Nazneen’s Fate

Nazneen is the protagonist of Monica Ali’s debut novel Brick Lane (2003). Born in Bangla Desh, Nazneen is married at the age of 18 to 40-year-old Chanu Ahmed who lives in London. Fate plays a big role in Nazneen’s life. Rather, she allows fate to play a big role. What is the role of fate in our life? Let us examine the question with Nazneen as our example.

Nazneen was born two months before time. Later on she will tell her daughters that she was “stillborn.” Her mother refused to seek medical help though the infant’s condition was critical. “We must not stand in the way of Fate,” the mother said. “Whatever happens, I accept it. And my child must not waste any energy fighting against Fate.”

The child does survive as if Fate had a plan for her. And she becomes as much a fatalist as her mother. She too leaves everything to Fate which is not quite different from God if you’re a believer like Nazneen and her mother. When a man from another continent, who is more than double her age, marries her, Nazneen accepts that too as part of her Fate. When her firstborn son, the treasure of her life, dies at the tender age of one, Nazneen behaves mechanically.

However, Nazneen had not left her little boy to Fate. She sought medical assistance. She did whatever she could to save the boy’s life. She challenged Fate, in other words, with all her might. The boy’s death shakes her belief in Fate. It will take a lot more painful experiences for her to shed that faith altogether and take charge of her life. 

Fatalism can be both a comfort and a constraint. It shields Nazneen from the chaos of migration and a lot of emotional turmoil engendered by her marriage with a much older man who is a typical Muslim male chauvinist. “What could not be changed must be borne” is her mantra, something she absorbed from her mother.

What cannot be changed must be accepted, of course. But knowing what can be changed and what cannot be requires certain wisdom, as the Serenity Prayer teaches us. Leaving everything to Fate is disastrous. Nazneen learns that as she brings up her daughters and deals with many domestic issues. It is only towards the end of the novel that she will learn the real truth about her mother. Her mother’s death was not an accident as she had been told; it was suicide, the ultimate tragedy of the hardcore fatalist. If you leave everything to Fate, Fate will desert you one day, because you are supposed to take charge of yourself. Even God cannot save you without your dynamic cooperation.

Nazneen begins to question the meaning of her life. Is it meant to be merely fate-driven? Seeds of rebellion get planted in her soul. Seeds of yearning, rather. She wants to experience love which her self-righteous and snobbish husband, gifted by Fate, can never give. The young and handsome Karim gives her the kind of love she wants, passionate sex included. Karim is Nazneen’s choice over her Fate.

Later Nazneen decides to let her husband go. She leaves Karim too. Husband Chanu wants to go back to “Amar Sonar Bangla” and live the rest of his life there. With his family, of course. But the girls are not interested. Nazneen decides to stay back in England with the girls. She also decides to leave Karim. “I wasn’t me, and you weren’t you,” she tells Karim. “From the very beginning to the very end, we didn’t see things. What we did – we made each other up.” The illicit world they created was only an escapist world meant to lift her up from her mundane and absurd life as a role-player. She has to face the reality now. She can. There begins her redemption.

Redemption is taking charge of oneself with full responsibility. Even God becomes redundant.

When Karim tells her that if the sinfulness of their adultery is what prevents her from accepting him as husband, Nazneen is quick to differ. Sin it was that they committed, no doubt. And Allah forgives. She knows the Quranic verse: “O My servants, who have transgressed against their own souls! Do not despair of the mercy of God, for Allah forgives all sins.” But God and his forgiveness are not the issue for her. She has to be herself, her real self.

The novel ends with her realisation of her own duties and responsibilities – to herself. Fate cannot be a soothing drug or an escape route. Everyone has to take charge of themselves. There’s no escape.

PS. This post is part of the Bookish League blog hop hosted by Bohemian Bibliophile.

PPS. I reread Brick Lane recently as I awaited my new arrival, The Curse of Muziris by Hamish Morjaria.