I was completely gripped and entirely heartbroken by The Pearl that Broke Its Shell, the debut novel of author Nadia Hashimi. Hashimi – an Afghan-American – drops her readers straight into the midst of modern-day Afghanistan. She weaves together two tales: First, we’re introduced to young Rahima, the third of five daughters to an opioid-addicted father and an overworked mother. Through the ancient tradition of bacha posh, Rahima is allowed to dress and act as a boy and therefore assist her family in ways daughters were typically unable to.
Secondly, we travel back in time about a century to meet Rahima’s great-great grandmother Shekiba, orphaned by an epidemic, who took similar steps as Rahima for survival. Through the linking of these two stories, Hashimi presents Afghanistan’s women, battered and bruised but strong and resilient, in the daily fight for love and freedom.
Hashimi is a gifted author. Her writing is smooth, clear, and flowed beautifully. Her descriptions of character, setting, and other details are excellent. She presents exactly what we need to know without being overly flowery in her depiction. She navigates some extremely tough subject matter – drug abuse, child marriage, physical abuse, death, and so on – without being graphic. She doesn’t shy away from these issues, but she doesn’t overdo them either.
I’ve said it before: I don’t like dual timeline stories. But I really enjoyed this one (Kudos to you, Ms. Hashimi)! I was hooked by both Rahima and Shekima’s lives. I read the 450+ page book in two days and was left in deep thought – thoughts I’m still working through. I’ll share a few with you:
The difference in women’s rights in the west versus many Middle Eastern countries is not new to me. But how easy is it for us to overlook the issues not right in front of us? I felt sick to my stomach reading the things these women endured. Yes, it is a work of fiction, but Hashimi takes careful effort to be accurate to the issue. After reading Hashimi’s book, I looked a little more into women’s rights and found this article to be helpful. More often than not, women’s lives are under total control of a male guardian from birth until their death. Some girls are permitted to attend school until puberty, and then they are often married off in arranged marriages by their fathers, uncles, grandfathers, et cetera, at which point their husbands gain control of their lives.
As someone who was blessed to have a loving father, an excellent education, and a beautiful marriage to a man of my own choosing, my heart just ached reading The Pearl that Broke Its Shell. I wanted to rush in and tell Rahima and her four sisters how special they were, while their own father overlooked them and complained about his wife’s failure to produce a son. Girls were just a burden, while sons were elevated and praised. Wives who never birthed sons were failures, looked down upon by their husbands and their families. One thing that really struck me was how cruel sister-wives and mothers-in-law were to each other. You would think that they all felt the pressure to be loved and fruitful and would understand the burden of feeling like a disappointment since their birth simply for not being a male. And yet, families were so unbelievably cruel to each other. Women against women. I hated that.
But even more so, the abuse within marriages just hurt me, and that can be a universal issue. Thirteen-year-olds married to men they’ve never met, four or five times their age. Terrified to be called to their husband’s room at night. Abused by physical intimacy (if you can call it that…) never explained to them – something supposed to be sacred in a marriage union. Slaving away all day long, cleaning and cooking and raising children. It was sickening to read about.
This was not a happy book. I felt full of sorrow for anyone who has been – or is in or will be – part of anything resembling Rahima and Shekiba’s lives. But the story is presented powerfully, and I am always grateful for books that tackle the hard subject matter and bring to light the problems of our world. I hope to read more by Nadia Hashimi, for she clearly has a gift, and I would highly encourage others to dive into The Pearl that Broke Its Shell. It’s a beautifully written, poignant piece about survival, hope, fate, and freedom.
Jessica
Copyright Nadia Hashimi and William Morrow Publishing. Image from Amazon.com.
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