Mimicry in Fadia Faqir’s The Cry of the Dove

Abstract

Disorientation is not a pleasant experience for the characters of these novels and it is understandable that they fantasise about ways of ending or avoiding it. At one point in Brick Lane, Nazneen starts wondering whether she could magically transform herself into a Westerner by altering her clothes:

Suddenly, she was gripped by an idea that if she changed her clothes her entire life would change as well. If she wore a skirt and a jacket and a pair of high heals, then what else would she do but walk around the glass palaces on Bishopsgate and talk to a slim phone and eat lunch out of a bag? If she wore trousers and underwear, like the girl with the big camera on Brick Lane, then she would roam the streets fearless and proud. […] For a glorious moment it was clear that clothes, not fate, made her life.

(Ali 228)