Razia

Outer characterization

Razia Iqbal is one of Nazneen's neighbors in the novel Brick Lane by Monica Ali. Like Nazneen, Razia is a Bangladeshi immigrant and lives with her husband and her two children, Tariq and Shefali. After her husband is killed in a work accident, Razia gets a job as a seamstress. She also goes to college classes to learn English. Later, she and Nazneen start a sewing business together.

Nazneen describes Razia as having large hands and “a long nose and narrow eyes that always looked at you from an angle, never straight on, so that she seemed perpetually to be evaluating if not mocking you” (p. 19). Nazneen also notes about Razia that:

There was nothing feminine about her face, and with her hair tucked into her hat she could have been a labourer or a fisherman, but when she smiled her face lost its sly, sideways look and her nose seemed smaller. When she was smiling she was almost handsome. (p. 57)

In this way, Razia’s more masculine appearance matches her rejection of traditional Bangladeshi gender roles and idea...