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Isabel: Outside Havana, Cuba – 1994 (1)
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Refugee, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Trauma and Coming of Age
Injustice and Cruelty vs. Empathy and Social Responsibility
Hope vs. Despair
Family, Displacement, and Culture
Invisibility and the Refugee Experience
Summary
Analysis
Twelve-year-old Mahmoud Bishara is used to being invisible—it is how he survives. Getting noticed by the Syrian army or the rebels fighting them, he knows, is “just inviting trouble.” When the bell rings in school, Mahmoud finds his 10-year-old brother Waleed to walk him home. He takes a different way every day, trying to find a back alley or bombed buildings that could serve as shelter in case more bombs came.
Mahmoud’s arc examines the benefits and drawbacks of being invisible. Here, Mahmoud emphasizes that being invisible serves as a form of protection for him: the less he is noticed, the less likely it is for him to be attacked. It is also worth noting that despite Mahmoud’s young age, he has needed to take on a protective role for his brother Waleed because of the danger of the civil war going on.
Themes
Just four years ago, Aleppo had been a beautiful, bright city, until 2011 came and a wave of revolutions swept through the Middle East. The leader of Syria, Bashar al-Assad, made people who didn’t like him “disappear.” A man in Damascus was imprisoned for speaking out against him, and then some kids were arrested and abused for writing anti-Assad slogans on walls. Suddenly, tens of thousands of people poured into the streets, demanding more freedom, and within a month, Assad had turned his tanks and soldiers on his own people.
Gratz highlights parallels between Mahmoud’s, Isabel’s, and Josef’s stories: all three are locked in oppressive and dangerous situations. Yet at the same time, even though these different societies have all sunken into despair as a whole, the people within those societies still try to find a sense of hope in order to make a better future for themselves.
Themes
As Mahmoud and Waleed turn down an alley, they notice two boys beating another boy up in order to take the bag of bread he carried. Mahmoud remembers another incident, in which his friend Khalid, a Shia Muslim, was beaten by two older boys who were Sunni Muslims. Mahmoud had joined the fight to try and protect Khalid, and then he had been beaten up himself. That’s when he learned how valuable it was to be invisible—even to the point where he and Khalid stopped being friends. A year later, Khalid died in an airstrike.
Mahmoud again reinforces why it is so valuable to be invisible, as the alternative—being noticed—can put a person in even more danger. Yet Mahmoud also hints at some of the drawbacks that come with being invisible, such as the fact that Mahmoud and Khalid had to stop being friends, thus cutting off a vital source of support for Mahmoud.
Themes
As Mahmoud watches the boy getting beaten up, he wants to do something—he feels angry, indignant, and sympathetic toward his boy. But he knows better than to get involved and averts his eyes, trying to be invisible. He takes Waleed on a different way home.
This incident later haunts Mahmoud, as he wishes that he had chosen not to remain invisible in order to help the boy. Gratz shows how hard it can sometimes be to stand up and support others, but that it is necessary to empathize with those who are being oppressed and to give aid.
Themes
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