MEATLESS DAYS

“I had strongly hoped that they would say sweetbreads instead of testicles, but I was wrong” (21)

— these are the opening words of Sara Suleri’s “Meatless Days” as she realizes that the Pakistani

delicacy is testicles. Here is a story entitled “Meatless,” yet we immediately discover that the

primary focus is on meat. In a literal sense, the essay is about Suleri trying to remember whether

she had previously known that kapura are testicles, leading her to question whether her mother

had deceived her about the delicacy’s ingredients. However, with more in-depth examination, one

can argue that meat is an allegorical vehicle to examine the author’s relationship with her mother.

Throughout the essay, Suleri tells a story of meat that is literal, but her realistic, often historical

narrative is interwoven with a more profound meaning that turns words and events into metaphors

for Suleri’s mother. In turn, it becomes an exploration of childhood memory, trust, discovery, and

eventually, death as Suleri explores the events of her life for the meaning of the kapura, and in

doing so, explores the relationship with her mother.

The scholarly conversation surrounding Meatless Days commonly centers around topics of

national identity, postcolonialism, and feminism. Suleri herself has directed much of this work by

virtue of her own writing, notably Boys Will Be Boys, where she writes about feminism, The

Rhetoric of English India, where she traces the genealogy of colonial discourse, and of

course Meatless Days, a memoir which in essence covers all three topics. It is natural, therefore

that academic focus has pointed to those areas. A handful of scholars have written about food, and

specifically meat in Suleri’s work, yet still point back to Pakistani identity: Anita Mannur, in her

article “Culinary Nostalgia: Authenticity, Nationalism, and Diaspora,” argues that Suleri’s

contemplation of the kapura is more related to her “own location among a US-based community

of Pakistani expatriates” (19). Sangeeta Ray, Mara Scanlon, and Timothy Adams also tie meat
directly to Pakistani identity, and while Fauzia Janjua covers the symbolism of food, she does not

examine meat as an allegory for Suleri’s mother.

However, Meatless Days is, above all, a memoir in homage to Suleri’s mother, and the central

theme of the corresponding essay aptly focuses on meat. Parama Roy presents the most

significant discussion of meat in Alimentary Tracts: Appetites, Aversion, and the Postcolonial,

where she says:

“There is an extraordinary literalism to the way in which food functions in the novel —

the kapura parable of the preceding chapter is a vivid instance of this — and the obstinacy with

which it refuses to sequester itself in a purely metaphoric or allegorical realm or to subordinate

itself to a world of abstractions. Thus the kapura (or the pancreas, or the kidney, or the mother’s

breast) is both word and flesh, to be spoken as well as eaten” (184).

In her work, Roy sees the kapura both literally as food, and as a trigger for emotional

examination. She goes on to offer that, “This figuration of the mother as source and purveyor of

food provides something of a template for the text’s explorations of love, dependence,

vulnerability, conflict, and transubstantiation” (185). Roy touches on the connection between

meat and mother, positioning the mother as the literal provider of food, and the provider of a

maternal relationship. However, close reading of the essay furthers this discussion by establishing

a connection between Suleri’s exploration of the kapura and her exploration of the relationship

with her mother.

In A Study in the Idioms of Dubiety and Migrancy in Boys Will be Boys and Meatless

Days Rachel Tudor tells us: “In Suleri’s subsequent autobiographical text, Boys Will Be Boys: A

Daughter’s Elegy [to her father], she confesses that Meatless Days ‘is largely an elegy for her’
mother (16). Near the end of Meatless Days, Suleri reminisces about saying to her mother, ‘you

must be just who you are, and we must discover why’ (166). In Meatless Days, Suleri not only

laments the loss of her mother but grieves over the possibility of ever understanding who her

mother was.” (80) There seems to be a common understanding, as detailed here by Tudor, that

Suleri’s relationship with her mother was complicated. It appears that Suleri struggled to

understand her mother, and one could expect that her mother struggled to understand her

daughter. This essay analyzes how the concept of meat plays a role in helping Suleri process how

her distant relationship with her mother evolves into a more adult understanding, resolving when

her mother dies.

Meat, beginning with kapura, drives Suleri to access memories of her childhood, and in doing so,

she begins to examine her maternal relationship: “It was my mother, after all, who had told me

that sweetbreads are sweetbreads, and if she were wrong on that score, then how many other

simple equations had I now to doubt?” (23). Here we see that the question of sweetbreads leads

her to question her mother, and in turn, the foundation of all she knows. The word “equations”

gives us an insight into how Suleri formulates her thoughts around the relationship with her

mother. Equations are mathematical calculations, ones that should make sense. To Suleri, in the

context of her maternal relationship, they do not. The “equations” of childhood are simple: our

mothers tell us what something is, and we believe that to be the truth. However, the “equation” of

the kapura leads Suleri to question the simplicity of life and wonder about the events of her

childhood. Things that seemed straightforward now appear complex, and the uncomplicated

mother-daughter love is complicated by Suleri’s realization of how duplicitous her mother may

have been in her attempts to teach her about the world.

It is reasonable that Suleri should have been able to trust her mother, but the examination of

the kapura makes her question that trust. If she could knowingly trick Suleri into eating a testicle,
were there other things that Suleri had unwittingly done? Meat becomes a representation of both

trust and mistrust, of faith in her mother and her unrealized lack of faith. Suleri begins questioning

the very essence of their relationship, sending her on a journey of discovery, not only to find out if

she had known about kapura but also to find out if the basis of her childhood and her relationship

with her mother was as she knew it to be. Suleri gives this profound implication saying, “In order

to submit even the most imperfect answer, I had to go back to where I belonged and — past a

thousand different mealtimes — try to reconstruct the parable of the kapura.” (24) Suleri refers to

this as a “parable,” giving the story of the kapura a religious or spiritual significance. This is not

the only time Suleri mentions meat being a parable, closing the essay with, “As parable,

the kapura does not dare to look much further” (44). Let us examine the kapura as parable then,

as a spiritual message from Suleri’s mother: what is the moral or spiritual lesson that it is trying to

teach? Is it that life is precisely as it seems, that testicles are precisely that, and one should be

aware of the disguise hidden in the word “sweetbread,” the chosen name for something that is

quite the opposite of the word’s implicated label? Suleri uses the word “dare,” which implies a

risk that there is some danger involved in facing and examining the kapura. Perhaps Suleri is

implying that this is the lesson her mother was trying to teach her with the kapura: that she should

be wary of being tricked, let alone by her mother. At a dinner party, Suleri reveals that her mother

loved phrases like, “‘mutton dressed up as lamb,’ which had been such a favorite of my mother’s.

Another was ‘neither flesh nor fowl’” (23), and it is at this moment that Suleri suddenly realizes

that her mother’s proclivity for the trickery of words might reveal a trickery of experience too.

Though this is a journey of discovery, it is plausible that Suleri does not want to confront her

mother and face the dishonesty in their relationship. She wants to keep the idea of her mother

pure, but the kapura forces her to face reality. Suleri fights this, saying, “I rummaged for the

sweet realm of nomenclature, “couldn’t kapura on a lazy occasion also accommodate something

like sweetbreads, which is just a nice way of saying that pancreas is not a pleasant word to eat?”
(22) Suleri speaks of the “sweet realm of nomenclature” in compelling parallel to the word

“sweetbreads” as if hoping for the term to be applied to something “sweet” and not testicles.

Perhaps the “sweet nomenclature” in which she “rummages” offers Suleri some words of comfort

and safety as if the words she chooses are a safe space that allows her refuge from the reality of

what the words truly mean. The word “rummaged” implies an imprecision that is more

metaphorical than academic, as if she is “rummaging” through her bag of tricks: the defense

mechanisms and strategies she has created through the safety of words that protect her from

reality. In the same way, she wants the words to be “pleasant” just as she wants her relationship

with her mother to be “pleasant,” and by the pleasant word sweetbreads now having been revealed

as very unpleasant, Suleri shows us the signs that she is uncovering the truth behind the things she

was taught by examining the nomenclature to be different in tone and meaning from what she

initially imagined.

Suleri creates a distinct sense of coldness between herself and her mother, her notable absence

exemplified in the passage in which the children drink milk from a water buffalo, where Suleri

says, “She kept away herself, of course.” (25) Where she uses the words “of course” in this

sentence, Suleri is telling us that this was predictable, that her mother would “of course” not be

present, and that her children would not expect her presence. The weight of these words, this

small phrase, has a heaviness that reveals a constant expectation of her mother’s absence. Yes, it

was her mother who had wanted them to drink the pungent buffalo milk, once again making her

daughter taste and experience something unknowingly. That she did not insert her physical

presence into the moment, creates a distinct distance between what she inflicted upon her child

and what Suleri experienced. Whether it be buffalo milk or kapura, Suleri’s mother created an

inescapable air of mistrust and distance.

Mistrust is a pervasive theme in Meatless Days, and it becomes evident that Suleri questions her

mother’s motives saying, “The second possibility that occurred to me was even more unsettling:

maybe my mother knew that sweetbreads are testicles but had cunningly devised a ruse to make

me consume as many parts of the world as she could before she set me loose in it.” (23) “It” refers

to the world that she will be set free to experience once she is free from being “trapped” by the

constraints of her mother’s rule: constraints from which she will be set loose. That Suleri uses the

word “consume” here is an example of interwoven deeper meaning in the text, as if knowledge

and experience are something one can ingest just as one would meat. It also, however, puts a

positive bearing on her mother’s potential trickery as meat can be nourishing and filling. Suleri

could be considered forgiving of her mother’s cunning “ruse” as she sees that the intent was

supportive and positive even if the delivery was not. Further examination of Suleri’s negative

language concerning her mother is revealed where she uses the word “unsettling” to reveal her

discomfort with her mother, the word implying something that physically can cause anxiety and

distress. Their relationship makes Suleri uncomfortable, and she uses words to describe that

discontent. She goes on to wonder if her mother had “cunningly devised a ruse” using the word

“cunningly,” which paints her mother as duplicitous and deceptive, as does the word “ruse.”

Where Suleri says, “maybe my mother knew,” she is acknowledging that her mother would have

been capable of such deception. This is conceivably Suleri’s way of accepting that her mother did

indeed know and that her method of teaching her daughter about the world also displayed a vast

chasm between them. The mother could not teach her daughter directly because their relationship

held an enormous emotional distance, and so she used things like meat, like the kapura, to teach

her child. Suleri says, “For of course she must have known, in her Welsh way, that sweetbreads

could never be simply sweetbreads in Pakistan.” (23) Using “must have known,” Suleri

acknowledges that her mother was aware and purposeful in her actions. This was not merely the

action of a woman who did not realize what she was doing. The word “must” implies an accurate

and clear understanding and perhaps also reveals the mother’s command over her daughter. Suleri

“must” obey her mother and “must” follow her mother’s will. These are words that continue to
“trap” Suleri in her mother’s world. The discord that these words create helps the reader envision

how her mother could have negatively perceived the world in which she was raising her children

and explains why Suleri words things in the way she does. There is an implied feeling of force

and negativity. Suleri says, “the institution of meatless days rapidly came to signify the imperative

behind the acquisition of all things fleshly.” (32) The use of the word “fleshly” is almost shocking

here. Flesh relates more to the human body than to meat as would find in a butcher, and her use of

it creates a very personal, human statement that borders on the macabre. In that the flesh is not of

a living being, it is a reference to life and death, the real and the surreal, relationships and

closeness, and the lack thereof. Suleri continues, “It made us think of meatless days as some vast

funeral game, where Monday’s frenetic creation of fresh things beckoned in the burial meals of

Tuesday and Wednesday. ‘Food,’ Nuz said with disgust — ‘It’s what you bury in your body.’

(33) Suleri uses the word “funeral,” and her sister says, “bury.” The macabre mention of

“fleshly,” and then the thematic emblem of death and burial is an extraordinary interplay of the

real and surreal. In these days of abundant meat where there was meant to be none, did Suleri find

abundance in her mother, or did she find herself devoid of the richness of relationship? This is

what she is remembering and questioning.

If meat is allegorically related to Suleri’s mother, it would then also be related to her death, a

topic that emerges at the end of the piece and is, in essence, the final element of discovery and

examination that offers Suleri closure. In recalling a dream she had after her mother’s death, she

says, “What I found were hunks of meat wrapped in cellophane, and each of them felt like

Mamma, in some odd way. It was my task to carry those flanks across the street and to fit them

into the coffin at the other side of the road, like pieces in a jigsaw puzzle.” (44) Where her mother

had been absent in her life, Suleri was now finally able to hold her mother close, and the “jigsaw

puzzle” represents the pieces of her mother that she now understands. Suleri had always felt

disembodied from her mother and is now able to see her as whole. This element of the dream
harkens back to “the imperative behind the acquisition of all things fleshly” as at her mother’s

death, Suleri acquires her mother, taking us back to the melding of the real and surreal. In reality,

Suleri acquires an understanding of her mother, and in the surreal dream, this becomes the

physical pieces of flesh. She uses the word “task” as if she was tasked to examine her mother, just

as she tasked herself to explore her memories of kapura. The use of the word “task” is compelling

as she is being asked to do something by someone. One interpretation is that Suleri is motivated

by herself to follow this job through to completion. Another idea would be that it is her mother

finally pushing her to piece this together. Following the path of discovery directed by the kapura,

the final result was to take all she had discovered and piece it all together. Following through on

the task of putting the puzzle together in her dream, she finally understands her mother and so

understands the world and her place in it. The “simple equations” (23) are solved as she puts the

“jigsaw puzzle” back together. “Although my dream will not let me recall how many trips I made,

I know my hands felt cold. Then, when my father’s back was turned, I found myself engaged in

rapid theft-for the sake of Ifat and Shahid and Tillat and all of us, I stole away a portion of that

body. It was a piece of her foot I found, a small bone like a knuckle, which I quickly hid inside

my mouth, under my tongue. Then I and the dream dissolved, into an extremity of tenderness.”

(44) Suleri may use the word “extremity” here to emphasize that it was a piece of foot that she put

into her mouth, as in a literal sense, the foot is a physical “extremity.” At the same time, however,

it is a piece of her mother, perhaps the missing piece of the “jigsaw puzzle” that Suleri did not

understand. This interplay of meat as a representation of the emotion she feels at her mother’s

death, while at the same time being literal, is part of the essay’s meat allegory. Her mother

becomes the meat: the symbol of both the emotional, as she absorbs the understanding of her

mother’s role in her life, and the physical as she puts that piece of her mother in her mouth,

causing the dream to end, and tenderness to take its place. When understanding the puzzle of her

mother, she finally feels tender towards her because she finally sees her differently, seeing what

her mother was trying to teach her about life and her place in the world. Ganapathy-Doré concurs,
saying, ‘Meatless Days’ is, therefore, a reference to motherless days, a deliberately unsentimental

title for a daughter’s commemoration of her departed mother.” (37)

Meatless Days is an essay about meat and mother: the literal and the emotional, and Suleri’s

journey to find an understanding of both. By the end, both the reader and Suleri realize kapura to

be testicles, and we recognize these “sweetbreads” to be anything but sweet. By removing the veil

of the literal, Suleri’s language guides us to the assertion that meat is the bittersweet allegorical

representation of her mother. In the end, meat leads her to understand the lessons mother tried to

teach her about life and the world around her: that things are not always as they seem, and that

trust is never a guarantee. And so it ends, “I had eaten, that was all, and woken to a world of

meatless days.” (44) speaking of a world where Suleri’s mother has gone, has left her “meatless”

and motherless, but with a greater understanding of her place in that world.

Works Cited

Adams, Timothy Dow. “Private Parts of Pakistan: Food and Privacy in Sara Suleri’s Meatless

Days.” Revista Canaria De Estudios Ingleses, vol. 58, 2009, pp. 67–75.

Ganapathy-Doré, Geetha. “A Mouthful of Stones in a Mango Leaf: History, Womanhood and

Language in Sara Suleri’s Meatless Days, a Memoir.” Commonwealth: Essays and Studies, vol.

24, no. 1, 2001, pp. 31–40,117.

Janjua, Fauzia.” Chapter 16 The Symbolism of Food in Meatless Days.” (255–261)

Raibaud, Martine, et al. Cultures in Movement. Cambridge Scholars Publisher, 2015.

Mannur, Anita. “Culinary Nostalgia: Authenticity, Nationalism, and Diaspora.” MELUS: Multi-

Ethnic Literature of the United States, vol. 32, no. 4, Jan. 2007, pp. 11–31.

Ray, Sangeeta. “Memory, Identity, Patriarchy: Projecting a Past in the Memoirs of Sara Suleri and

Michael Ondaatje.” MFS Modern Fiction Studies, vol. 39, no. 1, 1993, pp. 37–58.

Roy, Parama. Alimentary Tracts: Appetites, Aversions, and the Postcolonial. Duke University

Press, 2010.

Scanlon, Mara. “Mother Land, Mother Tongue: Reconfiguring Relationship in Suleri’s Meatless

Days.” Lit: Literature Interpretation Theory, vol. 12, no. 4, 2001, pp. 411–425.

Suleri Goodyear, Sara. Boys Will Be Boys: A Daughter’s Elegy. University of Chicago Press,

2003.

— -.The Rhetoric of English India. University of Chicago Press, 1992.

— -.Meatless Days. Viking, 2018.

Tudor, Rachel. “Sara Suleri: A Study in the Idioms of Dubiety and Migrancy in Boys Will Be

Boys and Meatless Days.” 2011.

(This research paper was written for Professor Christina Becker’s Expo-25 class at Harvard

Extension School and was originally submitted in December 2019)