The Map of Salt and Stars

Nour’s mother, known as “mama” in the narrative, “was always a lady” who “could run a marathon in high heels and wrestle a lion without ripping her pantyhose” (53). For a large part of the narrative, Nour’s mother retains her immaculate appearance, even as she walks on broken pumps. This detail is a testament to how people retain distinctive personality traits, even as they face extraordinary hardship.

Nour’s mother, a mapmaker, is an enigmatic character who feels she must conceal her deepest grief from her daughters. She mentions her late husband seldom and encourages her daughters to look forward and cultivate personal strength rather than dwell on the past. It is her decision to leave Manhattan for Syria and join Abu Sayeed that propels the narrative, and her painted map guides their next journey to Ceuta. As she struggles with many uncertainties, Nour’s mother withholds the final destination on the map, because she wants to shield her daughters from disappointment in the event of failure. At times, Nour is critical of her mother, accusing her of being interested in maps at the exclusion of her children. However, by the end of the novel, Nour’s mother has extraordinary faith in Nour’s ability to decode the map, and this encouragement is vital to Nour’s sense of autonomy as she grows up.

Nour’s father, known as Baba, has died from cancer at the beginning of the narrative. Even after his death, however, he is a constant presence in his family’s thoughts. The story of Rawiya originated from Baba’s telling it to Nour, and Nour grounds her own version of the story in his version, which she deems the best. Nour, who had a special bond with her father, considers that her father was her chief protector and that “if Baba was here […] I wouldn’t have to be brave” (202). However, over the course of the narrative and through her mother’s stories, Nour learns to see her father as vulnerable. For example, he would not speak to her mother as a fellow student in Cordoba and insisted on taking the family to New York to find himself. Baba’s death is a key catalyst for Nour’s coming of age and for her taking responsibility for her own life, finding her own voice.

Huda, Nour’s eldest sister, was a champion soccer player in New York and has come of age as a confident young woman. She also grounds her identity in Islam, as she wears a hijab and puts her trust in God. Huda is a great role model for Nour, as she is both wise and non-judgmental. Nour trusts Huda to guide her to safety in the wake of the political unrest they encounter on the streets of Homs.

When their house is shelled, Huda is badly injured, and the infection eventually leads to the loss of her arm. When Huda is wounded, Nour loses a protector, and instead feels protective of Huda. This role reversal is underscored when strangers assault and attempt to rape Huda. Nour, disguised as a boy, feels inadequate when she cannot defend her vulnerable sister. Nour’s mother stays behind with the oldest sister as the two younger, more capricious sisters embark on their own journey with the coded map. At the end of the novel, after the reunion in Ceuta, Huda is still fragile and uses loose clothing to conceal the loss of her arm. However, she is strong enough to educate and guide Nour, and she is present when Nour fills in the last space on the map.

The middle sister Zahra begins the novel as Nour’s enemy. Nour considers her vapid and shallow for continually inspecting the gold filigree bracelet on her arm and for only seeming to care about clothes and boys. For her part, Zahra makes the cruel barb that Nour cannot be a real Syrian owing to her inferior Arabic. Philosophical Huda thinks that Zahra is one of those people who “take time to find out who they are” and “get pushed around by all these little things, the stuff the world says is important” (29). She therefore encourages Nour to see Zahra as someone who is lost and acting out, rather than as essentially cruel.

Still, Huda’s advice is difficult to take when Zahra continues her moodiness and becomes enamored of Yusuf, a boy whom Nour does not initially trust. Nour’s relationship with Zahra only finds healing when the two sisters must collaborate in their quest for the family’s salvation. Then they soon address their mutual envy, and Nour learns that Zahra’s bracelet was a gift from their father. Zahra shows character growth when she sacrifices the bracelet to ensure them safe passage with the smugglers. At the end of the novel, the sisters enjoy each other’s mutual respect, and Zahra is on the verge of engagement to Yusuf, with whom she deeply bonded during their refugee experience.

Abu Sayeed is Baba’s adopted brother. He has, to Nour’s synesthetic imagination, a reassuring “honey-yellow voice” which causes her mother’s voice to “click into place” (3). For Nour and her family, “Abu Sayeed and Baba were two knots of the same string,” and Nour’s mother’s fear of losing this tie causes her to move the family back to Syria, to be close to her late husband’s brother (3).

Abu Sayeed has endured many tragic losses in his life. His name, Abu Sayeed, means father of Sayeed, and is a reminder of the son who ran away after a fight. Both Abu Sayeed and his son shared a love of rocks, and as Nour comes into his life and shows a similar interest in his favorite topic, she fills the gap left by Sayeed. For Nour, too, Abu Sayeed fills the void left by her father, as he tells her magical tales about jinn and rocks from the Arabic past, as well as coming to Huda’s rescue when the two boys try to rape her. However, like Nour’s father, Abu Sayeed expresses vulnerability when they board the boat, and he admits he is afraid because he cannot swim. Abu Sayeed drowns, and this loss, in the wake of her father’s, causes Nour to fall into despair, where she considers that her journey will be futile. However, with these male role models gone, Nour eventually learns to find heroism in herself.

Yusuf is the teenage son of the refugees Nour’s family encounters. At first, he makes a bad impression on Nour because she encounters him arguing with his grandmother, Sitt Shahid. He is tall, with a “gray tee-shirt” that “leaves behind a woody smell like sticky evergreens and heat” and has anger that “is a knife to me, a weapon” (134). Nour associates Yusuf with the type of aggressive masculinity behind the violence her family encounter on their journey. Nour is even more suspicious of him because of his interest in her sister Zahra.

It is only after Abu Sayeed dies, and after Yusuf confesses his deep grief over his own father’s death from a shell, that Nour sees a different side to Yusuf. She is grateful for his help in getting her family on the boat, and she can relate to Yusuf’s predicament of making a pilgrimage to the place where his father died. She accepts his gift of a penknife to ensure her safety on the journey. When Yusuf returns to Ceuta, Nour is delighted to see his reunion with Zahra and to welcome him into the family.

Rawiya is the heroine of the story that Nour’s father passes on to her. In reality, Rawiya, whose adventures take place around the middle of the 12th century AD, is “a figment” of the author’s imagination and a means of showing the “extraordinary historical time period” of Arabic history when al-Idrisi, a scholar and mapmaker, was alive (353). Joukhadar’s invented heroine crops her hair and wears a turban in order to pass as a boy, and she adopts the name Rami. Her adventure in many ways parallels Nour’s; in addition to being disguised as boys for safety, both girls traverse the same terrains, encountering a different challenge in each. Both girls also ultimately find safety in Ceuta, a place that their mothers consider home.

Rawiya subverts gender expectations by showing unparalleled bravery in the face of danger. It is her cunning and prowess in combat that defeats the roc and detracts the expedition’s enemies. While she disguises her female identity, she eventually reveals the truth to Khaldun when she makes the first move to initiate a romantic relationship. Throughout her narrative, the tension in Rawiya’s character is between home and the places she has not yet traveled on the map. She knows she must explore before returning home, to obtain fortune and keep her mother from poverty. When she brings Khaldun back to Ceuta and provides for her family, Rawiya fulfills a quest normally ascribed to male heroes. Rawiya’s ownership of heroism, rather than passively awaiting rescue, informs Nour’s own trajectory as she increasingly comes to rely upon herself.

The scholar and mapmaker, al-Idrisi, is based on a historical figure who lived in the 12th century. While Joukhadar wrote him a deceased wife and daughter, he was uncertain of whether the historical al-Idrisi ever married.

In the novel, al-Idrisi is the mapmaker under whom Rawiya apprentices, and whom she makes her leader. While al-Idrisi comes from a line of prophets and is the rumored descendant of Mohammed, he judges people on their personal merit rather than their bloodline. At the beginning of Rawiya’s adventure, al-Idrisi and Rawiya’s relationship is unequal; he is the sage, and she is the student. He dispenses valuable wisdom about the importance of hearing your own voice in the midst of others’. As Rawiya grows in confidence, however, she stops relying on al-Idrisi, and increasingly uses her intuition and the tools she learned from her father to defeat her enemies.

While al-Idrisi initially feels betrayed on learning that Rawiya is female (reflecting his patriarchal values), he eventually accepts her. As the narrative nears its end, al-Idrisi cedes power to Rawiya and Khaldun, and he goes to his ancestral home in Ceuta for his retirement.

The expedition meets Khaldun as he wallows in despair, as he’s been charged with the task of killing the fierce roc. Rawiya is struck by his “beard of black curls, the graceful line of his nose, his dark, thick brows and full lips” (86). The sensualized descriptions of Khaldun are conveyed through Rawiya’s eyes, and this perspective is part of Joukhadar’s gender role-reversal; the woman is the one who desires, and the man is the object of that desire. Khaldun is also more submissive and sensitive than Rawiya, and he agrees to follow her for the rest of his life when she saves him. When Rawiya reveals herself to be a woman, Khaldun wishes to marry her, but not dominate her—which is distinct from most men of his era. He is happy to be made part of Rawiya’s household and does not insist she assimilate to his, as would be the traditional fashion.

As a poet, Khaldun is also a prophet, as his verse already predicted the roc’s death and its transformation into white eagles.

Al-Idrisi’s second apprentice is a famous merchant’s son, “a lanky, black-haired boy dressed in a rich olive cloak,” but he is far more prone than Rawiya is to physical or emotional disturbance (35). Also unlike Rawiya, who independently sought al-Idrisi, it was Bakr’s father who recommended Bakr apprentice to the sage. Al-Idrisi instantly makes Bakr feel inferior when he says that he chose Rawiya (then going by Rami) “for the wit and courage God gave him” and that Bakr “would do well to borrow some of that nerve yourself” (36). Throughout the apprenticeship, Bakr indeed is inferior to Rawiya as he is more chatty than useful, has no instinct for the astrolabe, and is less valiant in battle. However, prior to his death in battle, he reveals he is a misfit in his family, as he buys a scarf that will impress his hard-to-please mother. When he knows he will die, he gifts the scarf to Rawiya to give to her own mother, “so she knows you didn’t abandon her” (36). This shows some generosity of spirit, as Bakr accepts that he has been defeated and wants Rawiya to succeed where he failed.