58 pages • 1 hour read
Salma El‑WardanyThese Impossible Things
Salma El‑WardanyFiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2022A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapters 1-4Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 1 Summary: “Malak”
Content Warning: The source text and this guide discuss religious intolerance, racism, rape, domestic violence and abuse, sexism and misogyny, and political violence, including killings.
Three young British Muslim women, Jenna, Malak, and Kees, have been best friends since they were seven. Now in college, they are sitting together under a tree on campus. Jenna, who is a virgin, discusses sex and romance with Malak and Kees. Malak’s boyfriend, Jacob, and Kees’s boyfriend, Harry, join the group. Jenna comments that even though she adores Jacob and Harry, she does not want to date white, non-Muslim men because she doesn’t want to hide her relationship from her family, the way that Malak and Kees do.
This statement briefly turns the group’s mood serious, but they quickly turn lighthearted again when Jenna tells them she has started seeing a man named Mo, who is studying to be a doctor, just like Jenna herself. Until the previous day, Jenna was seeing another man, and she reveals that the other man broke up with her because she was more than two hours late to a date. Jenna protests that her lateness is a matter of “genetics,” offering a detailed explanation of how various Arab countries have different cultural attitudes toward promptness. As she is of Palestinian descent, she argues, it is “genetically impossible” for her to be on time. Her friends combat this by arguing that she must have inherited some “British efficiency” from her English mother.
The group continues to enjoy the lazy summer afternoon together, though Malak recognizes that this pleasure is fleeting. She chose to continue with her master’s degree primarily so she and her friends could have one last year together before going off into the world. Malak feels their time together is perfect, and this is why she is completely shocked when Jacob breaks up with her that evening.
Chapter 2 Summary: “Bilquis”
Kees walks to her parents’ home, and along the way, she tries to adjust her persona to one that will please them. This is something that she finds increasingly difficult. She thinks about how she is no longer “exactly, wholly, and totally everything her parents wanted her to be” (25). She greets them with hugs, and she and her siblings Saba and Hakim banter about encouraging their father to go into politics. Kees feels guilty about not visiting for six months despite living only an hour away.
The family prepares for dinner together in a practiced, easy routine. Kees enjoys that her mother asks, as always, for Kees to make the rotis, which is a tradition the two share. Her mother frets over Kees’s diet, promising to make her some food she can take home with her. After dinner, Kees calls Harry. She talks about Malak and Jacob’s breakup, wondering if they will reunite—Harry recognizes that she is, in fact, thinking about his future with Kees, not about Malak and Jacob themselves.
When Saba approaches, Kees hangs up the phone. Saba reports that her parents have, at her request, connected her to a matchmaker, and Saba has been meeting prospective grooms. Kees is upset when she hears this and says that Saba, at 19, is too young; but Saba insists she is ready and wants to find a Pakistani Muslim man their parents will approve of. Their father wants to ensure that Kees is fine with her younger sister marrying before her.
Later, Kees returns to her studio apartment, where Harry is waiting for her. He immediately notes her poor mood. They embrace and have sex. After, they discuss the difficulties of being from different religions, as Kees is Muslim and Harry is Catholic. He argues that they “believe in the same God” but merely “choose to worship him in different ways” (36). Though Harry recognizes that the journey will be hard, and they will be met with intolerance from both their communities, he believes their relationship can survive. Kees cries, certain that no matter what decision she makes, someone will be hurt.
Chapter 3 Summary: “Malak”
Malak wakes in a bad mood; she is still struggling with her breakup from months ago. Every morning, she studies her Quran, and she is frustrated when this practice does not bring her peace. She thinks back to the breakup, which Jacob had suggested and Malak had agreed to, given the difficulty of being together despite their cultural differences. Ever since the breakup, Malak only feels like herself when Jenna or Kees are with her.
Malak enters her kitchen, where she sees her brother, Samir, texting his girlfriend, Liz. This makes Malak momentarily angry, but she quickly feels guilty about her feelings. The siblings joke about their father’s claims that he will return to his home country of Egypt to fight in a potential revolution, which they know is all talk. Privately, Samir tells her that she looks awful and cautions that their parents have noticed her poor mood. Not knowing its cause, they worry that she is dealing with clinical depression. Samir invites her to go out with him and Liz, and Malak agrees. She then watches the news with her father, thinking about a past summer spent in Egypt with her cousins.
Chapter 4 Summary: “Malak”
Saba is getting engaged, and the family has thrown an engagement party. Malak is miserable as she watches Saba with her fiancé, Amer. Kees thanks her for coming, and Malak recognizes that the party is difficult for Kees, too. Jenna appears, causing her friends to laughingly note that she is “only” an hour late. She looks beautiful, which Malak attributes to her self-confidence.
Suddenly, Malak and Kees realize that Jenna is intoxicated on alcohol, and they are anxious when she reveals she has brought alcohol to the event since Islam prohibits drinking alcohol. When the prayers start, Malak notes that she feels distant from God even though she has been praying regularly. She misses the peace she used to get from prayer, especially when praying with a congregation. Malak wishes that she, too, could drink at this event, but she fears that if she drinks while still heartbroken, she will be led to misuse alcohol.
An older woman presses Jenna and Malak about why they are not yet engaged or married. Malak struggles to bite her tongue against a sarcastic response. Kees rescues them from the conversation by requesting Jenna and Malak help with serving food. Malak complains about the aunties’ nosy questions, and Jenna tactlessly points out that at least Malak no longer has to hide or lie anymore after her breakup from Jacob.
Malak seeks a quiet moment outdoors, noting that there is no socially legible way to suffer the pain of heartbreak. Kees and Jenna come join her, carrying food and soda; Jenna apologizes for her callous comment. Malak requests some of Jenna’s alcohol, but Kees, who does not drink alcohol, abstains. Malak says that she felt closer to God when she was with Jacob, leaving Kees to muse that it was perhaps not worth the pain of the breakup if Malak feels that way. Malak dismisses this, citing that the “cardinal rule” of their community is that they must marry Muslim men. She wants this community approval.
Malak and Kees argue about giving in to these demands versus fighting against them. Malak calls it “stupid” of Kees to think she can continue her relationship with Harry after they graduate university. Though Malak knows she is hurting her friend, she urges Kees to end the relationship now. Kees strikes back, arguing that Malak will regret breaking up with someone she loves just for community approval; she says that the people in the community are not going to be the ones living the day-to-day of Malak’s marriage. The two storm away from one another.
Chapters 1-4 Analysis
The first chapters of the novel introduce the longstanding friendship between Malak, Jenna, and Kees, while also highlighting the different ways in which the three women balance their religion and traditions with their lives in England. Their experiences and their varied ways of dealing with them each contain certain contradictions, some of which cause the women anguish, and some of which they are able to easily disregard or make fun of. For example, Jenna jokes about her inability to be on time, blaming this on her Palestinian roots. The lightheartedness of this conversation shows that the young women deal with some of their differences from the dominant culture with humor. Nevertheless, they are aware of cultural conventions in England—like being punctual—and the specific ways in which they themselves break these rules or don’t fit in. In this way, the novel explores the theme of Cultural Pressures Versus Personal Autonomy.
Kees’s anxiety to find a “version of herself” (24) that pleases her parents shows that these same cultural tensions can also be a point of intense anxiety and conflict. Kees manages the tension between her desire to please her family and being in love with Harry, a white Catholic man, by lying to her family and pretending that she has never had any romantic attachments. This leads her sister, Saba, to call her “heartless.” Kees, meanwhile, struggles with the lies she tells them and fears that when the truth comes out, “somebody’s heart is going to crack” (37)—she knows that she will ultimately have to choose between obeying her parents’ wishes and breaking up with Harry, or staying with Harry despite her parents’ disappointment and pain. This struggle is addressed through the novel’s attention to the theme of The Burdens of Familial Expectations.
Harry attempts to reassure Kees by pointing out The Similarities Between Islam and Christianity, which is one of the novel’s main themes. However, Kees understands that despite Harry’s arguments and her own feelings on the subject, her parents will not see it this way. In her parents’ eyes, Harry’s cultural differences—in addition to his religious differences—make him an unsuitable romantic partner. Of the three friends, Kees experiences the most conflict between her desires and her family’s traditional values. In contrast, Malak breaks up with her white, British boyfriend because she knows that she cannot handle the pressures of standing up to her family if she continues with the relationship; though this causes her a great deal of heartache, she chooses familial obedience over love. To avoid getting herself into emotionally difficult situations like Kees and Malak, Jenna dates only Muslim men.
Though Jenna, Malak, and Kees have different strategies for dealing with the various guidelines of culture and religion, they rarely come into conflict over one another’s methods, even when these methods are transgressive. Jenna telling Malak not to swear during prayers in Chapter 4, for example, is framed as a reasonable request, even though Jenna is intoxicated on alcohol (something that is haram, or forbidden, in Islam) when she delivers this command. Kees, meanwhile, does not drink alcohol at all, but she does not judge her friends for choosing not to follow this religious prescription. The women’s easy acceptance of one another’s choices in most cases makes the fight between Malak and Kees all the more significant since they are rarely in conflict with one another. Both women perceive this disagreement as a personal attack over their choices and moral decisions, and they are ill-equipped to manage it. Ultimately, it leads to them not speaking to each other for a year and a half, which unfolds across the remainder of the novel.
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