I looked at the prompt, which were both from the reader's guide for this book supplied by NYRB Classics (I forgot to mention that earlier under the prompts, oops), and it intrigued me. I thought that I would attempt to dissect it a bit. When I started writing down my observations I realized that many of my notes throughout the book are regarding these depictions. I feel like these carefully inserted brushstrokes of vivid sketches give Salih a moment to remove the reader and himslef from the political, socio-economic assertions. These images are not colorful or inspiring to me. They are a simple part of a feeling or memory. To me, all of these different moments of detail are drawn in a muted hue of rouge or burnt umber. Everything feels like hardened clay and smells like a hot day by an overfull river. I can feel mud between my toes and sand in my nose, it tickles and is spicy.
"Entering by the door of the spacious courtyard, I looked to right and to left. Over there were dates spread out on straw matting to dry; over there onions and chillies; over there sacks of wheat and beans, some with mouths stitched up, others open. In a corner a goat eats barley and suckles her young. The fate of this house is bound up with that of the field: if the field waxers green so does it, if drought sweeps over the field it also sweeps over the house. I breathe in that smell peculiar to my grandfather's house, a discordant mixture of onions and chillies anddates and wheat and horse-beans and fenugreek, in addition to the aroma of the incense which is always floating up from the large earthenware censer" (60-61).
