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Chapter 4
Themes
and Colors
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Frankenstein in Baghdad, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Truth, Lies, and Storytelling
Good vs. Evil
Power, Authority, and Social Divisions
Family, Friendship, and Home
Superstition and Religion
Summary
Analysis
Elishva calls out to her son, Daniel, and the body reacts by standing up. This body, made of a variety of body parts and the soul of Hasib Moham Jaafar, has now been given a name: Daniel. Elishva is standing in the room of her house that has collapsed, looking down into Hadi’s house. The body whom Elishva calls Daniel walks through the hole in the wall into the old woman’s house.
The Whatsitsname’s ability to travel from one place to the next in Baghdad depends on the destruction in the city: the creature takes advantage of holes in people’s walls, such as the one between Elishva and Hadi’s house. This suggests that violence in the streets benefits the Whatsitsname: human brutality is responsible for helping him survive.
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Elishva brings her son’s old clothes and does not look at the body too intently. She realizes that this body does not correspond to Daniel’s, but she has promised Saint George not to interrogate God’s will. She concludes that few people come back from war looking identical to their past selves. She recalls other women’s stories about how the faces of those who return are never the same as the ones they kept in their memory. Elishva, however, is convinced that she is experiencing a miracle.
Despite being accused of madness or dementia, Elishva is able to examine the situation from a critical standpoint: she knows, from a rational perspective, that this is not her son. But she has invested so much emotional energy in believing that her son would return and in trusting in the image of Saint George that she prefers to interpret this unexpected event as a positive sign.
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The body, in the meantime, notices his reflection in a glass and finds himself ugly. Then, when he puts on the clothes Elishva has given him, he finds that he looks just like Daniel Tadros Moshe, Elishva’s son, whom he sees in a picture next to the image of the saint. Soon, he notices that the saint’s lips are moving, and he hears Saint George tell him to be careful with Elishva—otherwise Saint George will kill him with his lance.
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In the meantime, Hadi spends the day looking for the Whatsitsname, but does not hear any useful information from his neighbors about his corpse’s whereabouts. That day, Elishva wears a read headscarf to replace her mourning headband, and she heads to the butcher’s to buy a lot of meat. Impressed by the change in the old woman’s appearance, Umm Salim asks Elishva about it, and she tells her that God has fulfilled her wishes, bringing her son Daniel home. Umm Salim concludes that Elishva indeed has gone crazy.
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Hadi, in turn, concludes that the Whatsitsname’s disappearance has spared him the trouble of unsewing the body parts and scattering them in the city. However, he enjoys telling the story of this creature over and over again, perhaps because it convinces him that this is merely a figment of his imagination, not real-life events.
As Elishva prepares food for her guest, she concludes that God has fulfilled her wishes. Father Josiah, however, always corrects Elishva, telling her that only Muslims understand their relationship with God as demands to be fulfilled. However, Elishva does not believe, as Father Josiah does, that God is a distant, overbearing presence. She sees him as someone close to her, like a friend.
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Although Elishva’s guest does not eat anything, she remains unperturbed. She spends the day and night talking to him, sharing with him secrets she has not confided to anyone in a long time. She explains that she did not agree with her husband, Tadros, who wanted to bury an empty coffin for Daniel, filling it only with some clothes and bits of his guitar. Elishva refused to go to the funeral. She only saw her son’s grave after Tadros’s death, when she finally went to the cemetery, where son and father were buried side by side.
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During this period, Elishva’s daughter Matilda married one of their neighbors. People were open to the idea that Daniel might still be alive, because so many people returned from the war after years. For example, one of Elishva’s neighbors returned after years in Iran, becoming a Shiite Muslim during years of prison there, a fact that his Christian family violently disapproved of. People also returned after the war in Kuwait in the mid 1990s.
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In this historical context, when economic sanctions were declared against Iraq, Matilda and Hilda’s husbands decided to live abroad. Elishva promised to join her daughters in the future, once all hope of Daniel’s return was crushed. In the meantime, her daughters worried about her, knowing that “demons” were now roaming the city, wreaking destruction. They often threatened to come to Baghdad to force Elishva out of the city. However, Father Josiah agreed with Elishva’s decision to stay. He believed it was people’s religious obligation to stay in the city and support the community, in the same way the Assyrians had suffered in Iraq in the ancient past.
Elishva shares all of these stories with her guest. She also describes Abu Zaidoun, a Baathist who would force people to join military service, and who physically dragged Daniel away. When Elishva and Tadros received an empty coffin for their son, brought to them by the military, Tadros destroyed his son’s beloved guitar out of grief. Multiple women in the neighborhood shared Elishva’s anger at Abu Zaidoun and vowed to make sacrifices to God if the man died. Elishva, too, had made a secret vow, and reveals it to her silent guest.
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After many hours of listening to Elishva in silence, the Whatsitsname finally speaks. In a hoarse voice, he says he must leave. Elishva, who is worried that he might never come back, just like Daniel, asks him to stay, but he promises to return. After her guest leaves, Elishva notices that Saint George’s shield is particularly shiny. This lasts a brief moment, and then the picture returns to its normal state.
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