55 pages • 1 hour read
Randa JarrarA Map of Home
Fiction | Novel | YA | Published in 2008A 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 5-8Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Part 1, Chapter 5 Summary: “Summer’s Fabric”
The summer that Nidali turns 11, her family flies to Egypt for her aunt’s wedding.
Geddo, Nidali’s grandfather, drives the family from the airport to Alexandria. They reach Ma’moora, a beachside neighborhood in Alexandria, and arrive at Aunt Sonya’s apartment. Sonya immediately begins discussing the wedding. She tells Nidali that she will let her wear makeup for the wedding, but Mama interjects and tries to protest. That night, Nidali’s mother and aunt drink coffee and gossip for hours as Nidali falls asleep.
The next day, Nidali explores the rest of the apartment and goes into her mother’s old room. She looks at old photographs beneath the glass top of her mother’s dresser. Among the photos, she spies an old invitation to her father’s poetry reading from 1971.
Mama takes Nidali to visit Yia Yia at the Greek Cooperative Cemetery. Nidali stands at Yia Yia’s grave and tells her about her life. She notices a single frozen tear on her mother’s cheek: “Now I saw that Mama’s tear was like glass” (87). Nidali wonders if her grandmother, who was Christian, understands her and her family when they pray for her with Koranic verses. On the car ride home, Nidali looks at Mama as she drives and wonders what it will be like when Nidali visits her own mother’s grave someday.
At the wedding, Nidali feels uncomfortable in her dress and wishes that she could take it off. She complains to her cousin Layla, and they decide to sneak out to the beach. Nidali reflects on how her parents got married at the same hotel. Layla says, “They slept together here” (89). Nidali doesn’t understand what she means, so Layla tells her “how babies are made” (89). Nidali is disgusted with this thought and tries to push it away.
Layla tells Nidali that when a woman has sex for the first time, she bleeds, but then she doesn’t bleed ever again. Nidali says that her mother bleeds every month, but Layla says dismissively that that’s just her period, and in fact, Layla just started her period last year when she turned 12. Layla says that Aunt Sonya will bleed tonight—if she is a virgin. Nidali doesn’t know what a virgin is. Layla explains: “Baba told me we’re like a match. Once we’re lit, we can’t be lit again” (90). Nidali brushes this off, telling Layla that Sonya’s husband won’t care whether Sonya is a virgin or not.
They reenter the wedding hall just as Sonya and her new husband hold up glasses of hibiscus tea to “cheers” each other. Her husband fumbles and drops the glass and spills tea in Sonya’s lap. Nidali sees the red stain on Sonya’s white dress and decides that what Layla said about virgins must be true.
A week after the wedding, Baba arrives in a car. He embraces Mama and cries. He tells Nidali that Sido, his father, is dead.
Part 1, Chapter 6 Summary: “Barefoot Bridge”
Nidali’s family sets out for Palestine to attend her grandfather’s funeral. They fly to Jordan, then take a taxi to the border. Nidali notices the mountainous, rocky terrain and how it contrasts with the terrain of Kuwait or Egypt. She asks Mama for a pen and paper and makes a list of everything that she sees out the window.
They arrive at a checkpoint and board a bus. As they approach Allenby Bridge, they are told to exit the bus and move into a building, where their bags are dumped out and inspected. Nidali eyes some of the soldiers, thinking to herself that they’re cute.
Eventually, she and her mother are separated from Baba and Gamal. Female soldiers instruct them to move into rooms that look like changing rooms, where they’re told to remove their clothes. A soldier scans their bodies with black devices. Mama lets out a huge fart and the soldier is forced to leave. Another soldier yells and Nidali sees that the soldier found a gold chain that a woman was attempting to smuggle in her tampon.
As they put their clothes and shoes back on, another woman yells at one of the soldiers, accusing her of stealing her shoes. The soldier denies this, but the woman continues to yell at her until finally the soldier relents and flings the shoes at her.
Hours later, Mama and Nidali are reunited with Baba and Gamal, and they take a taxi to Baba’s village.
The next day, Nidali wakes up in her grandmother Sitto’s house. Sitto is illiterate but known for her storytelling abilities. Nidali helps Sitto cook as Sitto tells her a folk tale about two sisters who farted in front of the mayor. Nidali admires her grandmother, thinking to herself that although her grandmother is illiterate, she can still tell tales.
Nidali visits Sido’s grave with Baba. Baba tells her about his childhood and how all his sisters got married young. He says he wants Nidali to have the same opportunity he had to gain an education—something his sisters never had.
Part 1, Chapter 7 Summary: “Life Is a Test”
Nidali characterizes her 12th year of life as the “Year of the Long, Hard Study” (107), in which she studies diligently for her entrance exam to get into secondary school. The exam determines students’ rankings for the four years of secondary school, which in turn influences where students can go to college.
Nidali tells Baba that she would rather listen to his stories about childhood than study her textbooks. Baba takes this seriously and orders her to serve as his scribe as he dictates a memoir aloud. He starts to speak but then revises his words, starting and re-starting over and over again. He continues to force Nidali to do this every night. She arranges snacks for herself and waits as her father thinks. He never gets further than dictating the title of the work, “Evergreen, A Memoir” (109).
At school, Nidali stands on the playground with Linda and their friend Rama, a new student from the Sudan, listening to a mixtape that Linda stole from her brother. They look over at the students from the Senior school. A curly-haired boy waves at Nidali, and she doesn’t know what to do. Rama holds up Nidali’s arm and forces her to wave back.
Nidali takes the entrance exam. During the first part of the exam, she is overwhelmed by the questions and worries about wasting away in the junior school and never making it to the senior school. During the essay portion of the exam, she writes a short story about aliens and ends the exam feeling content with her work.
A month later, the exam results are revealed. Students find out whether they are placed in 1A, 1B, 1C, or 1X, “[t]he Nerd Class […] for super-geeks who scored exceptionally high on the multiple-choice and essay questions” (114). Nidali knows that Baba will punish her if she does not get placed in 1A. She sees her result and screams in horror. She got into 1X.
While enrolled in 1X, Nidali continues to write stories for her assignments instead of doing essays. She frequently gets punished with detention. In detention, she often spots the curly-haired boy, Fakhr, from the courtyard. One day, she asks him what he’s writing. He says that he writes letters addressed to famous people. He writes Nidali a sarcastic letter (beginning with, “[d]ear bitch,” and using a racial slur) and passes it to her (117). Nidali reads it and, “[a]fter that, [she] tried to get detention at least every other week” (117).
Throughout her eighth-grade school year, she continues to get detention but still gets A grades in her classes. She kisses Fakhr a total of “three and a half times” (119). She is happy to be demoted to 2A for the following year.
Nidali convinces her mother to let her go to a pizza party celebrating the end of the school year. After the party, she sits on the steps outside the pizza place next to Fakhr, watching people go by. Baba arrives to pick her up, and she panics. They drive home as Baba silently seethes.
They arrive home. Nidali sees her mother sitting in the corner of the room. Baba kicks Nidali to the floor. He yells at her for celebrating her demotion to 2A, but Nidali protests, saying that he must be angry just because he saw her with a boy. Baba slaps her, grabs both of her hands with one of his hands, and continues to slap her, calling her a “whore” (122).
Afterward, Nidali waits for mother to come and comfort her, but her mother never comes. Nidali wonders why Mama doesn’t love her enough to protect her.
Part 1, Chapter 8 Summary: “Tanks Like Green Elephants”
On the morning of Nidali’s 13th birthday, she hears planes flying overhead, tanks rolling through the streets, and bombs dropping: A war is starting.
She turns on the TV. The announcer declares that Kuwait is now the 19th province of Iraq.
One day, bombs begin dropping close to the apartment. The family crawls underneath the living room table, huddling together. Gamal asks if they are going to die. Baba amuses himself by slapping Mama’s rear and saying that they will survive and “live off of the fat preserves in your mama’s ass” (129). Eventually, they all stretch out their legs to meet each other in the center—“a tender moment” (129)—and the bombing stops.
Four weeks later, as the invasion continues, Gamal finds a black cat in the bathroom. As Baba gestures, thinking about what to do about it, Nidali flinches. He asks her why she flinched, and she says that she thought he was going to hit her. He staunchly denies hitting her often, even though Nidali says that he’s hit her at least “five hundred” times in her life (132).
Nidali’s friend Rama calls and tells her that Linda and her family fled for Saudi Arabia because they are Kurdish.
One day, Nidali convinces her parents to let her visit Rama. Mama drives her there and visits with Rama’s mother while Nidali and Rama spend time in Rama’s room. They get into a tickle fight. Their legs entangle, and they begin grinding against each other. Nidali jumps quickly out of bed. The two girls pretend that nothing happened. After Nidali leaves, she realizes that she will never see Rama again, and she cries on the way home, thinking about the injustice of war.
Part 1, Chapters 5-8 Analysis
These chapters reinforce the theme of School as Both Refuge and Battleground. Nidali’s school serves as a refuge because it provides her with a chance to form crushes and explore her attractions outside the confines of her strict home life. On the other hand, school serves as a battleground for Nidali as she navigates the pressures and expectations of her father, Baba. She feels the weight of competition and the pressure to perform well in her studies, which adds additional tension to her already complex relationship with her father.
As a character, Nidali undergoes development from a wholly obedient daughter to a slightly more rebellious one. While she still gets good grades, she begins to push back against her father’s narrow definition of success and starts pursuing her own interests and passions in small ways. The motif of the pen reflects this. Nidali uses it as a form of escapism and creativity but also as a form of rebellion. She uses her pen to write stories, which at first inadvertently brings her academic success but later brings her punishment. This punishment, in the form of detention, leads her to spend time with her crush, Fakhr. Fakhr is another character who uses a pen; he pens letters to famous figures. Fakhr and Nidali begin their flirtation with Fakhr writing Nidali a letter in detention, showing that the pen denotes agency and self-expression as it initiates romance outside the confines of Nidali’s strict home.
While less extreme than other examples in the book, Nidali’s budding relationship with Fakhr also demonstrates the theme of Relationships as War. They begin their relationship through verbal skirmishing, and Fakhr is even openly hostile toward Nidali at first. Moreover, Nidali’s explorations with her friend Rama are cut short by literal war; Nidali leaves Rama’s house knowing that she will never see her again.
In these chapters, the impact of war on Nidali’s family becomes more evident. Something that was once an ever-present but distant threat becomes a real, tangible danger. This reflects a turning point in the narrative: This chapter grouping moves past Nidali’s early childhood, whose end was heralded by the traumatic experience of her father abandoning her mother in the desert. It delves deeper into Nidali’s adolescence and the challenges that she faces as she tries to navigate her identity and aspirations within the confines of her patriarchal and war-torn environment. In these chapters, Nidali’s struggles with her father’s expectations and the pressures of academic success highlight the complex dynamics within her family.
As Nidali transitions into adolescence, she starts to learn about sex and virginity. She explores attractions and begins to discover her queerness. She also becomes more aware of the constraints placed on her by her patriarchal society. This sets the stage for later chapters in which Nidali’s exploration of her sexuality and identity becomes an integral part of her journey.
The theme of Multicultural Identity and the Meaning of Home also becomes more pronounced in these chapters. Nidali’s identity as half-Palestinian becomes increasingly relevant. Her family experiences—and witnesses—poor treatment at the border crossing. While Nidali does not understand why this happens, she absorbs the implications of being viewed as “other.” Moreover, even her romantic interest, Fakhr, who himself experiences discrimination, discriminates against Nidali by calling her a derogatory term. Even though Nidali considers the Middle East to be her home, she is repeatedly reminded of her otherness and sometimes struggles to find a sense of belonging.
The motif of nature and weather recurs in these chapters. As the family drives toward Allenby Bridge, Nidali observes Jordan’s terrain: “I saw the rocks sticking out of the mountains that flew past us and the sand and the green trees lining the road” (95). She notes how this terrain looks different from the nature she is used to—either the flat desert of Kuwait or the greenery of Egypt. The description of the landscape reflects Nidali’s sense of displacement and unfamiliarity as she enters a new territory.
