Sweet Dates in Basra by Jessica Jiji is a book about friendship and love but simply it can be said, the book is about growing up. Growing up is a part of life because it involves going through hardships and experiencing new things and we see a lot of these in the book.
In the book, there a three main characters, Shafiq, a Jewish boy, Omar, a Muslim boy and Kathmiya a Muslim girl. Shafiq and Omar are childhood friends and they are more like brothers and they go in a journey to find their identity and their relationship to their families and to the world in a time of war or more precisely, World War II. They are like normal friends trying to find a place for themselves in this world but of course it's hard for them because there are so many things getting in their way.
Kathmiya is a marsh girl who gets sent to the city of Basra to work to earn some money for her family. But the whole time she was upset that her family couldn't get a husband for her. In Iraq, at that time, it's a bad thing for a girl who is around 13 and 15 not to have a husband and for Kathmiya that was all she knew about marriage because her knowledge on relationships in the world was very limited. Kathmiya is the type of girl that goes by what others say, she doesn't t think outside the box and that goes for Shafiq too because both of them are going by what society has to say about everything.
When Shafiq and Kathmiya meet's, the first thing Shafiq sees is her seductive eyes and he instantly falls in love with her. But where a boy would try to make a girl realize that he loves her, Shafiq doesn't try to do anything because he knows how the society he is living in is. In Iraq at that time period (and even now in some countries where Muslims live in) it is considered a bad thing for a boy and a girl to have a boyfriend and girlfriend relationship because they might do things that are supposed to be done only after marriage, for example a girl getting pregnant. If a girl did get pregnant at that time in Iraq, she is considered "impure" and that could result in the death of the boy who got her pregnant and the girl herself. With all these in mind, Shafiq tries to stay away from Kathmiya and he does a pretty good job of doing so for four years. The same goes for Kathmiya because even though at times she thinks about Shafiq, there are walls that keep her from thinking about him in a way someone might think about someone else if they are in love with that person. But after four years, there mind starts to take control of their bodies and they find themselves in love with each other. Even though it took them a long time, their ignorance to the world turned to knowledge and their innocence turned to experience.
At the end of the book, Shafiq prepares to go America to expand his knowledge. Also, Kathmiya gets pregnant by Shafiq and her mother, Jamila, is horrified when Kathmiya tells her. Even though most Muslim mothers would do anything to get rid of the baby and even abuse the girl who is pregnant, Jamila gives Kathmiya the privilege to keep the baby and visit Shafiq before he goes off to America. After he leaves, Kathmiya gets the responsibility of taking care of her baby. The privileges and responsibilities that Kathmiya gets marks the end of her childhood and the beginning of her adulthood.
The way Kathmiya exits her childhood isn't similar to how others might exit their childhood. For everyone, its a different experience that leads to the same stage in life; adulthood. Its not all about privileges, it's also about how one's views of the world changes and how the world's view of one changes as well.
