And, if you were poor, suffering was your currency
Saboor mentions this as a general idea. Currency or money is a motivation for people to work to either make ends meet or to maintain their lifestyle. But when someone is poor, money is not a motivation to live, but to survive. In poverty, money is available only as a hand-to-mouth entity. So, in poverty, the motivation to work is to escape suffering as that is the thing that is metaphorically, available in a large quantity
And that, perhaps, may have been Maman’s true intent, to shift the ground beneath Pari’s feet
Pari observes this as discovers about her father's homosexuality and her mother's rebellious teenage years. Nila, a depressed and lonely soul, couldn't not have anybody's, in particular her daughter's, attention. She had numerous liasions, none of which matured enough. Her stint with Julliene faltered after some time and a year later he was in a relationship with Pari. Pari feels overwhelmed by her mother's demand for attention and feels that her mother's answers had been delivered to question her beliefs about her family.
I remember my mother at the blackboard and how she could nail a misbehaving pupil with a single, scalding glance, like a rock from a slingshot, the aim surgically true.
Markos narrates how his mother, a stern and strict teacher, could trace a misbehaving pupil with a military precision and her stare would scare the child into submission for his mother was popular for her reputation. The mother's glance and its severity is compare to a rock fired from slingshot, both precise and deadly.
There was a finality to this look. Resignation. Like a sculptor finally dropping mallet and chisel, giving up on a recalcitrant block that will never take the shape he’d pictured.
Markos narrates how his mother was disappinted with her son's conduct when he sees the face of Thalia for the first time. Odelai had told him already about what had happened to Thalia. She had been raising him as a single mother andd wanted to instill in him the values she had grown up with. On observing his reaction, she understands that her efforts have been wasted and she can't do anythign further to make her son be the person she wants him to be.
She keeps walking, the darkness around her like a mother’s womb, and when it lifts, when she looks up in the dawn haze and catches a band of pale light from the east striking the side of a boulder, it feels like being born.
Parwana, after abandoning her sister in the desert as was Masooma's wish, faces a conflict on whether she should do so or not. She finally decides to live a life unburdened from taking care of an invalid sister, loneliness and being an unwanted person in comparison to her sister. She had been discriminated against since she was a baby and this chance feels to her like a rebirth. The darkness and the subsequnet dawn, feel like a dark womb and subsequent emerging of a baby form it.
