Good Advice is Rarer than Rubies

Miss Rehana, the protagonist, is employed as an ayah in Lahore, a city in the Punjab province of Pakistan. The story’s action revolves around her trip to the British Consulate, where she undergoes a screening process that will determine whether she can migrate to England to be with her fiancé, Mustafa Dar. Beautiful and independent, she travels alone to the Consulate without wearing a veil. Through the eyes of Muhammad and other men in the shantytown, her beauty takes on a bewitching quality; it alone compels Muhammad Ali to approach her and offer her a passport to England. She is the primary vehicle through which the story explores The (Western) Male Gaze and Constructions of Femininity.

Though the narrative does not grant readers direct access to Miss Rehana’s thoughts, there are small clues throughout the piece that she is both anxious and excited about the process she’ll undergo at the Consulate. She is otherwise calm and reserved. However, her true motives only emerge when she shares that her marriage was arranged and that she’d rather stay in Pakistan and live her life as she has been.

Miss Rehana is the wisest character in the story, as evidenced by her recognition that Muhammad Ali is scamming her.