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CULTURAL FICTION | WANTING MOR BY RUKHSANA KHAN



Jameela and her family live in a poor, war-torn village in Afghanistan. Even with her cleft lip and lack of educational opportunities, Jameela feels relatively secure, sustained by her Muslim faith and the love of her mother, Mor. But when Mor dies, Jameela’s father impulsively decides to start a new life in Kabul. Jameela is appalled as he succumbs to alcohol and drugs, then suddenly remarries, a situation that soon has her a virtual slave to a demanding stepmother. After she’s discovered trying to learn to read, Jameela is abandoned in a busy market, eventually landing in an orphanage run by the same army that killed so many members of her family. Throughout it all, the memory of her mother sustains her, giving Jameela the strength to face her father and stepmother when fate brings them together again. Inspired by a true story, and set in a world far removed from that of Western readers, this powerful novel reveals that the desire for identity and self-understanding is universal.


★★★☆☆
Set in Afghanistan in 2001, and inspired by a true news story blurb the author came across, Wanting Mor introduces readers to Jameela, an impoverished Middle Eastern girl with a mountain of challenges to overcome. She comes into the world with a cleft lip and grows up in a small village heavy with the presence of American military. The majority of her family was killed all at once during a bombed family wedding, her mother dying a little later from illness. That leaves Jameela only with a sullen, very much emotionally withdrawn father who falls back into drug use after the death of his wife. 

Jameela does the best to care for her father and maintain the household chores, though she's still a child who yearns for a chance to attend school and learn to read. That chance never comes, since her father suddenly decides to move them to Kabul. He meets up with an acquaintance of his there and immediately Jameela and her father are living in a house where she is thrust into a position as house servant. Before long, the actions of her father end up getting them kicked out of that place, but much to Jameela's surprise he already seems to have another living situation lined up just hours later! Before the end of the night, Jameela is trying to wrap her mind around the reality that she has a whole new stepfamily practically out of nowhere. 

While she does start to develop the earliest fibers of a friendship with her new stepbrother, the family unit is restructured once again after Jameela's stepmother decides she just cannot find a way to like and live with her husband's daughter. It baffles the mind, but Jameela's father takes his wife's side, deciding to take his daughter to a busy market street and just abandon her there to fend for herself. Through the assistance of a Kabul butcher who takes pity on her, Jameela is guided to a local orphanage, where she is not only given the opportunity for an education but also a chance to have her cleft lip surgically repaired. 

Through each of these experiences, Jameela struggles with a sense of constantly being an outsider but still challenges herself to do the best she can, driven to become a woman her mother would be proud of. Though life at the orphanage is nowhere near ideal, learning to persevere through the experience gives her the tools to later find peace in the wrongs life has dealt her.

While at times it felt like Khan didn't take the story as far as she could've (leaving the character of Jameela reading as slightly undercooked), the story as a piece of late middle grade / YA literature does have its merits. I especially enjoyed the story Jameela remembers at the beginning of the story, regarding her grandfather being a potter and Mor (her mother) using the analogy that fire is what makes clay stronger, so when we go through hard times, we should think of ourselves as clay being put through fire, sure to come out of things stronger than ever before. A universal message that can benefit readers of any age! 

It's a clever title -- "Mor" being the term for mother

Wanting Mor = Wanting More / Wanting Mother.

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