Road To Chlifa Themes

A peaceful life suddenly broke because of the war, a long prepared test would never come on a day, the very loved girl exploded in front of eyes and the new cute partner got killed on the road……These things were buried deeply in his mind. He is Karim, who is living in terrible memories and can barely overcome them, experiencing a hard time at the beginning of the story, The Road to Chlifa. The following paragraphs will illustrate how Karin’s serene life got an earthshattering change because of a war and a troubled journey. Coming in as a negatively thinking outsider, Karim moves into an appreciative insider throughout the story.
After fleeing the war in Lebanon, the main character of the book, Karim, faces the reality of a different world when …show more content…
While he was waiting to recover in the hospital, his memories were thrown back to a few months ago. Marineau uses the memory to show that Karim was a considerate and patriotic person instead of showing up in pessimistic and uncooperative circumstances as he did at the start of the story. First of all, Karim became considerate since he thought he had the responsibility to take Nada’s place to look after her sister. As it was being said in Karim’s final decision, “I’m going with you…And then, for starters, pass me Jad. We can take turns carrying him. It won’t be as tiring that way.” (Marineau 61). Due to Maha’s stubbornness wanting to go to Chlifa, Karim finally agreed to go together and help take care of Jad, even though Karim did not want to. Karim was really concerned about the safety of Maha and many other conditions like whether Nada would be too tired to carry the baby all the way on her own. Besides, Karim showed his patriotism when he talked about why he did not want to go to Paris with Bechir, which was completely different from the pessimism he had for Canada which was the new country he had moved to in the beginning of the story. As Karim argued, “The city’s in ruins, and, yes, the country’s in ruins, but at least it still exists. Because of the people. The day no one left…there’ll be no Beirut anymore, no Lebanon, nothing!” (Marineau 46). Karim loved …show more content…
Carrying all the guilt to the end of the journey as it was mentioned at the beginning of the story, Karim was the one who always thought negatively. When Karim and Maha were arriving at Chlifa, as a result of Karim’s impulsion and abandonment, Maha got raped and killed. As Karim reflected about himself, “he knows who’s responsible for her death. Maha didn’t die from the knife that silt her throat. She died from abandonment, from words loaded with hatred. He, Karim, was the one who killed her.” (Marineau 129). The shame together with the guilt was buried deeply inside Karim’s mind, which made him isolate himself from the other students in Montreal to keep clam. He missed Maha badly that if any students mentioned the scene, like the juniper trees he met in his journey, or did something similar to Maha, he would be mad. However, as time passed by, he relieved himself from the pain of losing Maha and joined the family of the class. As the author wrote in the story, “Karim didn’t come back till March…He’s more present; he participates in activities and discussions more.” (Marineau 139). Besides, Karim realized the unhappiness was his personal inner problem and began to appreciate life. As he wrote in his diary after Maha had been dead death for nearly one year, “to what made me hate her in the beginning…I realized that for months I