By the Sea

Chapter 6 marks the culmination of the novel’s exploration of The Unreliability of Memory and Competing Narratives. Latif’s outburst amid Saleh’s accusations regarding Asha—he accuses Saleh of being “obsessed with his narrative” (271)—is a crucial moment that ironically reveals Latif’s investment in his own narrative. The novel largely cedes the floor to Saleh following this, forcing both Latif and the reader to contend with a version of history that dismantles the one Latif has constructed. Saleh’s monologue is a reclamation of narrative agency; he evolves from the silent asylum “case” into the author of his own history, moving from strategic silence to exhaustive testimony. Nevertheless, the novel does not give Saleh the undisputed final word; once he finishes the story, Latif shares a memory of Saleh walking around the disputed home and choosing pieces to auction. Saleh does not remember the incident, saying that he sent a servant to collect the possessions. The moment unsettles both of them: Saleh is “astonished,” and Latif questions whether he could have rewritten the past to cast Saleh as a more villainous figure, remarking, “Let’s say for the moment that I imagined it…But it seems so strange to have a picture” (311). That the men are able to establish a friendship despite this lingering ambiguity embodies the novel’s core argument: that understanding is achieved not through arriving at a singular narrative, but through the difficult process of entertaining conflicting stories.

This chapter also brings the theme of The Intergenerational Burdens of Betrayal and Inheritance to its conclusion, employing the recurring motif of furniture as a tangible symbol of the disputed legacy. Saleh’s account identifies the ebony table as the catalyst for the feud’s violent escalation. His refusal to return it, an act he later recognizes as born of pettiness and vanity, turns Asha against him, leading directly to his persecution. The table is thus freighted with symbolic weight, representing contested honor, ownership, and what Saleh comes to see as futile ambition. The ebony table’s journey mirrors the cyclical and destructive nature of the family conflict, serving as the material legacy of a moral failing—a “scourge to remind me daily of my vanity and my loss” (311). In a postcolonial context, these personal disputes over property reflect a broader societal instability and the fraught process of establishing legitimacy in the wake of historical upheaval—a point underscored by the role that Zanzibar’s newfound independence plays in Saleh’s economic calculations and Asha’s political maneuverings.

Similarly, Saleh’s account of his 11-year imprisonment redefines his identity beyond the family feud. It is here that the novel most directly confronts the limits of language in articulating trauma. While Saleh details the degradation of the detention camps, he notes his inability to verbalize the worst of it, explaining that those years “were written in the language of the body, and it is not a language [he] can speak with words” (296). His former identity is erased, replaced by that of a political prisoner. Yet, he forges a new, stoic identity through the disciplined rituals of communal prayer and storytelling, which provide “order and purpose” to an otherwise dehumanizing experience (298). His reference to a photograph of Jewish men being forced to scrub pavements in Vienna places his personal humiliation within a broader, global history of dehumanization, solidifying the novel’s political critique of a brutal post-independence regime and bearing witness to silenced histories that official state narratives seek to erase.

Ultimately, the chapter’s conclusion moves beyond the recitation of past traumas to depict the tentative beginnings of reconciliation. This emerging bond between Saleh and Latif is founded on a mutual recognition of exile, loneliness, and loss. After Saleh completes his narrative, the dynamic shifts from confrontation to care; Latif stays the night, a gesture of intimacy that breaches their formal distance. This culminates in Latif bringing Saleh to his London apartment. The description of Latif’s apartment, which reeks of “loneliness and futility” with its bare walls (314), deliberately mirrors the desolate back room of Saleh’s shop: A shared atmosphere of desolation becomes the foundation for their connection. The emerging friendship with Rachel, whose family backstory as Sephardic Jews reveals another narrative of displacement, underscores the creation of a new, diasporic “home” in London. The novel thus offers a nuanced vision of healing, rejecting sentimental notions of return in favor of forging new communities based on the essential work of sharing and listening to painful histories.