She shall not be moved: analyse af Shereen Pandits novelle

She shall not be moved, a short story by Shereen Pandit. In Underwords, the Hidden City, the Maia Press Ltd., 2005.

A summary of the short story

The bus was full of people and the central character seat with her daughter near the pram space.

Two middle aged women seat in the pram space where they ignored the Somali woman who held the pram in the one hand and her child in the other and waited to catch the two women´s attention.

The two women did not want to change their seats and the Somali woman squashed herself so the other people could get past her.

Then came the “black” driver and instead of forcing the two women to move he was against the Somali woman. Line 32: “he comes at this Somali woman and yells at her that either she folds up the pram or she leaves the bus”.

The narrator

I think that our narrator is about 30 years old and she has a daughter who is about 6-7 years old. The narrator´s mother had brought her up to respect the old people and she had especially forced her to sacrifice her seat to the old people when she was kid. Line 86:” now my Mum, when we were kids, she´d only have given us what for if we didn´t get up and offer our seats to older people”.