as he grew ill, Naseem appeared to thrive on his weakness, which was symbolic of the struggle of their marriage. Another instance of falling in love in fragments, are the interactions between Amina and Ahmed Sinai, as seen in the paragraph below:she began to train herself to love him. To do this, she dividedhim, mentally, into every single one of his component parts, physicalas well as behavioral, compartmentalizing him into lips, and verbaltics and prejudices and likesin short she fell under the spell of the perforated sheet of her own parents, because she resolved to fall in love with her husband bit by bit.In both examples, a husband and wife who shared no love tried to fall in love with each other without truly knowing the other. For Naseem and Aadam, such love never occurred, but for Ahmed and Amina, such love occurred when: Ahmed came to himself under Aminas care, he returned not to the self which had practised curses and wrestled djinns, but to the self he might have been, filled with the contrition and forgiveness and laughter and generosity and the finest miracle of all, which was love. Ahmed Sinai had, at long last, fallen in love with my mother.Therefore, I am uncertain of Rushdies intent in paralleling these two incidents. I believe Rusdies intent in including the magical perforated sheet in the relationship between Naseem and Aadam was to show that their marriage only worked in under such magic. That they could love one another only in pieces, rather than in entirety. The contrast between the two marriages shows that for one set of married couples, fragmented love dissolved under the constraints of marriage, and of true knowledge of the other person. In another case, fragmented love led to complete love. I believe that Rushdies intent is to explore the possibilities of arranged marriage in India, and their possible outcomes. He may be trying to make the statement that although marriage to someone with whom you ar...
