Under the Persimmon Tree

     A quest for meaning.  In order to find significance in one's life, journeys are started and completed.  Depending on the individual, these explorations will have varied destinations.  In Suzanne Fisher Staples's novel, Under the Persimmon Tree, we meet two protagonists, Najmah and Nusrat, whose stories are intertwined as they discover what their life's meaning is to be.
     Najmah is a young Afghan girl who finds herself alone after tragic events.  The Taliban raid her family's farm and force her father and older brother to leave with them.  Najmah is left to fend for her pregnant mother and to sustain the farm.  Days later, she witnesses another trauma when an airstrike kills her mother and newly born brother.  The episode leaves her shocked and voiceless.  With no one left to trust in her village, she begins a journey to Pakistan in hopes of reuniting with her father and brother in a refugee camp, and ultimately, returning to their homeland.
     Nusrat is an American woman, formerly known as Elaine.  She still feels grief over her sister Margaret's death and then she meets a young Afghan man, Dr. Faiz Ahmed Faiz.  They fall in love and Elaine feels a peace and contentment she hadn't felt since Margaret was alive.  Elaine converts to Islam and changes her name to Nusrat.  After they marry, Faiz feels the need to return to Afghanistan to set up medical clinics.  Nusrat agrees to go with him and it is decided that she will live in Peshawar, Pakistan where the rest of Faiz's family resides.  They relocate and Faiz leaves for Mazar-i-Sharif, Afghanistan.   Nusrat teaches refugee children in the school she establishes in her backyard, but she becomes anxious and unsettled as too much time goes by without word from Faiz.

     Stars were an important image in this book and Najmah's name translates into "star".  Symbolically, stars are used to "light the way" and can provide guidance via a physical journey or an introspective one.  Najmah looks to the stars and recalls the words he father told her, "As long as you know the stars, you will never be lost.  From them you can tell time and distance and you can find your way home" (Staples, pg. 10-11).  After Nusrat and Namjah meet at Nusrat's school, Namjah explains to the older woman about polaris or al-Qutb, "It's the most constant star, and I'm never lost knowing it's there" (Staples, pg. 226).   Not only does Namraj believe the stars will help her find her father and brother, but she also believes they will illuminate her way home as well.  Nusrat also looks to the stars, but for different purposes.  She looks to them and hopes her husband is still alive and will return to her.    She uses them as a way to communicate with her husband.  "If you come out here every evening and look up at the stars, they will tell you where I am and that I am safe," Faiz tells Nusrat before he leaves Afgahnistan (Staples, pg. 220).  Both females search among the stars to find the ones they love.
     At the book's end, Namraj is reunited with her older brother, Nur.   Their significance lies in their determination to return to Afghanistan and reclaim their home.  Nusrat knows that her next destination will be in returning to the United States to make amends with the family she left there.  In a way, I wish the children would have returned with Nusrat, but I understand that their journey would then be unfulfilled.  And they must restore importance to their disrupted life.
     I liked this book because of its multiculturalism.  Most of the information that students have about the Middle East is based upon the military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan.  Students may form stereotypes based on one-sided information.  They need to realize the Middle East is not just comprised of the Taliban and terrorists.  In particular, I thought the example of Akhtar and Khalida's family showed great kindness and compassion to Najmah.  At great risk to themselves and their children, they disguised Najmah as a boy and brought her along with them on the road to Pakistan.  They provided her with food, water, and they protected her as if she were one of their own during a battle with explosions and gunfire.  Students may not appreciate or understand the danger Najmah faces, but they can hopefully relate to the goodness that is given to her.  In reading chapter 3 of the textbook, Young Adult Literature in the Clasroom:  Reading It, Teaching It, Loving It, a final thought regarding multiculturalism emerges.  Barbara Samuels contends, "We must help our students become part of the diverse, interconnected world in which they will function as adults.  Using multicultural literature is a way of empowering all students by building their self-esteem and expanding their ability to make contact with those whose experiences are different from their own" (Samuels, pg. 64-65).  This thought reminds me of how I explain Farewell to Manzanar to my 7th grade students.  I always tell them that I don't expect them to understand what it's like to be dragged away from your home and forced to live in barely furnished barracks, eating disgusting food, sharing filthy bathrooms, and essentially living in fear and guilt because you happen to be Japanese.  The point I make with them, however, is this:  If you can understand the unfairness of the situation, and understand the inhumanity of the situation, and understand the indignity that was suffered, then they have made a successful connection with the book, and therefore, the world around them.

     Another important point that the text brings up is in chapter 4, which focuses on engaging readers through historical fiction.  Barbara Illig-Aviles emphasizes using historical fiction because, "It helps them (adolescents) gain a deeper understanding of the effect historical events have on the social, political, and economic issues of the times" (Illig-Aviles, pg. 84).  Undoubtedly, 9/11 has been the event to most shape today's world.   My students from last year have never known a time before 9/11, and for most of their lives, the United States has been involved in military operations in the Middle East.  This situation presents a scenario of "good vs. bad", but as exposed by the reading, not every Afghani or Pakistani is evil.  Our school librarian teaches a literary investigations class, and in recent years she has read The Bread Winner with the 6th grade students to expose them to Afghanistan history and culture.  It's refreshing to see that instead of stereotyping Afghanistan people as terrorists, our students realize that many of them are innocents who are subject to land mines left over from the Russian invasion or who are terrorized by the Taliban.  It is my hope to incorporate a global literary study into my classroom.  Books that focus on different cultures would be read and discussed.  If I can make that happen, then I would definitely use Under the Persimmon Tree as one of the selections.