“I was brought up as a female… and a female only… my name does not matter. As for my story, it is the same story as that of any female. It started from the beginning of time and hollow dreams.”.

This is how the novel begins. 

It is the story of a simple woman who represents the vast majority of women who were brought up with certain values and understandings that forced them to summarize their lives as housewives and nothing more, for the narrator is a housewife who has no other job but to look after her house and family.

She narrates:

“When you are a child, you live in dear worlds of innocence, purity, and clarity of mind towards everything around you, accepting them as inevitable matters that need not be interpreted nor explained. Your mind is not engaged in thinking about the unconscious inclinations in the East which consider the female something that should be kept behind high walls and closed doors.

But when you are married, there becomes a different side to the matter".

Thus unfolds the story.

And as it unfolds, the counter dualism in the woman's world becomes clear. There is another woman involved, the narrator’s sister, Widad, who despite being brought up in the same male dominant restrictive society as the narrator, and despite having lived through the same circumstances, has managed to rebel against these prevailing values and concepts of restrictive male dominance in her society, and was able, like many other women who had undergone  the challenging period of transformation, to step forward and defy the negative attributes of the concept of sexual identity and  summon up her courage and remove confronting obstacles created by her society so as to go beyond these limits and acquire new cultural identity that glorify liberties, individual freedom, dignity and education. At the same time, Widad kept a bridge that linked her with her family, which served to alleviate the clash between her and the disapproving surrounding. 

“And this is how Widad completely differed from me. She was not created to become nothing more than a housewife who has no other job than to look after her house, husband and kids, and tied to the kitchen with strong threads…”

The Hegemony of the monologue is clear in the novel. For while the narrator is being shattered, disappointed  and stuck in the middle of isolation and frustration trying to cope with her anger at her husband's disloyalty and ruthlessness, she could do nothing but to retreat on the hope of regaining the missing balance.

Her circumstances led her to debate being nothing more than a housewife and mother, with the control and hegemony totally left for the man who allows himself to do whatever he pleases. Such conditions provoked her to take the same evolutionary path her sister took before, which was prevailing among certain groups in the society. This had contributed to the promotion of her personality and opened up new horizons of knowledge of what is relevant about her and her surroundings. Through these prospects she could reconsider her identity and the identity of the man who she lives with.

Here I am not condemning the role of a woman as a housewife and mother, because there is absolutely no doubt that it is the greatest and most noble role to have on the face of the earth, but I am condemning the marginalization, packaging and trampling of a woman's dignity and reducing her to this role only, without taking into account her feelings of womanhood and humanity at the same time, who has rights just as much as she has duties.

The atmospheres of the story, especially at the outset are limited, a characteristic of a woman who is used to the walls of her home, her husband and children. These were the atmospheres that engulfed and marginalized her as a subject to the authority of the male, under who’s cloak she lived, while her role was limited to being a carer for a husband, children and home, leading a life within specific patterns that don’t change.

These atmospheres do however begin to change in their characteristics as she starts to realise a more spacious and free world. While she focuses on reading and furthering her education, she finds herself in contact with the outside world, and the new blend of the society, that allows the female a more extended and spacious boundaries.

In the context of the novel we see several portraits of a woman clearly visible in the narrator's character. The pliant, who had to accept her husband's treachery and his ruthlessness, the dedicated mother, then the rebellious one. But the road that the narrator took to catch up with time led her to experience true love that she never found in her marriage.

No conflict lies with being a wife and a mother at the same time. But what about being a rebellious lover, does that not conflict with being a mother?