Monsieur Ibrahim and the Flowers of the Koran

Featured prominently in the work’s title, the Koran—to which Monsieur Ibrahim repeatedly refers throughout the narrative as “my Koran”—functions as a motif that helps to develop the theme of wisdom and its origins. Though the grocer identifies as a Muslim, he breaks some Islamic rules of behavior: He drinks alcohol and pays an occasional visit to the nearby brothel. Still, Monsieur Ibrahim remains devoted to the wisdom of “his Koran”—with an emphasis on his personal interpretation of its contents—insofar as it melds with his lived experience. For Monsieur Ibrahim, wisdom doesn’t derive solely from written laws; rather, they must be tempered by human happiness.

As Moses gravitates towards the grocer’s brand of personalized, Sufi-infused Islam, he rejects not only Judaism as a religious practice, but also Jewishness as a cultural and ethnic identity—two quite different things that the novella conflates into one. Moses’s father blames Judaism for being a source of bad memories, given his parents’ deportation and subsequent death during the Holocaust, though of course the vast majority of Nazi victims were completely secular Jewish people. Schmitt has Moses decide that being Jewish is “just something that keeps [him] from being anything else” (25)—though the novella never considers what effect adopting a Muslim name and identity might have on Moses in majority-white and Christian Paris.

When Moses inherits Monsieur Ibrahim’s Koran, he discovers two dried flowers and a letter from Monsieur Abdullah. The flowers symbolize the blossoms of wisdom that the grocer has imparted to Moses, as well as the enduring bond of love between the boy and his adoptive father. Armed with these simple essentials, Moses—now Mohammed—has a meaningful road map for life.