The Map of Salt and Stars

Both Nour and Rawiya set off on their adventures in the wake of a father’s death. Both heroines enjoyed close relationships with their fathers, with Nour’s Baba passing on his stories to her and Rawiya’s father teaching her how to use a sling and telling her about the roc. This transfer of paternal power to a daughter would have been unusual in the patriarchal society of each heroine, and it sets up each heroine with expectations that subvert the traditional feminine role.

Though “Rawiya tried to be content with her embroidery and her quiet life with her mother […] she was restless” and “loved to ride up and down the hills and through the olive grove atop her beloved horse, Bauza, and dream of adventures. She wanted to go out and seek her fortune” (7). In an extraordinary manner for a 12th century young woman, Rawiya relates more to her father than her mother. Following his death, she takes on his role as breadwinner so that she can “save her mother from a life of eating barley-flour porridge in their plaster house under the stony face of Jebel Musa” (7). Her father is absent through death, and her brother disappeared at sea—and these absences create the opportunity for Rawiya to assume the previously male power.