58 pages • 1 hour read
These Impossible Things
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Themes
The Similarities Between Islam and Christianity
One of the major tensions in These Impossible Things is between the young Muslim protagonists and their respective boyfriends who don’t share their religion. At the beginning of the novel, Kees is dating Harry, and Malak is dating Jacob, both of whom are white British men. Each young woman keeps her partner a secret from her family because their British Muslim families will not approve of their dating non-Muslim men. Since Malak believes there is no future for her relationship with Jacob, they eventually decide to part ways, and this is a decision she later comes to regret, despite his avowed willingness to convert for her. Kees, however, decides to marry Harry, though he, as a devout Catholic, has no intention of converting to Islam. Harry’s religious devotion, though ostensibly a barrier to his relationship with Kees, is presented as a way in which the two of them can connect with one another. Throughout the novel, various characters address the ways in which Islam and Christianity are or are not similar, and the novel argues that religious devotion itself—irrespective of the religion—is unifying rather than divisive.
The younger characters in the novel, including Kees and Jenna, note the primary overlap between Islam and Christianity: Both religions advocate the worship of the same monotheistic God. Though this point recurs several times, the novel itself does not affirm that this is the only meaningful similarity between Harry and Kees’s religiousness. Rather, the novel presents a greater emphasis on the broad question of having a faith rather than on the specific questions of theology. When Kees sees Harry praying on his knees, for example, she admires how his religious devotion has a physical aspect that signifies the intensity of his belief. She respects his beliefs because she, too, feels a similar sense of devotion to her religion, even though it is different from his.
The novel also points out that a sense of religious devotion leads characters to have shared cultural values, even when they are from different religions. For instance, Kees is horrified that Harry’s mother, Vivian, thinks Kees might be pregnant before marriage. When she notes Vivian’s returned shock, Kees is comforted that they have the same beliefs on the subject. Though the specifics of how they worship may differ, as Kees specifically notes when she attends mass with Harry and finds the service unnecessarily long, the core values of family, piety, and marital importance are the same.
Ultimately, the novel addresses the primary difference between Harry’s and Kees’s religions as based in the way culture intersects with those religions, not the theology itself. The novel criticizes the prohibition against Muslim families accepting their daughters’ relationships with non-Muslim men and highlights the damaging effect such a prohibition has on both those who are expelled from their families and those who do the expelling. Harry’s family, by contrast, welcomes Kees. At the end of the novel, Kees comments to her mother that this rejection does not represent the Islam she recognizes from the Quran, which highlights the novel’s argument that these cultural attitudes misalign with the true teachings of Islam.
The Burdens of Familial Expectations
Kees, Malak, and Jenna all labor under the various expectations of their families. These expectations are most obvious in Kees’s relationship with her parents; not only do her parents expel her from their home when she reveals that she plans to marry a white Catholic man, but they also pressure her to excel in her career. Malak and Jenna face familial pressures, too, though they are not as obvious as the expectations of Kees’s family.
In Jenna’s case, her family’s expectations are not applied by force but rather by example: Jenna’s parents are, after decades together, so transparently in love that Jenna feels an intense need to meet their level of domestic bliss in her own partnership. She also feels, however, that she must be more in line with community standards than her parents, as her mother did not convert to Islam until after their marriage. Her need to win the “game” of marriage, as the three friends often call it, has an intergenerational element. Jenna both feels that she must meet her parents’ example and feels that she cannot repeat their admittedly minor transgression to their community’s guidance on what constitutes an acceptable spouse. When she finally admits her worries to her mother, however, Jenna finds that she receives far more maternal support than she expected, with her mother discouraging her from marrying for any other reason but love.
Malak’s understanding of family—and, by extension, the expectations that family can place upon her—is more expansive than how Jenna and Kees imagine it. Malak’s nuclear family is comparatively accepting, though Malak does not recognize this for much of the novel. Her brother, for example, has a white girlfriend, whom he discusses openly with his parents. At the end of the novel, Malak herself notes that her expectation of parental censure was unlikely, given her parents’ easygoing natures. Malak’s worries over having an acceptable partner, as per her community’s standards, are thus external and internal. Malak seeks approval not only from her nuclear family but from her community at large, which she sees as her extended family. Malak hides her concerns from her family and her community, thereby muddling the issue of whether they might have supported her, if given the chance.
Despite the different expectations that these families place upon their daughters, the three protagonists find the best path forward by being honest about their lives at the novel’s conclusion. Even Kees’s circumstances are more optimistic at the end of the novel than at the beginning; though her family has ostracized her, the end of the novel offers hope of reconciliation, which would have been impossible if Kees hadn’t spoken up.
Cultural Pressures Versus Personal Autonomy
Kees, Malak, and Jenna live in England and are members of a minority group that holds strong religious and cultural expectations. They are subject to the expectations of hegemonic British culture and those of their British Muslim community. This Muslim community, likewise, contains various cultural influences; Malak, for example, is Egyptian born, while Kees’s family is British Pakistani and Jenna’s is British Palestinian. These different but overlapping cultural values create a web of expectations for each of the women. They try to balance these expectations with their personal desires, and each of them chooses to navigate these expectations differently.
Muslim women, the friends note, are supposed to be “virgins” when they marry, which is a term that Jenna and Lewis debate since its exact meaning can be variable. While Malak and Kees eschew this prescription for so-called virginity when they marry, Jenna avoids any sexual encounters that involve penetration, feeling this is a boundary to virginity that will serve her in securing a marriage to a Muslim man. When Jenna is raped in the middle of the novel, therefore, the transgression is not only physical and emotional but ideological as well; Jenna no longer feels certain that she fits the mold of a “good” Muslim woman now that she has had penetrative sex, though non-consensually. Jenna also believes that she is to blame for the rape since she willingly agreed to the sexual encounter with her rapist. She regrets that she didn’t shout and fight him physically, which, she thinks, is what rape victims are supposed to do. As Jenna struggles with these internalized cultural notions about what rape is and how rape victims are supposed to act, her self-esteem and self-respect suffer. She castigates herself for the crime against her, and as a result, she settles for what she believes is a “responsible” marriage with a man her community will approve of, even though she doesn’t desire or love him.
Malak, meanwhile, experiences the more violent effects of cultural gender expectations when Ali’s behavior becomes increasingly controlling and abusive. Ali excuses his actions by way of cultural narratives about acceptable or unacceptable iterations of women’s sexuality. His underlying logic is that he loves Malak because she fits the image of a certain kind of woman—one whose sexuality is controlled, often by a male authority. He sets himself up as an authority for Malak, responding with anger and violence when she does not conform to this image. Malak temporarily accepts his strictures, eager to please him because she believes her relationship with him will win her the cultural approval she craves. However, she does finally leave him and heads back to England, where she aborts the child she is pregnant with. At the end of the novel, Malak questions all the decisions she has made that were guided by cultural pressures, acknowledging that none of them brought her happiness.
In contrast with Malak, who breaks up with Jacob, whom she loves deeply, because she wants a husband who will win her community’s approval, Kees decides to stay with Harry and marry him. However, her choice comes with its own set of challenges, and she loses her family when she tells them about her relationship with Harry. In this way, the novel illustrates that there is no easy choice for the protagonists as they navigate between cultural pressures and personal autonomy. No matter which they choose, they end up forsaking another element of their lives that is equally important to them.
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