What was most intriguing to me was the legal responsibilities that the son in "The lawsuit" had to his step mother. I do not believe that the step mother was a gold digger, but rather that she was an enabler to the fathers mid life crisis (though possibly not because the age difference in this story did not seem that much different from the one from Aunt Saffiya and it didn't appear to be a disgrace or irregular in that story). Given that the events which followed her marriage to the father, I do believe it was his choice to do what he pleased with his money. Should he put his immediate family first? Yes, but as a human being he is permitted (though not condoned) to allow pride to overshadow his responsibilities.
In an outside reading it was brought to my attention that following the Iraq-Iran war, Iraq found itself with a large population of widows, who were then economically dependent on the state. Saddam decided that the best way to address this problem would be to sell them off to Iraqi men, and so each man who married a war widow was paid
Interesting thoughts on the stories! You are probably right about the father and the step-mother. And, wow, can you imagine being paid for marrying a widow (-er, I should say!)? That is so disgraceful to the poor widow! "Ah, my husband did not marry me because he loves me. He just did it because the government paid him to do it. He just came looking for a widow, and I happened to be the one he chose." Poor thing!
ReplyDeletehaha they way that Ashley just put that thing about men being paid to marry widows just makes it seem even more ridiculous that Saddam would do such a thing. As for your idea about the short stories, when you said that he was going through a mid-life crisis a light bulb sort of clicked on in my head about the stories, I had that idea but never really stated it or even realized that that was what I was thinking when I read the story. even though the age difference was not a problem in Aunt Safiyya I did feel like it was an issue in this story (particularly towards the family).
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