to crumble under the weight of cultural and religious differences” (Goodreads, n.d.-e).

2) A Place for Us by Fatima Farheen Mirza

Like the characters in A Pure Heart, those in Fatima Farheen Mirza’s A Place for Us are Muslim and, just like Rose, they live in the United States. This novel also focuses on dysfunctional family dynamics like those between Rose and Gameela. The plot summary for this read-alike centers around “the eldest daughter, Hadia's, wedding - a match of love rather than tradition” (Goodreads, n.d.-d), which shares similarities to Rose’s marriage to Mark in A Pure Heart. Although Mark converts to ensure the legality of their marriage (Hassib, 2019, p. 88), he is still a white American who was raised Christian (Hassib, 2019, p. 252). Against her sister’s wishes, Rose did not seek out or even rule out a romantic partner based on their religious beliefs. She and Mark fell in love despite being from different countries.

3) The Family Tree by Sairish Hussain

Sairish Hussain’s The Family Tree is very different in the plot from A Pure Heart. However, general similarities exist, including that the characters are Muslim, a main character's death occurs, and the familial relationships between the characters are strained. One part of the plot summary for this novel states that Amjad’s daughter, Zarah, has a life “alight with politics and activism[,] [b]ut she is now her father’s only source of comfort, and worries she’ll never have time for her own aspirations” (Goodreads, n.d.-b). Zahra seemingly embodies characteristics of both Gameela and Rose in A Pure Heart; like Gameela, her political ideology is important to her, and like Rose, it seems that she adopts the role of peacemaker in her family.

 

References:

Goodreads. (n.d.-a). Do Muslim women need saving? https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/17574515

Goodreads. (n.d.-b). The family tree. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/49942824-the-family-tree

Goodreads. (n.d.-c). The Muslim Brotherhood: Evolution of an Islamist movement. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/25593021-the-muslim-brotherhood

Goodreads. (n.d.-d). A place for us. https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/36840397

Goodreads. (n.d.-e). Where jasmine blooms. https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/31212936

Hassib, R. (2019). A pure heart. Viking

Indianapolis Public Library. (n.d.). An introduction to the history, art, and culture of ancient Egypt. https://indypl.bibliocommons.com/v2/record/S165C324509

Rangus, E. (2004, February 23). Everything in moderation. Emory Report. https://www.emory.edu/EMORY_REPORT/erarchive/2004/February/feb%2023/2_23_04profile.html