Spark to Ash - When the World Breaks Open

Seema Reza’s memoir When the World Breaks Open exposed me to a very different way of writing memoirs.  Admittedly, I haven’t read many memoirs, and those that I have read have been largely conventional in their prose style.  Reza, however, writes chapters that are at times poetry, at other times only a few paragraphs, and at other times—such as in the case of “Prey,” on page 193—only two sentences. 

In these shorter, sometimes poetic chapters, Reza seems to focus more on a larger concept or idea, rather than on a specific scene (or scenes) in her life as she does in the memoir’s longer chapters.  Taking the example of “Prey,” Reza describes feeling trapped, as though she is within a teaspoon being taken from a bowl and about to be eaten.  Reza describes several instances within the memoir in which she feels like she is hunted, especially in instances with her ex-husband, but in “Prey,” she describes a feeling rather than a specific event.

I think that this chapter, and others like it, lends emotion to the memoir that Reza accesses in a very creative way.  I couldn’t help but compare this memoir to Christine Hyung-Oak Lee’s Tell Me Everything You Don't Remember.  In her own memoir, Lee relays information about her life in a very matter-of-fact way, allowing no opportunity for self-pity.  Reza does so similarly in the longer passages of her memoirs, passages where she shows us a scene from her life.  However, the inclusion of the poetry and the shorter chapters infuses Reza’s work with emotion that reflects her passionate personality.

The organization of Reza’s memoir confused me at first.  We begin in Dhaka, Bangladesh in the seventies, with Reza’s early marriage to Karim.  Though we return to Bangladesh several times throughout the book—particularly for Reza’s childhood and for her father’s funeral—we also spend a lot of time in the United States, with Reza’s husband (and later ex-husband), and her children, and her work, and her lovers, and her vacations around the country.

I don’t doubt that the amount of time we spend in Bangladesh reflects how Reza feels about her own Bangladeshi identity.  This is especially apparent in “Chicken Soup,” in which Reza describes how to make a Bangladeshi chicken soup while she is preoccupied with Karim’s new girlfriend.  Throughout the chapter, she comments from time to time on how her methods of making chicken soup differ from her mother’s methods.  At the end of this chapter, she says, “If you don’t know how to cook rice, maybe I’ve wasted my time by telling you all of this.  Maybe you’re even more American than me and you just won’t understand” (147).  This says a lot about how Reza feels separated from her Bangladeshi identity, and probably explains why we spend more time in the United States in the memoir than in Bangladesh.

I now see that we begin in Bangladesh because that is where Reza began, hence titling that first section “Spark.”  “Spark” is also when she describes the beginnings of her marriage with Karim.  We find out in “Spark”—in its first chapter, “Stasis”—that Reza’s grandmother too got a divorce, and that in Bangladeshi culture, “family ties and lineage are the foundation of one’s identity” (13).  This sets up Reza’s later divorce from Karim, and adds layers to her relationship with her Bangladeshi identity and with her family.

“Spark” is also where we see a lot of Karim’s abusive behavior towards his wife and their children; Reza probably goes into the most detail about this behavior in this first section.  This is related to the short passage that sets up the beginning of this section: “There was a time / when your body and mine / could not control the spark / which turned to flame / and consumed us both.”  Reza is clearly talking about the fallout of her marriage here, how the spark—their initial love—turned into the flame of abusive, changing both of their lives and causing their separation.

“Spark” transitions into “Flash,” the second section, quite flawlessly.  In the first section’s last chapter, “Maybe I Don’t Forgive So Easily Either,” Reza writes, “[Your kids] are learning to avoid you when the warning signs are flashing.  I hope they can teach me, or that I can find the strength to head in another direction” (37).  In “Flash,” Reza begins to go into her work with veterans, as well as into war as a whole, and we remember her harrowing descriptions of Bangladesh at the beginning of the memoir—and our worldview widens somewhat from Reza.  Reza does this often in her memoir: she zooms in on small moments with her husband or her children or by herself, and then she zooms out to war and poverty, and then she zooms out further to depression, loneliness, love.  Since this section deals so much with war, “Flash” brings to mind the image of bombs lighting up, but it also brings images of light and clarity.

Reza ends “Flash” with the chapter, “Warnings For My Sons,” wherein she worries that her sons will be discriminated against, and warns them not to break the law for fear that they will be hurt.  This transitions into the next section, “Body,” in which Reza largely talks about motherhood.  She goes into detail about her miscarriage, and many of her descriptions center more on the fetus’s body than on her own.  In fact, after she’s lost her baby and before she has her second child, Zaki, she says, “I experienced a loneliness I had never before noticed.  A sense of being alone in my body” (95).  Reza discusses loneliness at several points in her memoir, particularly in relation to her divorce and to losing her father, but it’s interesting to see here how Reza does not feel as though her body belongs just to her, but too to her unborn baby.  This is also a precursor to Reza’s loneliness after the divorce when her children stay at Karim’s house instead of her own on certain days.

Reza also worries about being “good enough” in this section, and this seems to be a running theme throughout the memoir.  Reza doesn’t feel Bangladeshi enough, or doesn’t feel like a good wife, or feels as though she’s disappointed her family by getting a divorce, or feels like she isn’t helping the veterans enough.  In this section, she worries that she isn’t a good enough mother, especially with the effect her divorce is having on the children.

“Body” ends with Reza’s own parenthood transitioning into a memory of her father in the chapter “Beyond,” in which her father is taking Reza to go swimming in the ocean.  Earlier in the memoir, Reza mentioned that her father died of drowning; ironic, considering that he loved swimming all his life.  Because of this earlier detail, we know that the next section, “Soil,” will be about Reza’s grief over her father’s death.

The last section, “Ash,” is about Reza.  It’s about her falling in love with other men and finding her passions, but it also concludes with her understanding that she doesn’t need the love of men she barely knows to feel love.  She learns how to feel enough despite her flaws: “I have laid out all the splintered bits of me.  I am known.  Loved anyway.”  After spending her entire memoir feeling insecure about fulfilling her identities—as daughter, as wife, as mother, as writer, as Bangladeshi, as woman—this is a powerful line to end on; despite her doubts about herself, Reza is still able to recognize that people love her for who she is.  The spark in the beginning that lit her marriage on fire has ended in ash; the flames from the abusive relationship that made her feel less than have begun to dim and peter out as she has learned to love herself.