66 pages • 2 hours read
When the Apricots Bloom
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Prologue-Chapter 4Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Prologue Summary
Rania and Huda make a blood oath to remain loyal to each other, swearing to keep no secrets and to suffer sadness if the oath is ever broken. Huda is from a lower social class than Rania and does not want to lose her friend. The oath itself is an imitation of those they have seen in American films, and they comment on how many foreigners they have seen in Baghdad.
Chapter 1 Summary
Years later, Huda is now married to Abdul Amir, and they have a son named Khalid. She displays a portrait of Saddam Hussein in her home to show loyalty to the regime after she notices the mukhabarat, or secret police, walking by. Abu Issa, a member of the mukhabarat, comes in after his partner cuts the padlock on their door; the narrative subsequently refers to Abu Issa’s partner only as the Bolt Cutter. Huda offers the men tea. She works at the Australian embassy, and the mukhabarat want to know about the affairs of foreigners in Iraq and the countries that such foreigners represent. The two men ask about Huda’s boss, Deputy Ambassador Wilson, and his wife Ally, noting with disgust Western men’s tendency to confide in their wives. Abu Issa insists that Huda must befriend Ally to get early warnings about strikes against Iraq.
Sanctions have destroyed the economy and Abdul Amir’s confidence, leading him to resent Huda, and he declares that she is a bad wife for putting her work ahead of her family. Huda notes that Abdul Amir’s business shut down, leading her to seek the job at the embassy. Her salary is substantial, but even her husband questions her loyalty to Iraq. He storms off to the coffee shop during a presidential address that can’t be shut off. He returns later smelling of nargileh smoke, a kind of tobacco smoked in a hookah, and Huda must undo multiple locks to let him in. They go to the backyard so Huda can tell him about the mukhabarat, and she notes that embassy wives never stay in Iraq long. Although her sizable salary earns her a certain respect, Huda also endures suspicion due to her affiliation with foreigners. Abdul Amir claims that Huda asked for this kind of trouble by working with foreigners, and he suspects that the mukhabarat might pay her for using her job to provide them with valuable information.
Chapter 2 Summary
Rania is spotted by Professor Adnan Nawab, a celebrated poet, while men smoke nargileh and debate literature. She dodges tea with Adnan and proceeds instead to an appointment at a bookstore to sell books that belonged to her deceased father, who would likely not have approved of the sale. Tom and Ally Wilson, the Australian deputy ambassador and his wife, enter the bookstore as Rania is selling her books. Rania reveals that she went to school in England and speaks to the couple in English. She considers asking them about Huda but refrains, as she has not spoken to Huda in a decade. Rania laments that she and Huda are no longer friends and remembers the good times they had with the books as children.
Rania does meet Adnan for tea and while there, she recalls a recent phone call with her daughter Hanan, who is currently living in Rania and Huda’s hometown of Basra with Rania’s mother. Hanan misses Baghdad and points out the hypocrisy in the fact that Rania forces her daughter to stay in their hometown. The phone line cut off before Rania could tell her daughter that she loves her. Adnan remarks that Hanan is better off in Basra where she is safer, noting that another woman just starved herself to death after her daughter was taken by the mukhabarat. Rania later sees the Wilsons leaving the bookstore, where Ally is catcalled by men in the street. Rania comments on Ally’s bravery and foolishness for coming to Baghdad with her husband. Rania’s own husband, Hashim, died 15 years prior when his jet was shot down over Tehran, and Rania has no conception of what married life might be like, for Hashim was killed less than a year into their marriage.
Chapter 3 Summary
Ally’s mother, Bridget, was a nurse in Baghdad in the 1970s and died of cancer when Ally was a child. Ally is writing a book about her mother’s time in Iraq and has a picture of her mother standing by the Tigris River, which contrasts sharply with the image of her mother dying of cancer. Ally’s father, Robert, never recovered from Bridget’s death, and Ally recalls his heavy drinking and depression. Ally suspects that her home in Baghdad is monitored and remembers being a journalist in Canberra, Australia until Rupert Murdoch reorganized her newsroom and ended her career. Forced to keep her former status as a journalist secret while she lives in Iraq, she is starting to feel constricted by her life as a housewife.
Ally decides to walk to the embassy, noting that she is often either harassed for her Western appearance or mistaken for a Russian prostitute. Ally compares the relative safety of the monitored streets to the backseat of a taxi when Ghassan, their security guard, tries to call her a cab. On her walk, Ally gets harassed by some men driving a car. The car drives off as Ally approaches the embassy. Tom insists that Ally arrange to use an embassy driver to avoid such incidents of harassment. They have only been married for six months, and Ally resents how much time they spend apart, especially as Tom suggests that she move to Jordan.
Chapter 4 Summary
Huda reads Ally’s fortune in her coffee grounds, but she has lost some of the gift passed on to her from her grandmother, who was a famous fortuneteller. Huda tells Ally that she sees birds and a kite in the grounds, indicating good news and an upcoming change. Huda sees other symbols and images in the grounds, but she chooses to ignore them. Amira, Huda’s coworker, suggests that Huda’s husband should become Ally’s driver, which causes Huda to suspect that Amira is working for the mukhabarat.
Huda returns home, but Abdul Amir is not there, and she suspects that he is at the tea house smoking nargileh with the other unemployed men. Huda’s son Khalid is playing soccer with his friend Bakr, and Huda is alone. Abu Issa and the Bolt Cutter arrive, and she invites them in. Abu Issa insists on Abdul Amir becoming Ally’s driver, pressing Huda for information on Ally. The Bolt Cutter makes lewd comments about Ally, and Huda persuades them to leave by saying that she needs to prepare dinner for her husband. Abdul Amir returns home, and Huda remembers the romance of their earlier years before Abdul Amir lost his job. She tells Abdul Amir that Abu Issa wants him to become Ally’s driver. Abdul Amir makes a lewd comment about Ally, and Huda suspects that the Bolt Cutter harassed Ally into hiring a driver and then sent Amira to mention Abdul Amir’s name. The salary for driving is $200 a month, which is close to what Huda makes, so Huda and Abdul Amir agree to drive Ally.
Prologue-Chapter 4 Analysis
The opening chapters introduce the reader to main characters Huda, Ally, and Rania, and establish the different difficulties that each woman already faces in Iraq. Huda’s husband, who was once romantic and attentive, has changed since losing his job, becoming irritable and disconnected. Huda is the sole provider for her household in addition to being the primary caretaker for her son, Khalid, and warding off threats like the mukhabarat. Huda’s deftly handled interactions with Abu Issa and the Bolt Cutter indicate that she is a brave woman who navigates stressful, high-stakes interactions without showing fear. While the mukhabarat want Huda to befriend Ally, Huda’s trepidation reveals her doubts about how the government handles foreign affairs. Her primary motivations focus on protecting and providing for her family, so she cooperates with the mukhabarat to protect her son. Huda’s need to convince herself that she cannot be friends with Ally also betrays a softness to her character.
Rania is struggling to provide for herself, and thus, selling her father’s prized books is a difficult task, for it represents the necessity of trading family treasures to maintain the family’s day-to-day sustenance. By selling her father’s books, she is essentially selling out her family. Rania’s daughter, Hanan, is kept in Basra while Rania lives in Baghdad, a situation that demonstrates a stark difference between the kind of mother Rania wants to be and the kind of mother she is now. However, Rania’s guilt at Hanan’s accusations of hypocrisy is undercut by the reality that, were Hanan to live in Baghdad, she would be at much greater risk of violence. Like Huda, Rania is in the challenging position of navigating the pitfalls of parenthood alone, and the fact that Rania cannot imagine married life draws attention to the problems of Huda’s relationship, particularly her husband’s lack of participation in the marriage. This marital tension thus demonstrates that a husband can easily become a hindrance rather than a partner.
Ally is a foreigner whose husband’s status as a diplomat gives her both advantages and disadvantages, for although she is afforded some additional safety, she is also under much greater scrutiny and must endure multiple incidents of harassment that threaten her well-being. Despite these difficulties, her position of wealth and privilege compared to Rania is pointedly established during their first meeting at the bookstore, for unlike Rania, who goes to the bookstore to sell what remains of her father’s belongings, Ally visits the bookstore to purchase new books that will bring her closer to her mother. While Huda and Rania are struggling to keep their families intact, Ally is working on building a new connection with her deceased mother, Bridget. Yet although Ally’s higher status makes somethings easier for her, the harassment she faces draws direct parallels to Rania’s fears for Hanan’s safety, and both women’s need for male protection in this culture emphasizes both the incompetence of Abdul Amir and the absence of Hashim. Although Ally has Tom, she still needs a driver to protect her in her day-to-day activities, a fact that portrays Tom as an insufficient protector.
These initial interactions also emphasize that men are largely separated from or entirely absent from the affairs and lives of the female protagonists of the novel. There are the husbands and fathers who are either dead or absent, the powerful mukhabarat whose shadowy interference manifests in indirect ways, and the nameless men on the street who harass Ally. From Tom’s suggestion that another man should take over the responsibility of keeping Ally safe, it is clear that Tom does not pay enough attention to Ally’s safety himself. This pattern thus establishes the novel’s primary focus on women’s issues, with men relegated to one of two possible roles in the narrative: hindrance or threat. While the characters of Abdul Amir and Tom are largely benign, Abdul Amir’s insecurities hinder Huda’s attempts to protect and care for her family, while Tom’s negligence holds Ally back from learning more about her mother.
The most important counter to this dynamic is the women’s eventual determination to support and care for each other. As the story progresses, these budding relationships are targeted and hindered by Abdul Amir’s hatred for foreigners and Abu Issa and the mukhabarat’s desire to infiltrate Huda and Ally’s bond. In a sharp contrast to such male interference, Rania’s observation that she cannot imagine married life serves to establish her relative independence compared to the other women in the novel. However, that very independence is somewhat marred by a tenuous lifestyle in which she must literally sell off the remnants of her former male provider to support herself.
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