Amal Unbound

Sharing food is an expression of love. It brings family and friends together. Family meals offer time to communicate and deepen relationships. Amal senses this acutely when she returns home to visit. She has missed her mother’s food, and while the kardhai chicken and fresh roti are delicious, Amal missed her family even more. The dinner makes Amal again realize how “precious” her ordinary life was.

Sharing food shows that one cares about someone. For Amal’s departure to the Khan’s estate, Amal’s mother packs nuts and dried fruit in Amal’s suitcase along with her clothes. Fozia brings sweets to celebrate the new baby and gives Amal a box of laddus when she must return to the estate. Food calls up memories of family, the past, and love. When Amal shares her treats with Nasreen, the older woman takes a bite and exclaims “it tastes like home” (176). Food represents a connection to family and love. 

Memories, like books, help keep Amal afloat in her new life of servitude. Memories prevent Amal from losing hope and giving into despair. Although memories can be painful— emphasizing all the freedoms and love that Amal has lost—Amal is determined not to lose her memories. They connect her to her past and to her family. Memories underscore the novel’s theme of the importance of family and its unbreakable, supportive bond.

Amal hopes that her memories will never “grow as distant as Nasreen Baji’s had” (149). Losing her memories would be losing a part of herself, her identity. Amal does not agree with Nabila’s advice to keep her family in a “separate part of [her] heart” (122). Amal’s memories of her family are one of the only things that sustain her. She says, “If I stopped remembering my life before this, what reason would I have to go on?” (122), showing how important her family is to her life. On her visit home, Amal absorbs as many details of her family as she can, so she can “hold onto it” when she must return to the estate (160). Amal cherishes the henna decorations on her hands because they will remain for a few weeks as a memory of her visit. Like books, memories allow Amal to be free in her mind, mentally escaping the estate. They also keep her rooted to her past and her self-view.

The natural world offers Amal and several other characters a sense of both freedom and quietude. Amal can freely meet Omar by the wooded stream near her family’s fields. Memories of her mother working in the garden, and growing her roses, connect Amal to her home and help her relate to Nasreen. Talk of gardening also prompts Nasreen to remember her childhood and family, and the peace she found in working the land. Nasreen’s unwillingness to garden now that she is married to Khan represents the loss of her family and freedom. Nabila enjoys the peace of the garden and comfort of the stray cat. When she was younger, the purple flowers reminded Nabila of her home, and allowed her to imagine she was free. However, the garden at the estate is a conflicted place for Amal. It offers her a feeling of calm, glimpses of freedom, and recalls memories of home, but its high walls also remind her of her bondage.