The Embassy Of Cambodia, By Zadie Smith

The Game of Badminton

In her short story, “The Embassy of Cambodia”, author Zadie Smith explores the complex mind of a domestic servant named Fatou, and how she finds happiness despite personal experience with abuse, suffering, and death. “The Embassy of Cambodia” manages to address a wide spectrum of societal and cultural problems and also has the ability to connect with individual readers on a deeper level. Smith uses many intertwining techniques to ultimately demonstrate how routine, faith, and relationships can help navigate a life that is filled with pain and uncertainty. In order to create a sense of structure and certainty in her life, Fatou sets aside specific amounts of time on certain days to ensure relaxation and happiness. Smith

Credited to Andrew and their weekly theological conversations, Fatou develops a strong belief in the Christian faith and interestingly she seems to have had an ongoing battle with the Devil; even claiming that he “chooses [Africans] especially for suffering” (Smith). While keeping in mind the constant moral conflict that Fatou faces every single day, one symbol really jumps out to the reader. That is the badminton match that is being played inside the Embassy of Cambodia. The endless back and forth “pock smash, pock smash” of the shuttlecock represents Fatou’s morality and the entity’s holding the rackets are God and the Devil who both play with different styles, “one player [can] only imagine a violent conclusion and the other a hopeful return” (Smith). In fact, Fatou uses the Devil to describe major events in which she has felt or experienced pain and suffering. For example, as an employee at the Carib beach hotel, Fatou was trapped in a bedroom by the Devil “in Russian form” where it was inferred that he sexually abused her (Smith). In one conversation with Andrew, she told her eyewitness account of “nine children who [had] washed up dead on the beach” and a boy who was killed while “being knocked down on the street” (Smith). In response, Andrew told her not to “give the Devil [her] anger” claiming that “it is his food” (Smith).

On the surface one could say that Fatou has only a few meaningful relationships. Those being her father, who sacrificed a lot financially to give Fatou opportunities in life, and the Andrew who, according to Fatou, “[cares] for her, [is] clean, and [has] given his life to Christ” (Smith). One cannot doubt the impact that those two have had on Fatou, but there is another relationship that helps mold Fatou’s personality and at the very root drives her away from the pain and uncertainty.That is the people of Willesden. Smith centers the story around the Embassy of Cambodia not because Fatou simply walks past it every day, but because it represents the presence of a foreign threat. The people of Willesden conclude that the embassy pops up because of “genocide” inferably of the people in Cambodia (Smith). In describing the nature of the Cambodian genocide, the narrator states that the Khmer Rouge “wanted to create a society of Old People”, and later Andrew cites that they were “enemies of logic and progress”, characteristics that did not describe Fatou. (Smith). The people of Willesden observed that Fatou was not one of them.She did not fit in with the “Old People” of Willesden which as a group was represented by the Derawal family who, as a family, was hurtful towards Fatou. Fatou didn’t care. Andrew stated that Fatou “[is] not like [those] people” because she “care[es]