Gold Dust

I thought that the novel gold dust portrayed a heartfelt story of a young man and his camel. The one thing that I enjoyed about the novel was that instead of there being one moral to the story there were a bunch of morals and lessons that the novel displayed. I also thought Gold Dust was pretty easy to read because it shared many similarities with the novel that we have read previously Aunt Safiyya. I understood what it was talking about when it discussed the evil eye and how it followed those who were envied of their beauty.
The part about the novel that I had trouble with was the resentment it presented towards women. It pretty much said that all of life’s problems could pretty much be traced back to the women in their lives. For the piebald it was the beautiful white camel that caused him to become plagued with a disease. For Ukhayyad it was marrying a beautiful poet who he was forbidden to that caused him to lose everything in his life. It was like it showed women as the reason for pain in all men’s lives, from the moment they leave the womb till the moment they die almost each struggle could be traced back to a woman in their life.

“He could not escape the contempt he felt toward the woman, toward himself, toward children, toward the world. From the moment they emerge from their mother’s bellies, humans never truly enjoy a single moment in peace. As soon as they put one calamity behind them, they great the next…”

Ukhayyad’s only true bond he had in the story was with his camel. All of the struggles that he went through were pretty much all related to his pet. He demonstrated a loyalty to his animal and the camel did the same to him in return.