Summary
Karim straps Jad to his back and carries Maha’s body, which he has wrapped in a scarf to hide her nudity. He leaves their backpacks and walks forward as if in a dream into the village of Yammouneh, known to be a proud, fierce village. An old man approaches Karim and asks what happened to Maha. Karim says some men must have murdered her in the pass. People of the village speculate that it was Christians or Syrians, who they’ve long been enemies with. Karim knows that it was his own cruel words that killed her.
Rather than bury Maha in the village, Karim insists that she wanted to go to Chlifa. With a convoy of villagers, some of whom are armed, Karim walks to Chilfa. He asks for old man Elias when he arrives, but learns the man and his wife died six months earlier. If this is so, he realizes, Maha’s parents couldn’t have arranged for her and Nada to live with them. He wonders whether it was another of her lies. Then he remembers something she said about how things she says sometimes feel like they could just as easily mean the opposite, and that, therefore, everything is true.
Maha is wrapped in white cloth and buried under a juniper tree. Karim talks to her in his head. He decides to go to Damascus, Syria, where he can get a flight to meet his parents in Montreal. Elias’s niece Fatima offers to raise Jad as her own, but he says his family will simply have to accept that he is bringing Jad with him; he can’t abandon Jad too.
In Part III: Life Goes On, the narrative returns to Karim’s diary from February 1990. In the hospital, he remembers his landing in Montreal: he explained that the Tabbara family died, but didn’t tell his parents the whole story about how he came to have Jad in his care. They didn’t pry, happy to see their son alive. In the next few months, Karim was in a funk. After the madness of Christmas, his parents got him to go to school to break him out of his despondent state.
My-Lan visits the hospital every day. Karim learns of her own refugee experience that brought her to Montreal. He begins to get used to what is different about her, and wonders what made him hate her initially. Karim realizes he doesn’t have a monopoly on unhappiness; he had convinced himself he was the only one suffering, but he was wrong.
Karim decides there’s no point in thinking his suffering is unique. He doesn’t know why he survived, but he will live on so that Maha, Nada and everyone else’s lives were not lost in vain. He lives so that he can tell Jad, who has just taken his first steps, about his lost family. Karim leaves the hospital with higher spirits. He reflects that he isn’t in love with My-Lan, though everyone in his life jokes that he is. He simply can’t wait to see her again.
The narration switches to the unnamed classmate of Karim’s from Part I. She explains how Dave and Karim act civilly to each other at school, even playing soccer together. Students tend to leave Karim alone now; even Nancy gives up on trying to seduce him. The class has become more social. They’re putting on a play about racism, which won’t change the world, but might help them understand the world a bit better.
The novel ends with Karim’s diary from May 1990. Addressed as a letter to Béchir, Karim finally writes out a list of twenty-one things he likes about his new home, focusing on things that speak of peace and simple pleasures. He has made a new friend, named Simon. In the list, Karim says he’s thinking of becoming a doctor and returning to Lebanon one day to help rebuild. He concludes by writing that he will always hate hockey, peanut butter, soap operas, and English class.
Analysis
The motif of Maha’s lies arises again with the revelation that Elias and his wife are dead. Karim understands that Maha’s desire to travel to Chlifa couldn’t have been to live with these deceased friends of her parents. The true reason she wanted to leave for Chlifa remains a mystery to Karim. It is not the destination but the journey that provides justification—in this way, the “road to Chlifa” becomes a metaphor for life itself.
The final section of Part II explains the mystery surrounding the baby Karim is spotted with at the park early in the book: the baby is Jad, who Karim feels a duty of responsibility toward after Maha’s death. Another mystery from Part I is also cleared up: Karim’s intense reaction to the song that mentioned a juniper tree is explained by the fact that Maha is buried beneath a juniper.
Part III returns to the timeline from the beginning of the novel. Karim is still recovering in the hospital. It appears that his stint in the hospital has afforded him the time to sit with his thoughts and process the trauma of leaving Beirut. Karim’s narrow-mindedness is reduced by his growing admiration for My-Lan. Through hearing her refugee story, Karim opens his awareness of other people’s hardships. He understands that his suffering is not unique.
While in the hospital, Karim also has an epiphany that helps him work through his survivor’s guilt: rather than questioning why he survived when Maha and Nada died, he commits himself to embracing the life he has. Making the best of his traumatic circumstances, he decides he must live to tell Jad about the family the boy lost in Lebanon. By opening his mind and putting himself in service to Jad, Karim moves out of his funk and is able to begin entertaining thoughts of becoming a doctor who can travel back to Lebanon one day to help rebuild the nation.
The novel concludes with Karim’s mind and heart having opened enough that he is finally able to write Béchir a list of things he likes about Montreal. The list contains most of the things one would expect of a teenage boy; however, Karim’s choices focus on the many peaceful qualities his new life offers. Still, there are things about Canadian culture he will never like and refuses to accept. This optimistic but stubborn perspective suggests that Karim is adjusting to life in Canada while retaining an attachment to Lebanon.
