One of the Romani people Orlando lives with in Constantinople. The Romani people begin to suspect that Orlando isn’t quite like them, and Rustum says it is because Orlando’s “God is nature.” Rustum and others in the community think nature is “cruel” and is no kind of god, but Orlando sees only nature’s beauty. Indeed, Rustum and the Romani people respect nature, but they also acknowledge its destructive forces. Nature is, after all, more than just pretty sunsets; it is also bitter cold, harsh winds, and torrential rains. The Romani people also believe Orlando to be different because she puts too much stock in her ancestry and family history, which goes back nearly 500 years. Rustum’s own family can trace its roots back to the building of the Pyramids, and he considers Orlando’s family no more than a “vulgar upstart.” Rustum and his community highlight Woolf’s argument of the subjectivity of fact and truth. To Orlando, it is true, and no doubt a fact, that her family is both noble and old and nature is to be worshiped above all else, but Rustum and the Romani people’s truth is something else entirely.
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Rustum el Sadi Character Timeline in Orlando
The timeline below shows where the character Rustum el Sadi appears in Orlando. The colored dots and icons indicate which themes are associated with that appearance.
Chapter 3
...“the English disease, a love of Nature,” and that it affects her more than most. Rustum el Sadi, one of the members of the communtiy, suspects that Orlando’s “God is nature,”...
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“But so beautiful,” Orlando says to Rustum el Sadi, and he knows immediately that Orlando does not believe as the Romani people...
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...Romani people are pleasant but regard her as “a stranger” of “low birth or poverty.” Rustum explains that his own family extends back some “two or three thousand years.” They “had...
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Chapter 4
Since Orlando’s return, the “bones of her ancestors” have “lost something of their sanctity.” Rustum el Sadi’s words have caused her to look at things differently. “I am growing up,”...
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Chapter 6
...is your antiquity and your race, and your possessions compared with all this?” Orlando hears Rustum ask. Suddenly, the clock strikes and the Turkish landscape “collapses and falls.” Orlando isn’t sure...
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