50 pages • 1 hour read
Ahdaf SoueifThe Map of Love
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 1999A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Symbols & Motifs
The Isis and Osiris Tapestry
Divided into three parts, Anna’s weaving of Isis, Osiris, and the infant Horus stands for what is immutable in the lives of the novel’s characters and of the world. The story of the ancient gods Isis and Osiris is one of resurrection: when Osiris is murdered and ripped apart by his brother Set, Isis seeks all the pieces of him, puts them together, and brings him back to life. Their son, Horus, goes on to depose Set and restore cosmic order to Egypt. An ancient and foundational myth, the story has obvious connections to the events of the plot: for instance, to Amal’s reassembly of Anna and Sharif’s lost story, to the re-weaving of the divided tapestry itself, and to the resurrection of Sharif through his great-great-grandson.
The image of Anna’s weaving is also loaded with significance. Anna writes in her journal of weaving as an activity that keeps you in the place you are, paying attention to the world around you: “It is not like reading or writing, when you are necessarily cut off from everything so that you may not hear when you are spoken to—indeed you may look up and be surprised to find yourself where you are, so transported were you by what is on the page. When I work at the loom I am still part of things and it seems as if the sounds and the smells and the people coming and going all somehow get into the weave” (385). The tapestry thus serves as an image both of the lived moment and that moment’s rippling effects on both the past and the future.
The final restoration of the divided tapestry also reflects the book’s wider perspective on the nature of the human experience, coming as it does through chance (Omar’s encounter with Isabel), through love (ditto), and through the inexplicable (Isabel’s belief that she received the last part of the tapestry from the ghosts of her dead family).
Land and Farming
Both Amal and Sharif are eventually drawn back to the simplicity and community of Tawasi, the farming community of which their family is the long-time landlord and benefactor. The plain goods of their lives there—a strong connection to the day-to-day and the chance to ameliorate the future through the present—are symbolically linked to the patience and rhythmic routine of farming.
The land signifies not just the people’s livelihoods, but their sovereignty. Fights over what land belongs to whom are not just about economic value, but about how people understand their own lives and roots. Images of land and of cultivation are often used this way throughout the novel. People are considered as countries that other people can visit. For instance, Sharif describes Anna as “his sea to swim in, his desert to gallop in, his fields to plough” (499). Land is here both an image of what separates and what unites, and an image of the permanence that Soueif sees underlying all the uproar and change of life.
The Trunk
When Isabel brings Amal the mysterious trunk of artifacts, Amal describes it as a “Pandora’s box” (7). Isabel hopes not. And indeed, what flies out of the trunk is less all the evils of the world (though there are plenty of stories of those), but both history and hope.
Amal’s steady unpacking of the trunk, and her connection to the objects within it, represents the human relationship to the past. As she explores the trunk’s contents, she begins to discover that this seemingly self-contained and even quaint artifact is in fact much more complex than she expects.
The trunk’s contents—diaries, letters, weavings, clothing, portraits—slowly take over both a table in Amal’s flat and most of her mental space. As the trunk is unpacked, it transforms from a wrapped-up, self-contained time capsule to something messier, more interwoven with the present, and more living. The past only appears to be neatly boxed up.
