Hilda Character Analysis

With her veined and wrinkled hand, Elishva would put the Nokia phone to her ear. Upon hearing her daughters’ voices, the darkness would lift and she would feel at peace. If she had gone straight back to Tayaran Square, she would have found that everything was calm, just as she had left it in the morning. The sidewalks would be clean and the cars that had caught fire would have been towed away.

Elishva no longer shared with anyone her belief that Daniel was still alive. She just waited to hear the voice of Matilda or Hilda because they would put up with her, however strange this idea of hers. The two daughters knew their mother clung to the memory of her late son in order to go on living. There was no harm in humoring her.

If the argument was interrupted, Elishva would argue with herself instead or grab hold of one of the women in the church to listen to her fiery sermon about how she refused to leave her home and move to a place she knew nothing about. Father Josiah encouraged her to stay, because he saw it as a religious obligation. It wasn’t good that everyone should leave the country. Things had been just as bad for the Assyrians in previous centuries, but they had stayed in Iraq and had survived. None of us should think only of ourselves. That’s what he said in his sermon sometimes.

There were people who had returned from long journeys with new names and new identities […]. There were people who had survived many deaths in the time of the dictatorship only to find themselves face-to-face with a pointless death in the age of “democracy”—when, for example, a motorbike ran into them in the middle of the road. Believers lost their faith when those who had shared their beliefs and their struggles betrayed them and their principles. Nonbelievers had become believers when they saw the “merits” and benefits of faith. The strange things that had come to light in the past three years were too many to count. So that Daniel Tadros Moshe, the lanky guitarist, had come back to his old mother’s house wasn’t so hard to believe.

With her veined and wrinkled hand, Elishva would put the Nokia phone to her ear. Upon hearing her daughters’ voices, the darkness would lift and she would feel at peace. If she had gone straight back to Tayaran Square, she would have found that everything was calm, just as she had left it in the morning. The sidewalks would be clean and the cars that had caught fire would have been towed away.

Elishva no longer shared with anyone her belief that Daniel was still alive. She just waited to hear the voice of Matilda or Hilda because they would put up with her, however strange this idea of hers. The two daughters knew their mother clung to the memory of her late son in order to go on living. There was no harm in humoring her.

If the argument was interrupted, Elishva would argue with herself instead or grab hold of one of the women in the church to listen to her fiery sermon about how she refused to leave her home and move to a place she knew nothing about. Father Josiah encouraged her to stay, because he saw it as a religious obligation. It wasn’t good that everyone should leave the country. Things had been just as bad for the Assyrians in previous centuries, but they had stayed in Iraq and had survived. None of us should think only of ourselves. That’s what he said in his sermon sometimes.

There were people who had returned from long journeys with new names and new identities […]. There were people who had survived many deaths in the time of the dictatorship only to find themselves face-to-face with a pointless death in the age of “democracy”—when, for example, a motorbike ran into them in the middle of the road. Believers lost their faith when those who had shared their beliefs and their struggles betrayed them and their principles. Nonbelievers had become believers when they saw the “merits” and benefits of faith. The strange things that had come to light in the past three years were too many to count. So that Daniel Tadros Moshe, the lanky guitarist, had come back to his old mother’s house wasn’t so hard to believe.