When Mr. Pirzada Came to Dine

Content Warning: This section references wartime violence, including genocide and sexual assault.

“When Mr. Pirzada Came to Dine” opens with Lilia narrating as an adult and providing the exposition for the story. These opening paragraphs are detached and frank in tone, reflecting a narrator who is well-informed, experienced, and perhaps even a little jaded. By juxtaposing the mundane normality of Mr. Pirzada’s life (he brings her candy, he has a family, a home, and a job at the university) with the horrors of war and genocide (he doesn’t know if his family is still alive, people are shot in broad daylight, women are sexually assaulted), she concisely introduces Mr. Pirzada while providing a brutal historical context. However, a change occurs at the start of the third paragraph, and the narrative perspective shifts from the knowledgeable, experienced adult to that of the sheltered, innocent, 10-year-old Lilia. Gone is the all-knowing narrator who almost seemed bored by the facts she has read and considered thousands of times, and in her place is the young girl who “[knows] nothing of the reason for [Mr.