An Analysis Of Attar Of Roses By Tahira Naqvi

In the story, Attar of Roses by Tahira Naqvi, the story takes place in a Pakistani society, where a school teacher, Saeed, is reading a poetry book at a bookstand at the Alam market. When debating whether or not to purchase the book, the scent of attar of roses catches his attention, where he noticed a woman next to him and though he did not see her face, he was completely mesmerized with her in every aspect. He describes her hands a s possessing extreme beauty that he had never seen before, “the skin was pale and unlined, the color a pearly shade of jasmine, the fingers slender, the nails neatly rounded and pink,” (Naqvi, 1997, pg. 19). The narrator was awestruck by the beauty possessed by the mysterious women, where he described himself as …show more content…
“Her mouth was swollen, the lip dry and colorless… she looked tired, there were dark rings around her eyes and fine lines crowded the area around at the sides of her mouth,” (Naqvi, 1997, pg. 21), where he was criticizing every aspect of his wife and focused on her imperfections. He regarded her as a worn out woman, where he emphasized the differences between his wife and the mysterious woman, “He noticed how dough had caked around her finger nails and on the edges of her palms. Her fingers, thin and knotted, were ringless, he realized, and she wore no bangles,” (Naqvi 1997, 27) Razia didn’t smell like attar of roses but rather like, “A faint odor of sweat, mustard oil, and turmeric emanated from her,” (Naqvi 1996, 21). There is great importance placed on a woman’s looks, where a woman value is equivalent to her appearance – woman’s boy is regulated and shaped into becoming what society deems to be acceptable, “the sharp cultural contrast between the female and male form [reflects] symbolic terms, the dualistic division of social and economic life into clearly defined male and female spheres,” (Bordo, 2014, pg. 484). Back at school, he tries to justify his action un his lesson plans where reading a poem where a male student described that “the love is supposed to make you act irrationally, impulsively...sometimes one needs a little …show more content…
Where it is quite ironic that the thing that was supposed to control men’s sexual urges and protect a woman’s virtue was alluring to Saeed, where it was colorless in order to not draw attention to a woman’s figure, where women are forced to burry themselves under tons of fabric from head-to-toe. Men tend to want what they cannot have, where in their eyes the unattainable become what they most desire and men won’t stop until they attain it as a result of men’s desires being linked to their biological properties of their internal psyche (McCaughey, 2014, pg. 13). On the last day of school, Saeed frantically searched for the women because he knew it would be months before he would be back the market place, when he spotted her he promised himself that he would not lose her again and decided to follow her onto the bus until she got off at Shahlavi. He followed her on foot for half a mile down a cobble street when she suddenly disappeared from his sight once again. This time however, Saeed began to have break down, “It felt like an animal had been trapped and was struggling to be free, ‘oh God, oh God, help me,” (Naqvi 1996, 28), with tears rolling down his face, he realized that he would never see the mysterious woman’s face. By the time he had got home, Razia had his dinner ready where instead of talking to her he shoved a package into