So what can we do?
This is an interesting question not just because it surfaces in the three most recent class texts (Sugar Street, Rebel’s Silhouette and Sweet & Sour Milk) but also because it the question any great revolutionary must ask in the face of a Goliath-like injustice or oppression.
When Soyaan dies, and his soul is claimed by the General, Loyaan spends the rest of the book trying to answer this question.
In Rebel’s Silhouette, Faiz is in prison reflecting on that very question, ultimately asking “you” to “tell us what to do.”
Just from the first few chapters of Sugar Street, when this question is asked twice in two different forms, you get the sense of a society eager to find the answer to this question so as to gain independence.
But in all three, the situation looks bleak.
Loyaan is claimed by the General just like his twin.
Faiz is stuck in prison and his poems are filled with a sense of futility.
We get a similar sense from a few lines in the fourth chapter of Sugar Street: "For too long the nation had patiently endured the blows it recieved..." (32)
Despite this, (at least the two works we’ve finished) the works seem to be encouraging hope, instead of saying “give up.”
For some reason that probably has everything to do with timing, this all reminds me of an essay by Mark Twain I am reading for an American Literature class, called “The Turning Point of My Life.” Twain seems to be responding to an imaginary prompt asking him to talk about the turning point of his life, and he says that the question

“implies--without intention, perhaps--that that turning-point ITSELF was the creator of the new condition. This gives it too much distinction, too much prominence, too much credit. It is only the LAST link in a very long chain of turning-points commissioned to produce the cardinal result; it is not any more important than the humblest of its ten thousand predecessors. Each of the ten thousand did its appointed share, on its appointed date, in forwarding the scheme, and they were all necessary; to have left out any one of them would have defeated the scheme and brought about SOME OTHER result. It know we have a fashion of saying "such and such an event was the turning-point in my life," but we shouldn't say it. We should merely grant that its place as LAST link in the chain makes it the most CONSPICUOUS link; in real importance it has no advantage over any one of its predecessors.” (http://www.online-literature.com/twain/1324/)

So, in light of our readings, the apparent “failures” of Loyaan and Faiz should be viewed as links in a long chain that will ultimately lead to change.
We see the hope of this in the texts:
Loyaan passes the memorandums to his sister, and the baby Soyaan is born.
By writing his poetry, Faiz is writing to the future.
I’m not sure how Sugar Street is going to turn out, but from what we’ve read and our discussion so far, I get the feeling that Kamal’s nephews will factor in somehow.

((sorry for the length of this post. the mark twain essay is worth reading in its entirety, though, and is actually kind of funny.))