I really enjoyed this short story. It isn’t dramatic and mysterious (I do like dramatic and mysterious stories), but it has a warm subtlety that conveys a meaningful message to whoever reads the piece. It shows us the sisterhood found within women in Cairo, and perhaps women everywhere. No matter how drastically different one woman is from another, all women have one thing in common: their womanhood. Together we have the strength to support one another in a world that for so long has belittled us. Amanda Fields describes only her experience, but I believe such friendliness and understanding between women is found in other places in the world, too—in small or maybe large pockets of women thrown together by fate or God, all over the world.
Fields uses beautiful imagery to paint a vivid picture of the Egyptian Metro. The Metro “sighs open” (I loved that line—I can just imagine the machine’s hiss as its doors open); the “slums of Cairo whip by” (this shows us how quickly the Metro moves); a “fleeting space” opens in the pack of women—a rarity in the Metro. Flailing hands grab sweaty bodies and the tight sardine-packed mass holds itself up and keeps any women from falling. Fields, in one paragraph, describes her students’ warnings about the Metro, but as we learn (with her), that lower-class transportation system really is not so terrible. The women are helpful: there are no insults, no pinching of exposed flesh, no taunting or jeering at the foreigner on the Metro. There are only crinkled, gently smiling eyes and helpful nudges and prods.
It is a moving display of sisterhood, a bond that crosses any class, ethnic, religious, or racial differences.
-Laura Strawn Ojeda
I like what you were able to pull from this short story. I really enjoyed it myself. The imagery was fantastic. It was a creative way to express the idea of sisterhood amongst strangers on a train.
ReplyDeleteKayla Santos