Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in What the Eyes Don’t See, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Racism and Environmental Injustice
Truth vs. Corruption
Community Values and Collective Duty
The American Dream
Family, Tradition, and Strength
Summary
Analysis
During the weekend of Mark’s visit, Mona’s father, Jidu, was still in China, consulting with an auto parts manufacturer. A curious, dedicated researcher with a profound interest in his family’s history, Jidu was able to track his family’s roots back over 300 years. Jidu’s research revealed that his family were descendants of a Nestorian priest named Israel Raba, who was born in 1541.
By providing some historical context about her family’s background, Mona uses this section of the book to illustrate how helpful it is to be able to draw on her family’s traditions and values for strength and motivation. Mona’s family’s hunger for the truth—and their values of openness and solidarity—go back many generations.
Themes
Jidu also revealed their family’s connections to Paul Shekwana, and to one of Bebe’s uncles, Nuri Rufail Koutani, a revolutionary in the 1930s who studied in America before returning to Iraq, where he became a radical organizer who used the pseudonym Anwar. Nuri founded the Association Against Imperialism and Fascism in 1935, a leftist organization that was a starting point for the Iraqi independence movement. Nuri’s political activities sent him into hiding with his brother Haji’s family—he fled to Paris in 1937, where he continued fighting fascism with the International Brigades. Mona has always been drawn to Nuri’s story because of his bravery and his dedication to a progressive cause that transcended borders.
In this passage, Mona highlights even more of her family’s erstwhile heroes. By focusing on Nuri’s story—a story marked by radical politics, resistance against wrongdoing, and finding support in one’s family and community—Mona illustrates how her family’s legacy shaped her into the person she became as an adult. Mona’s family lore always concerned fighting for what was right—and so Mona carried on that mission in her own life.
Themes
Jidu’s research revealed that his own father, Dawood Hanna, had met Nuri when Nuri was rounded up with leftists and dissidents in 1956 and transported by train to a prison fortress. Dawood, the railway station manager, risked his life to seek out Nuri and offer him words of comfort. Nuri survived imprisonment and was freed two years later.
This passage further illustrates how Mona’s family’s legacy has always been one of radical risk-taking and empathetic solidarity.
Themes
Jidu’s childhood was marred by the decline of his homeland—anarchy and revolution defined his youth, and while a brief window of peace visited Iraq in the 1960s, fundamentalism soon reared its head once again. After Dawood was imprisoned during the Ba’ath revolution, Jidu traveled to Yugoslavia to study at the University of Zagreb. On a trip home, he met Mona’s mother, and they moved to England so that Jidu could finish his education. But when it was time to return to Iraq, the situation there was so bad that they moved to Michigan instead.
Because Mona’s parents were effectively displaced from their homeland, perhaps, their reliance on family stories and traditions became all the more important. This section of the book is significant because it illustrates the reasons why Mona’s family have clung so tightly to their past: they didn’t want to leave their amazing stories and traditions behind.
Themes
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As Saddam Hussein’s regime took over Iraq, Mona’s parents knew the homeland they loved was disappearing forever. Both Mona’s parents were furious with how Saddam’s “anti-communist zeal blinded Europe and the United States to his true nature.” Jidu became outspoken and active in the States as he wrote anti-regime newsletters and distributed them throughout his community in Michigan (and sent more copies to Iraqis abroad). Mona remembers that when she was growing up, her father was always stressed, upset, and traumatized. She remembers Jidu showing her pictures of the genocide of Halabja in Kurdistan when she was very young.
In this passage, Mona interrogates her family’s complex relationship with life in America. On the one hand, her parent were furious with how the U.S. turned a blind eye to many of Saddam Hussein’s most terrible deeds because they valued him as an ally against communism. On the other hand, her parents were trying to carve out a place for themselves in a new country. They were working to participate in the American Dream, but their hearts and minds were back in Iraq, where terrible things were taking place. Mona’s parents couldn’t help their communities back in Iraq, which perhaps caused them to double down on the belief that the community actions one could take were all the more important.
Themes
From then on, Mona learned what it meant to challenge injustice and to stand up for the weak and vulnerable. Now, Mona and Elliott make sure to remind their daughters that empathy, service, and a sense of justice are important. They tell their children their family’s stories, so that the girls always know the rich history of resistance and activism from which they come.
This passage shows that Mona and her husband have made a concerted effort to pass on the family values that have made them who they are. They want their daughters to grow up valuing truth, solidarity, and history.
Themes
