“She shall not be moved”
The short story by Shereen Pandit “She shall not be moved” is about a Somali woman sitting in a bus with her little daughter, with them in the bus there are sitting two elder white women. The two elder women are sitting in the pram space in the bus, and the white elder women are pretending that they haven’t seen the Somali woman and her child. In another seat there is sitting a woman with her child and the woman is the narrator of the story. The narrator tries to make the two white and elder women move away from their seats so the Somali woman can sit there with her babies, but the two elder women won’t move away from their seats and pretends that they did not see the Somali woman and her babies. The driver of the bus is a black man, and he starts to yell at the Somali woman because she is standing in the aisle and because she is not sitting on the seats. The two elder white women are saying a lot of racist words and express their racism towards the Somali woman. The Somali woman does not do anything or say something to the two elder white women, but the narrator is feeling a little bit guilty. She is feeling guilty because she did not help the Somali woman even thou she has taught her daughter to stand against such things in life. She is telling the Somali woman to report the bus driver but she does not want to report him, but instead call him a ‘slave’.
The narrator of the story is kind towards the elder white women and she asks them to move to the empty seats so the Somali woman and her babies can be there, but the two elder white women pretends they did not hear the woman and what she said to them. The narrator is afraid of being kicked out of the bus if she says anything to the bus driver or anything else to those two elder women that won’t move seats for the Somali woman and her babies. The narrator regrets a lot that she did not