Summary
Road to Chlifa begins with Part I: Catalysis, which takes place in Montreal, Canada over January and February 1990. The section opens with narration from an unnamed classmate of Karim Nakad, the novel’s protagonist. On January 8, the day Karim joins the class, the narrator’s friend Nancy questions Karim; he confirms that he is Arab and is from Lebanon. Nancy teases him for only giving single-word replies and acknowledges that at least he is cute. While the girls agree, Dave mutters in jealousy that he’s “a bloody Arab.”
Robert, their French teacher, introduces Karim to the class and then gets on with the lesson. The narrator notes that many students are distracted by Karim, who is so cute that he looks out of place in the classroom. With Karim’s dark skin, delicate features, and black tousled hair, the narrator believes he looks like a heroic desert prince, and pictures Karim riding a camel against a backdrop of sand dunes and sky. Two days later, Karim writes in his diary that his little brothers warned him he would feel invisible. Karim wishes this were the case: instead, he feels like a carnival freak, or an animal being inspected before sale. He doesn’t appreciate the attention from Nancy or the teacher’s attempt to make jokes and be his friend. He hates high school.
The narrator comments on how Karim’s introduction to the class is akin to how, in chemistry, adding one catalyst substance can set off all kinds of reactions. While there had been a balance among people at school, Karim happens to stir up people’s passions. Girls, particularly Nancy, develop crushes, and this provokes resentment among the guys. Sandrine wants to recruit Karim for her “Consciousness-Raising Committee on the Situation of Immigrants.” Dave harasses Karim for being stuck-up after he learns that Karim attended a French lycée in Beirut. But nothing gets a rise out of Karim: to everyone, he responds with an icy silence.
Karim’s diary entries from January 16 to February 8 come next. While there are no bombs in Montreal, he hates the snow and endless streets. He wonders what he is doing in Canada. In a letter to his lycée friend Béchir, who now lives in Paris, Karim bemoans the crudeness and stupidity of people in Montreal. He dreams about running in the snow with M, who transforms in the dream into an Asian girl from his French class; the dream gives him pain. Béchir writes back to say he’s being too pessimistic and suggests Karim write a list of twenty-one things he likes about Montreal. Karim can’t think of one.
With contempt, Karim comments on how they’re being made in French class to listen to songs and give oral presentations about their impressions; he lies to the teacher, claiming it’s against his religion to listen to music. Karim is pained when the Asian girl discusses a song with the line “boughs of a juniper tree”; he thinks she knows nothing about juniper trees. Another song, about the pain of carrying a true love inside, causes Karim to cry out and run out of the room. The last entry ends with him dreading a three-day class ski trip that begins the next day.
The narrator comments that, as the weeks go by, the students nurture the mystery around Karim. After a girl spots him at the park with a child, rumors circulate that the child is Karim’s son. The narrator provides her account of Karim’s episode in French class. My-Lan gives a presentation on a poem by Émile Nelligan and she discusses the song “No Love Without Sorrow.” After she presses play on the song, Karim screams and ran out of the room. She sees the indifference in his face and understands that Karim’s coldness comes from a place of despair.
She says that fights break out at school during this time, and Dave verbally harasses basically anyone in his line of sight. In this tense atmosphere, they go on the ski trip. On the bus ride up, Dave and his gang drink gin. The narrator sees Karim smile for the first time as he glides on cross-country skis; she sees a look of hatred when My-Lan makes a snow angel on her back. Around the fire, Robert instigates a discussion, asking immigrant students to talk about their experiences of life in Quebec, the Canadian province that contains Montreal. The students discuss how they are surprised by the ethnic diversity and relaxed attitudes; compared to their home countries, people in Canada were far less disciplined and freer to speak their minds.
When Robert asks about racism, Sandrine says in the future everyone will be the same shade of brown and all speak Esperanto. Pascale disagrees, and goes on a long monologue about how she is proud of her Haitian heritage and the uniqueness she feels; she is irritated by how white people assume everyone wants to be white, and how they group people according to ethnic stereotypes, which enables people to judge individuals not based on who they are but who they appear to be. Dave mocks what she says while he gropes and tickles Nancy. Robert announces that it’s time for bed, and is firm about separating the girls’ and boys’ dormitories. Dave says right, they wouldn’t want to “shock the little imports,” but he says to My-Lan that one of these days he’s going to have to loosen her up a bit.
The narrator wakes up to cries and a loud boom. She and other girls run outside to find, at the boy’s bathroom, Karim lying in a pool of blood. Dave is holding a bloody knife and My-Lan is standing in a corner paralyzed in terror, her robe askew. Dave says Karim tried to kill him. After Karim is evacuated to the hospital, the narrator learns what happened: Dave and his friends were drinking vodka in the boy’s bathroom when they saw My-Lan going to the kitchen for a glass of water. They pulled her into the bathroom, forced her to drink a glass of vodka, and groped her. Dave claims they weren’t going to rape her, but the narrator says it’s uncertain whether they would have. Regardless, Karim appeared and told them to let go of My-Lan. When they wouldn’t, Karim started punching Dave like a madman. Dave’s friend Luc pulled out a switchblade and gave it to Dave to defend himself.
The narration switches to Karim’s diary from February 14. He wakes in the hospital with three cracked ribs, a split eyebrow, a broken tooth, and a large gash. He is surprised to be alive, and remarks that it is strange to come through fourteen years of war unscathed only to nearly die in Saint-Donat, Quebec. He recounts how he heard My-Lan’s muffled cries and ran to the bathroom; time stood still as he repeatedly struck out at Dave. My-Lan visits Karim in the hospital, bringing flowers. She thanks him for saving her. Karim isn’t able to explain that he didn’t step in for her, he did it for M. Karim corrects himself, writing that no, he did it for himself.
Analysis
By beginning the novel from the perspective of one of Karim’s classmates, Marineau establishes how the class treats him as an object of curiosity. Karim’s Lebanese heritage makes him unfamiliar to the Quebecois students, who either fetishize his good looks or despise him for being Arab. In this way, Marineau introduces the theme of racial stereotypes, showing how racism can result in both exoticization and animus.
Marineau also introduces the theme of different perspectives by showing the tonal contrast of Karim’s diary entry: while the unnamed narrator had fantasized about Karim’s good looks, which she likens to those of a desert prince, Karim doesn’t appreciate the attention he receives, simply wishing to be left alone. In an instance of situational irony, Karim remarks on how his brothers had told him he would feel invisible, but the opposite is true: Karim feels he is a carnival freak for the others to gawk at.
The novel’s opening pages also establish the theme of narrow-mindedness. While it is clear that Karim’s classmates are treating him in a prejudiced, discriminatory way, Karim himself reveals his own narrow-mindedness. Rather than entering his new school with an open mind, he is closed off to everyone, which garners him a reputation for being stuck up and icy. The only person Karim opens up to is his friend Béchir, but even then Karim is narrow-minded, moaning to his friend about everything he hates about life in Quebec. In another instance of situational irony, Karim, even though he is the subject of racial discrimination, betrays his own racial animus to My-Lan.
The racial tensions build over the course of Part I, culminating during the ski trip. Having likely picked up on the tensions among his students, Robert, the French teacher, leads a discussion about the immigrant experience. During this conversation, Pascale directly addresses the frustrations she feels as a person of Haitian descent living in Quebec: she would like to be seen as the unique individual she is, but people are more likely to lump her into a broader category based on her ethnicity. Despite the teacher’s and Pascale’s attempt to get the students thinking in a more open-minded way, Dave mocks the conversation.
Part I reaches its climax when Karim fights Dave after finding Dave assaulting My-Lan. In the hospital, Karim acknowledges the situational irony of having lived through the Lebanese Civil War unscathed only to nearly lose his life in rural Quebec. The novel’s first section ends with Karim unable to explain to My-Lan why he saved her. The mystery and repression that have surrounded Karim are compounded by his cryptic mention of “M.” These questions propel the reader into Part II, in which the reader will learn that Karim’s closed-off manner, aggression, and desire to help My-Lan are all symptomatic of the post-traumatic stress and survivor’s guilt he feels for having lived while Maha and Nada died.
