Suffering/perseverants

Question 1

“It’s our lot in life Mariam. Women like us. We endure. It’s all we have.”

Answer 1

-short sentences show the bluntness of this path on life and the nihilism of it.

Question 2

“She remembered nana saying once that each snowflake was a sigh heaved by an aggrieved women somewhere in the world. That all the sighs drifted up in the sky, gathered into clouds then broke into tiny pieces”

Answer 2

-expectations of women and what they just endure
-contrasting imagery of nature with human grievances
-“broke into tiny pieces”- women must break and then stick themselves back together

Question 3

“Mariams dropping cheeks, the eyelids that sagged in tired folds, the deep lines that framed her mouth. A face of grievances, unspoken burdens gone unprotected, a destiny submitted to and endured”

Answer 3

-negative description of Mariam reflects her suffering

Question 4

“Mariam was 40 now. Her hair rolled up above her face, has a few stripes of gray in it. Pouches sagged beneath her eyes, brown and crescent shaped. She’s lost two front teeth and her skin had coarsened”

Answer 4

• negative description of Mariam reflects the toll life and Rasheed have taken on her