50 pages • 1 hour read
Michele MarineauRoad to Chlifa
Fiction | Novel | YA | Published in 1992A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more. For select classroom titles, we also provide Teaching Guides with discussion and quiz questions to prompt student engagement.
Section Two: The Mountain That Is Lebanon (Pages 85-132)Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Summary: Pages 85-108
Maha and Karim begin their journey, and immediately feel far away from the war-torn city they’ve grown up in. They see themselves as tourists in their own country as they attempt to visit the Jeita cave (although it is inaccessible), and look out at the landscape from vistas.
As they travel towards the mountains, Maha somewhat mysteriously tells Karim, “Nada was right—you really are perfect” (91). Once again, he is reluctant to inquire further, although he is curious. They also discuss religion, and discover that neither prays five times per day. They both agree that being a good person doesn’t depend on strict adherence to external rules. Karim is impressed by Maha’s intelligence.
Finally, the two reach the foot of the mountains. The moon has risen, illuminating the stones that cover the “ghostly moonscape” (95). They also discover ruins; in contrast to the peacefulness and serenity of nature, the ruins are, for Maha, a reminder of past violence and warfare.
Maha reveals her personal philosophy to Karim, telling him that she often feels she could “say one thing,” then “say the opposite and it would be just as true” (98). She is aware of all of life’s contradictions, and this has led to her reputation as troublesome. When Karim tells Maha that he hates lying, she reminds him that Nada called him “perfect,”and reveals that she found that out by reading Nada’s diary. She tells Karim the one thing she is sure of: “I hate perfect people” (100).
Maha finds a goat, and Karim attempts to milk it. He finishes, exhausted, sending Maha into a fit of giggles that spreads to Karim; they “laugh among the ruins in the middle of the moonstones glowing pink in the rising sun” (104).
Summary: Pages 109-132
Maha and Karim approach the snowy mountain peaks with Jad and the goat, who they call Black Beard. Maha says that she’s always wanted to make a snow angel. As they walk along the cliff, they see beneath them Nahr Ibrahim, the river of Adonis, as well as anemones, a type of red flower. Karim explains the myth that anemones spring from the blood of Adonis after he and Aphrodite exchanged a final kiss.
Hoping to reach the old Roman road, they walk late into the night; Black Beard walks off, and an explosion sounds. Black Beard is blown up, and Maha is hysterical. She wants to bury the goat, and doesn’t want to leave her behind “like an animal” (116). She asks Karim to explain to her what happens in the moment between life and death, since he “knows everything” (118).
Maha also reveals that she was jealous of Nada for her beauty and femininity, and that she is ashamed that her jealousy continues even after Nada’s death. Karim comforts her, and thinks of a quotation from The Little Prince: “‘It seemed to me that I was holding a very fragile treasure. It seemed to me, even, that there was nothing more fragile on all the Earth.’” (120).
Karim wakes up and discovers he is gripping Maha’s breasts. He realizes she is awake, and he apologizes. She asks him why he reacted with so much horror at her breasts, and he replies by telling her she “[doesn’t] even have breasts” (122). She retaliates in anger, telling him that Nada in fact wrote he was perfect “but a bit boring” (122).
Karim walks off to get air, and soon realizes he should apologize. While returning, he hears a cry. He finds Maha’s throat slit, with evidence she has been raped. He carries her body to the nearest village, where she is buried as a martyr under a juniper tree. Karim learns that Maha’s parents were not planning on sending her to Chlifa, as her nanny had died months before. He and Jad arrive in Chlifa, and then make the trip to Canada.
Section Two Analysis (Through Page 132)
Section II introduces a quick intensification of the relationship between Maha and Karim as they encounter the relics of their country’s past and descend further into wilderness. These pages build on the dichotomy between culture and nature introduced earlier in the book. The natural landscape is still associated with freedom and peacefulness, and the lunar aspects of the landscape make nature a magical. That magic continues to be associated with Lebanon’s past.
Maha and Karim’s relationship is innocent upon their meeting; however, in this section, it takes on increasingly romantic and sexual overtones. Maha holds out information about Nada, and explicitly accuses Karim first of wishing that Nada were the one making the journey. She is angered when herecoils from her breasts, when Maha knows he would’ve relished holding Nada’s. Karim, while impressed by Maha’s intelligence and maturity, is clearly unsettled by his sexual attraction given her young age.
While Karim sees Maha as too young to be sexualized, he is kinder than the world he lives in, as is suggested by Maha’s rape, which is implied by the blood trickling down her thigh. His fury and despair at not just her murder but also the violation of her body is thus implicitly linked to his reaction to My-Lan’s molestation in Section One. Whereas he could not defend Maha or punish her perpetrators, he can take his anger out on Dave. This explains his assertion that he did it not for “M” (Maha), or for My-Lan, but for himself.
This section makes a number of connections to Karim’s upsets and outbursts in Section One. We learn that the snow angel and the juniper tree both remind him of Maha, and this is why he is so upset when the imagery comes up in his new life in Canada. Maha’s death is the burden he carries with him to Canada: he believes that he is responsible because he abandoned her. This is the story he wishes to tell Béchir, or someone else who might understand.
