Importance of clothes

Saeed provides detailed descriptions of clothing to emphasize cultural and class differences. She often refers to servants’ kamizes as discolored or thin, which indicates that the servants cannot afford new clothes. Contrarily, Saeed draws attention to the colorful, soft garments that Nasreen Baji wears to enforce her wealth. The special outfits Amal and her sisters done for mehndi represent cultural differences between Pakistan and North America. Each girl possesses only one mehndi outfit, which additionally enforces Amal’s family’s financial constraints.