The Persian Carpet: Characters in Hanan al-Shaykh

First of all, both the narrator’s mother and Ilya are the ones the narrator loves and wants to stay close with. The narrator’s love toward her mother is well described in several parts of the story, especially from her feeling of excitement before meeting her mother. One might think that the narrator might hate her mother because her mother had left her and her sister behind in order to follow love. The narrator might feel rejected and abandoned by her mother. However, the narrator couldn’t resist her love toward her mother as is seen in her saying that she was “unable to wait”(240) to throw herself into her mother’s arms. The narrator “had missed her despite the fact”(240) that her mother left her. It shows her strong bond to her mother that is based on love and trust connected by blood. In addition, the narrator shows her special attachment to the carpet saying that she “used to lie on it”(241) and she “would be so close to it”(241). It seems she had spent a lot of time on it and thus is familiar with it. An interesting point here is that she is showing her attachment to Ilya indirectly by associating the carpet with Ilya matching their red colors. She used to stare at Ilya with a lot of surprise when he was coiling straw, bargaining, eating and doing anything he was up to. She wanted to watch him to see how he is doing so well in everything even though he is half-blind. Like the carpet she liked, Ilya is also the one she is so familiar with and the one she used to spend time watching. His strong image with red face and red hair is imprinted on her as the red carpet. Both her mother and Ilya are such significant people to the narrator that she can not describe the early years of her life without them.

However, her mother and Ilya have quite different personalities and values in several aspects. Her mother is such a selfish person who always tries to get what she wants by all means. In her point of view, nothing should be an obstacle to her in