Chapter 6 Summary and Analysis
Chapter 6: Of Love and Death
In late November 2014, Ayad met Asha, whom he ended up falling in love with, though he admits that he still is not entirely sure of the nature of the love. Asha caught his eye from the moment he saw her at the Harvard Club during a social event. After completing her social rounds for business purposes, Asha agreed to have drinks with Ayad and then took him back to her room, where they had sex numerous times. The next morning, she was willing to let Ayad off the hook, telling him that he did not have to see her again if he later realized he had just gotten caught up in one passionate night. Ayad insisted on traveling to visit her in Texas.
Ayad and Asha found that they had a great deal in common. Asha regularly visited a psychic to guide her through life decisions; Ayad had recognized early in his life that sometimes his dreams were seemingly premonitions of future events. Asha’s parents were from Pakistan, and her father embraced the same “fundamental optimism” of America that Ayad’s father had adopted. Asha’s father had developed a gas station chain and then invested in other real estate. He had proudly become a board member at his local chamber of commerce and began scripting letters to famous Americans such as George H. W. Bush.
After Asha graduated summa cum laude from the University of Houston and was accepted to the University of Chicago’s law program, her father wanted to arrange a marriage for her to a first cousin in Pakistan. She refused; she was already in love with a man named Blake, who would betray her many times over the next decade.
Ayad and Asha began seeing each other fairly regularly, though she continued seeing Blake as well. She did not tell Blake about Ayad, but Ayad was well aware of Blake and knew that many of the text messages she sent when they were together were to him. Ayad began to feel jealous and possessive, and these feelings did not increase Asha’s fondness toward him. He began to believe that Asha was the “woman [he] would and must marry,” and he would cry during sex, which was atypical of him.
Seeing his own brown skin joined with Asha’s seemed “unerringly correct” to Ayad, unlike the disgust he often felt when beholding white skin. In falling in love with Asha, Ayad felt that he was also falling in love with his true self, one that did not flinch upon seeing his reflection in a mirror.
One morning after breakfast, Asha told Ayad that she had found a cross in his bathroom and wanted to know whose it was. Though she was not particularly religious, she did identify with some Muslim traditions because of her childhood. Ayad told her that it was actually a souvenir of sorts from September 11. After the Twin Towers had fallen, Ayad eventually started making his way down Broadway. When he reached Fourteenth Street, an officer prevented him from going further. He decided to go to a blood donation site nearby, even though word was quickly spreading that Muslims were behind the attacks. While waiting in line to donate, he noticed one man who kept staring at him. Ayad asked him if he had a problem, and the man verbally attacked him, ending his invective with the declaration that they didn’t “need [his] Arab blood” and that America “should have killed you all when we had a chance.”
When the man made a movement towards him, Ayad urinated on...
(This entire section contains 1373 words.)
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himself. The man noticed and jeered at him in front of everyone who had gathered around the scene. Unable to say a word, Ayad left and went inside a Salvation Army thrift shop. There, he shoplifted the necklace with the cross and wore it continually for three months. He felt that wearing it kept him safer because it made people view him differently. Stunned, Asha told him that she could never do such a thing. After this conversation, Ayad found that his feelings for Asha continued to intensify while she grew increasingly detached from their relationship.
During this time, Ayad’s mother was also dying of cancer, and he periodically returned home to care for her. When Asha called to tell Ayad that Blake had found out about their relationship, she also conveyed that she and Blake had renewed their commitment to each other. A month later, Ayad was home to visit his mother when he became suspicious that he had contracted syphilis. A trip to the local emergency room confirmed the diagnosis, and Ayad was forced to call the seven women with whom he had had sex in the previous six months; Asha was revealed to be the source of his infection. She, in turn, had caught the disease from Blake. When she was with Ayad, she already suspected that she had it but had not mentioned it.
Ayad turned his attention to his mother. He recalled one of her last lucid conversations, in which she apologized to him for bringing him to America. She was convinced that he had never been as happy there as he was in Pakistan. Ayad realized that while his brightest childhood memories were spent in his parents’ villages, he never longed for Pakistan when they left. He realized this differentiated him from his mother, and he recalled all the prayers he had made as a young boy for her to be happy in America. Ayad assured his mother that he had enjoyed a good life in America and that the “serious” attitude she had always chided him about did not mean that he was not also happy. Months later, Ayad’s mother was buried.
Soon thereafter, Ayad spotted Asha’s engagement photos on Facebook. She had seemingly used a dating site that was the equivalent of a “twenty-first-century version of the traditional Pakistani arranged marriage.” Her Pakistani fiancé had attended the same medical school where Ayad’s parents had met. Not long after this announcement, Asha unfriended Ayad on Facebook.
Analysis
Ayad is particularly open about his vulnerabilities in this chapter. He finds that he is deeply in love with a woman, only to become keenly aware that those feelings are not returned. Instead, Asha has used him as a means of manipulating Blake, eliciting jealousy through an affair with Ayad. Perhaps Ayad fell deeply in love with Asha simply for the woman she was. Perhaps he loved her because she helped him to embrace his heritage more completely. Regardless, Asha was never committed to Ayad, despite his certainty that he wanted to marry her.
Ayad also proves vulnerable in revealing his use of a crucifix as a means of obtaining a more peaceful life in post-September 11 America. Ayad no longer embraces the Muslim faith, but Asha believes that he has crossed a line by using the most recognizable symbol of Christianity to avoid possible public confrontation that might arise from being Muslim. As children, they were both taught of the great honor associated with being persecuted for their faith; although Asha doesn’t claim to be a faithful and practicing Muslim, her allegiance to the faith of her childhood causes her to dismiss Ayad’s casual—and fictitious—alliance to Christianity for the sake of self-preservation. This revelation weakens Ayad’s credibility with Asha and diminishes his standing in her eyes. Interestingly, Ayad has hung onto the crucifix for years, symbolic of his need to feel more accepted in a Christian culture.
This conflict of culture is another area of vulnerability, one that Ayad explores through the conversations with his dying mother. He recognizes that his mother’s love of Pakistan far outweighs any fondness she ever felt for America and that she has never felt at home in her new country. While Ayad loves Pakistan, recalling trips there with great fondness, he is able to separate those childhood feelings from his loyalty to being an American. Ayad believes that he can be happy in America and also respect his parents’ homeland, thereby blending the sentiments of his father’s and mother’s differing cultural alliances.
