41 pages • 1 hour read
Hanan al-ShaykhThe Story of Zahra
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 1986A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Part 1, Chapters 4-5Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Part 1: “The Scars of Peace”
Part 1, Chapter 4 Summary: “Husband”
Majed marries Zahra, whom he barely knows, out of a desperation to get married. He thinks about his emigration to Africa and his life in the south of Lebanon, where he grew up in poverty. He recalls the pride his father felt at his moving to Africa to flee such oppression; Majed believed that once he married and had children, he would finally be a “real human being” (75). However, building a life in Africa proved difficult for Majed, whose class followed him. At a celebration of Lebanese Independence Day for all the expatriates at the embassy, most people ignored Majed, who felt out of place in the lavish setting and struggled to find someone he could speak to in Arabic rather than French.
He met his friend Tallal after working in his shop during the evenings so Tallal could drink and gamble. Majed was amazed at all the food Tallal ate, including mangoes and papaya; he told Majed to forget about foods like falafel when they could be eating avocado and caviar.
Majed has long craved physical touch from a woman but could not find one he considered suitable, in part due to his racism and in part due to shame about his frequent masturbation. When he meets Zahra, he looks forward to being able to sleep with a wife whenever he wishes and to marrying into a wealthy, respected family. Though he notices Zahra is unhappy throughout their engagement week and on their wedding night, he believes this is normal for women. However, when she does not bleed on their wedding night, which he takes to mean she is not a virgin, he reacts with anger. She begs him to take her to a doctor to verify her claim of virginity. Once at the doctor’s, however, Zahra tells Majed she was raped. Majed suspects that her family knew this and tricked him into marrying her. She tells him that she’s also had two abortions, and as they leave, Majed realizes how much he hates her. He says that she should have married the man by whom she’d become pregnant; she doesn’t respond except by begging Majed not to tell Hashem. Majed realizes that no one else knows their secret, meaning he can hide his own shame as well as Zahra’s.
He has sex with her that night, though Zahra remains motionless and unresponsive. As Majed plans to move past the incident, Zahra retreats further into herself. At a loss, Majed calls Hashem, and they decide to hospitalize Zahra, who Majed believes is not fit to be a wife or a mother. When she is released, Tallal and his girlfriend visit. Zahra reacts wildly, referring to a picture of her mother that only she can see and laughing erratically. Everyone is bewildered by her behavior.
Part 1, Chapter 5 Summary: “Zahra in Wedlock”
Zahra regrets her marriage to Majed and dreads his touch. Though she plays the part of a happy wife, she convinces no one. At the request of Tallal, Zahra and Majed plan to attend a concert with him and his girlfriend. Before they go, Majed offers to buy Zahra a new outfit to wear, but she won’t pick anything until he leaves. Once he does, she finds something she feels suits her. However, Majed and his friends berate her for her choice, telling her she looks awful. Zahra asks to go home.
Once home, she locks herself in the bathroom and thinks about the first time she encountered her Qarina, a spirit (or jinn) that possesses someone and torments them with nightmares and struggle. She was visiting her grandfather in south Lebanon and saw its reflection in the water; it paralyzed her, rendering her unable to speak or move. As she lies in the bathroom now, she wonders why her Qarina no longer visits her. Majed calls on Hashem to get Zahra out of the bathroom. When she finally agrees to open the door, she begs them to let her return to Beirut.
When she arrives in Beirut, her parents interrogate her endlessly about why she left Africa and whether her marriage has failed. Zahra tells them she has nothing to hide, and her mother lies to visiting guests that Zahra miscarried and needs rest. Zahra is silent and withdrawn, sleeping most of the time. She daydreams about returning to Africa and making her marriage to Majed work; she thinks that if she can perform her role as a wife and hide her true feelings as well as her true self, marriage might be simple. She’d also be free of her family and her feelings of isolation and imprisonment in Beirut.
Zahra returns to Africa but realizes as soon as she sees Majed that she does not wish to be near him and has no idea how to make their marriage work. Once home, Majed tries to sleep with Zahra against her will. She fights him, finally biting him to keep him off her and screaming at Majed to divorce her. In response, he tells her to get dressed and takes her to Hashem. Majed reveals to Hashem everything that’s happened since the two married, including his discovery that Zahra was not a virgin.
Hashem suggests that premarital sex is not the problem Majed is making it out to be. Nevertheless, he asks Zahra to name the man she slept with, thinking she must love someone other than her husband. However, she refuses to discuss what happened with Malek and tells them both she’d rather try once more with Majed. She suggests another wedding—a ceremony people could attend. Majed, bewildered, takes her back home. The next day, his friends visit to celebrate Zahra and Majed’s wedding. During the celebration, Zahra dances with the others and moves freely and wildly to the music. Her uncle stops her, however, and Zahra notices everyone staring at and criticizing her. She falls into a deep sleep and wakes up in a haze afterward, causing her uncle and husband to call a doctor. The doctor medicates Zahra, and her uncle tells her she’ll be going back to Beirut. She overhears Majed tell Hashem about a time she ran away from their home after an argument. An elderly neighbor invited Zahra into her home for rose water, which Zahra happily accepted, but Majed soon came to get Zahra.
Part 1, Chapters 4-5 Analysis
Zahra’s marriage to Majed exacerbates the tension between societal demands and Zahra’s own inner desires. She is constantly torn between what she feels she should do and what she actually wants to do, and Majed’s own desires and shame compound the strain. He too feels societal constraints, saying, “I needed to marry and beget children and to live in a house like everyone else if I was to become a real human being. I needed to get rid of the sense of the shyness and sense of inferiority which had dogged me since the beginning” (74). Majed struggles with having grown up in poverty and looks to attain a lifestyle that would finally give him a sense of belonging. For him, this means a life of wealth and marriage. In his haste to fulfill this dream, the identity of his wife seems a secondary concern; Majed marries Zahra because he sees her as a “ready-made bride” (73).
The pressure Majed feels to lead a certain life is both complicated and worsened by his feelings of displacement in both Lebanon and Africa, which develops the theme of Loyalty, Identity, and Displacement. He is biased against the people of Africa, yet his racist conceptions of the continent make him more tolerant of the revelation that Zahra is not a virgin: He says it’s “as if such formidable questions become insignificant here in Africa, where there is no culture, no environment, no family to blow them up out of all proportions” (88). Majed may dislike Africa, but the separation from his own family and culture gives him a certain freedom to fashion his own understanding of marriage independent of social norms. However, there is a limit to this flexibility. When Zahra struggles with her mental health, he reverts to a misogynistic understanding of marriage, thinking that the caretaking role ought rightfully to be hers and sending her back to Beirut.
Zahra, on the other hand, works very hard to be what Majed desires even as the inner turmoil of her Sexual Repression and Shame results in a mental health crisis. She thinks, “I have tried to make myself into what is expected” (94). Throughout her marriage to Majed (and for much of her broader life), Zahra tries to adhere to the roles that society assigns to her, but she faces criticism regardless. The novel’s exploration of Gender, Oppression, and Violence in 1970s Lebanon reveals the psychological toll women face in trying to meet impossible expectations, like maintaining one’s virginity in a society that encourages men’s sexual violence.
Zahra herself realizes that she is trapped no matter where she turns when she returns to Beirut. There, Zahra “realize[s] to where and to whom [she] had escaped” (103), referring to her life at home as a “prison.” However, when she returns to Africa, she second guesses her judgment: “Was this trap real? If so, how did I come to be returning at this moment, or thinking of remaining another second in Africa?” (107). Zahra cannot find happiness anywhere because her desires and wishes are never met and do not matter to those around her.
Zahra’s Qarina represents all that Zahra represses. The Qarina symbolizes Zahra’s true self: the fears, anxieties, and hopes that plague her and, like the Qarina, cause her to freeze. Since Zahra has not seen her Qarina in childhood, she wonders, “Where is my Qarina? Why doesn’t she visit me any longer?” (99). The answer is likely that Zahra has become too good at repressing her desires. Prior to her affair with the sniper, her Qarina visits her in her sleep, further suggesting that the Qarina symbolizes a part of Zahra that she attempts to hide.
