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Part 2, Chapter 14
Themes
and Colors
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in When Stars Are Scattered, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
The Value of Education
Hope, Faith, and Resilience
Family and Friendship
The Refugee Experience
Acceptance and Coming of Age
Summary
Analysis
Four years later, Omar is 17 years old. He and Jeri are in high school—they’re among the few students from A2 who passed the tests to get there. Everyone is proud of them for making it so far. Even though Omar passed his exams, he almost couldn’t go because he couldn’t afford the required uniform. When Ms. Martinez, the social worker Omar met years ago, learned about this, she bought one for him. Omar was shocked that she even remembered him, much less wanted to help him. Hassan is bigger these days. Maryam is, too—she’s pregnant again. Her first child did turn out to be a girl, and she’s very smart—she takes after her namesake, Nimo. Though little Nimo is still too young to attend school, Maryam teaches her at home. And Maryam still studies on her own, and she helps the neighborhood girls with their schoolwork.
Omar and Jeri’s acceptance to high school reinforces their commitment to their studies and, in a broader sense, to taking control of their fates as best they can. Neither boy has chosen to be a refugee, but they can choose to educate and better themselves. Ms. Martinez’s buying Omar the uniform reignites his faith in the support system in place in Dadaab, at least to an extent. The effort Maryam puts into educating little Nimo shows that she is following through on her earlier vow not to let her daughter be deprived of an education like Maryam herself was. She doesn’t, in other words, use her own crushed dreams as an excuse to succumb to despair. Instead, she uses what blessings she has—her own intelligence and a daughter who has inherited that intelligence—to make the best of her situation, working to provide little Nimo the education she herself had to give up.
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Maryam tells Omar that Nimo’s family called from Canada the other day, and Maryam was able to speak to Nimo briefly. Nimo says that life is hard in Canada: she struggles to speak English all the time, and not everyone there is rich. Some people even live on the streets. And Nimo even misses the food at Dadaab—something Omar struggles to make sense of.
Nimo’s admission that she misses the food at Dadaab—where people often go hungry—is darkly humorous, but it also reinforces the importance of cultural connection and close relationships. Nimo’s life in Canada, where she lives a life of relative economic privilege compared to residents of Dadaab, feels lacking because she doesn’t have her loved ones or their shared culture to make it feel like home.
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Soon, it’s time for supper, so Omar and Hassan part ways with Maryam and little Nimo. While everyone else is getting bigger, Omar reflects, Fatuma is getting smaller. She feeds her goats before herself these days. Even then, the goats are shrinking, too: there’s just not enough for them to eat these days.
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Jeri comes over to study with Omar at night. Currently, they’re working on an essay they’ve been assigned: What It Means to Be a Refugee. This is more or less the theme of all their essays. Omar thinks their teachers ought to be a little more creative. As high school graduation looms closer, Omar feels increasingly anxious—he likes to learn, and he doesn’t know what he'd do with no school. Plus, he still doesn’t know if he'll even get a job. He sees former classmates of his, like Tall Ali, hanging around the market chewing khat, and he despairs—even if he understands the appeal of khat for people who are suffering. Most of all, Omar is thankful for Jeri and the mutual support they provide each other.
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One day, one of Fatuma’s baby goats dies. Fatuma weeps over its dead body. The goat was starving, she explains, but she had no food to give it. The goat’s death is too much for Hassan to bear, and he takes off running. Omar chases after Hassan, but he loses track of him. He searches for hours, but with no luck. Later, neighbors join in the search. Omar’s worry spikes once the sun sets. Though others tell Omar they should pause the search until morning, Omar is done waiting. He sets out into the bush and walks until he reaches Dagahaley, the next camp over. He asks everyone if they’ve seen Hassan, but no one has. Just when Omar is about to give up, he hears a voice on a loudspeaker summon a man looking for his brother. Omar scrambles to his feet and heads toward the fruit market, where the voice on the loudspeaker said he should go.
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At the fruit stand, Omar meets a man who tells him that he found Hassan wandering around the market last night, but Hassan had been unable to tell the man his name or where he came from. Hassan is at the man’s home now, where the man’s wife is caring for him. Omar follows the man to his home, where Omar has a tearful reunion with Hassan. The man’s wife invites Omar to have some tea with them. Inside the tent, Omar meets Sarura, the couple’s daughter. Omar and the young woman look at each other, and Omar muses at how even “when life feels like it’s at its lowest […] God will deliver an answer and you’ll find a path out of the darkness.”
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Omar and Hassan thank their new friends and then head home. There, they find a big crowd gathered around their tent, and they discover that yet another surprise is waiting for them: the brothers have been scheduled for a second interview.
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