theme of Privilege

Both in the past and the present, Idris’s family has extreme wealth and privilege as shown through Merry and their reactions to the war.

Merry’s presence in the family is the most obvious example of the family’s privilege that they are aware of. In fact, the entire family feels uncomfortable around her for this reason. They recognize that she is removed from her family and her culture to be a part of their home. Naj thinks that she feels “the same embarrassment she sometimes feels around Merry, what her presence tells her about their birthright… her beloved grandparents, had paid a woman a paltry amount to leave her country and life, and no amount of love for her, no legacy of two decades… can erase the reality that she is not, in fact, family” (258).