Finding Anxiety: A Theoretical Analysis in Nadia Hashimi’s When the Moon is Low

This study aims to bring to limelight the psychological perspective of anxiety in Nadia Hashimi’s select novel When the Moon is Low. Anxiety is a major health challenge nowadays faced by women war-torn Taliban Afghanistan. Anxiety refers to a state of mind. In this fiction, the author attempts to jog the reader’s memory to be aware of the aspects of anxiety problems and their symptoms faced by families under Taliban rule and the prevalent Afghan culture. Nadia Hashimi is a noteworthy writer, and her famous work is When the Moon is Low. In this fiction, the author has portrayed the subject of the psychological tendency of anxiety. Fereiba is the protagonist, in this novel, who faces many struggles and feels anxiety due to her husband’s denial and throughout her displacement from Kabul to London. Finally, she overcomes all the suffering and aspires to live her dream life in London. The contemporary study is based on the qualitative study that adopted the psychoanalytic theory proposed by Sigmund Freud. It analyzes the text that represents the elements related to anxiety through the protagonist’s family. This study’s results are compared and discussed with other studies concerning anxiety. The findings show that anxiety is applicable in Hashimi’s When the Moon is Low. Also, the author has projected the aspect of anxiety in her work through her writing, especially narration, both fiction and reality. She has explored reality in the form of writing and attempts to voice out concerning the plight of Afghan women and children.