By the Sea

Rachel visits Saleh periodically, urging him to get out more. She invites him to have dinner with her and her mother; their family lived in Spain prior to the Inquisition, and Rachel thinks Saleh and her mother would enjoy “chatting away until the early hours about the walled gardens of Córdoba” (261). However, Saleh declines, as he is expecting Latif to visit him.

When Latif returns, Saleh continues recounting the intertwined history of their families. Amid the economic and political turmoil of independence, Saleh took out a loan on the house he had won from Latif’s father, Rajab Shaaban Mahmud. In 1967, the banks were nationalized, and Saleh’s debt was abruptly called in; he could not pay, so the house was repossessed, and Rajab and his wife soon moved back in.

At this time, Asha was having an affair with a government minister and was thus able to manipulate the system against Saleh. A few months after losing the house, Saleh was summoned to party headquarters, where he was condemned and arrested; Rajab had accused him of falsifying Bi Maryam’s will. He was held in a town prison before being transferred to an island detention center. After refusing an offer to be deported, he was moved between mainland prison camps for 11 years.