Mr. Pirzada Comes to Dine
The narrator of “Mr. Pirzada Comes to Dine” is a little girl between probably 2ndand 3rdgrade. The year is given, and the reader is constantly reminded of the time period by the repeated theme of the Pakistani Civil War in 1971. The narrator, Lilia, describes the year of 1971, focused around the constant visits of Mr. Pirzada, a visiting researcher whose family still lives in Dacca, the city most affected by the war. The most critical part of the story is Lila’s perspective. Lila at the beginning of the story looks at the war from an American perspective. Why, because this little girl is American. Everything around her is telling her to be American. The only thing she learns in Social Studies is the history of the USA, specifically before it became deeply involved in global politics. Lila’s mother is very excited about how American she is, but there are small tid-bits in the story, off-hand comments like “I’ve never seen an Indian witch before,” which show the reader that the white Americans around her are skeptical of the difference in her skin tone. The schools are indoctrinating her into America, yet the people of America are not totally accepting. Though this wasn’t the main theme of the story, it is important that the reader recognizes that in many ways, America is not a melting pot. Children who are raised here, like Lila, for better or worse begin to lose sight of their parents’ culture.
On the flip side, her father is not happy about her lack of Indian and Pakistani, history, culture, and even geography. He takes great pains to explain that Mr. Pirzada is Pakistani. Why? Lila never quite understands, but the distinction is important, especially when the two countries are in conflict with each other. The escalation to war and the war itself is followed close by Lila’s family and their nightly visitor, Mr. Pirzada. In the first months, real footage is shown of the events happening in Dacca, yet as the story moves on, the news becomes more and more censored and only minimalistic things like death counts appear on the news. The interesting thing about these broadcasts, for the reader, is that they are doubly censored. Lila tells the reader that a death count is read off, the reader has no idea how many people died, or what atrocities have been committed. The readers themselves are like children trying to put together the pieces and understand the atrocities of war. It’s safe to say that few Americans know about or remember details from the Pakistani Civil War. Why? Americans don’t learn about it at school, it’s never even mentioned. Death counts according to Wikipedia of Operation Searchlight range between 300,000 and 3 million while the accounts of rape range in between 200,000 and 400,000. Operation Searchlight was essentially an Eastern Pakistani, now Bangali, genocide. Looking up the numbers after reading the story makes the reader feel like the author, looking back at her child self who experienced watching the news of the war, but probably did not know what it meant. Mr. Bengali seems to have had a great effect on Lila, she remembers him quite clearly. “Mr. Pirzada Comes to Dine” gave me new insight into the lives of kids who are immigrants themselves, or whose parents are immigrants. Well written and eye-opening.
It's hard to imagine being Lila in this situation because the entire concept is foreign to me, as someone whose family has been rooted in this country for many generations. Even so, the idea of trying to hold on to her parents' culture while integrating into the dominant society is compelling. I think the fact that her father wanted her to sit with them while they watched the news was significant, because he wanted her to know what was happening to the people she comes from, and to be informed. I can't imagine the disconnect she must've felt then, and for the rest of her life, between the culture she had come to know well and they culture she was supposed to know. I feel like it'd make moments like those very uncomfortable for her.
ReplyDeleteI think that's a good observation; the whole melting pot concept is challenged by the fact Lilia is oblivious about what's going on in her parents'/parents' friends' cultural spheres because her curriculum at school is overwhelmingly about America. Maybe from personal experience I'll throw out that often mention or thought of the United States lingers in some other countries' cultural atmospheres, but the inverse is not always true (Americans aren't always conscious of what's going on in many of the smaller or developing countries of the world). I wonder if some part of that dynamic transfers to this story.
ReplyDeleteAs you mentioned in your blog post Lilia's father goes to great depths to explain the differences between Indian and Pakistani as a response to the war that was occurring between the respective countries. But I think it is also important to focus on the similarities between Lilian and Mr. Pirzada. Mr. Pirzada has a family with daughters that are near Lilian's age and that brings them closer. Also both Lilian's family and Mr. Pirzada have been separated from their respective cultures and families which is a incredibly similarity. Great Post!
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