The color blue is a recurring symbol of Bekija’s lifelong yearning for a masculine identity, simply because it aligns with Murash’s expectations for her. The symbol is rooted in a linguistic quirk that shapes Bekija’s entire existence. The novel’s epigraph explains that the Bulgarian word sin is a homonym for both “son” and “blue,” directly linking the color to her father’s unfulfilled wish for a male heir. This connection is established before her birth: “because still in my mother’s womb / I hear things / like my father saying / iskam sin / I wish for a boy” (ix). For Bekija, blue ceases to be a mere color and becomes the embodiment of the approval, freedom, and power afforded only to men in her world. 

Bekija’s insistence on wearing blue as a child is a desperate attempt to become the son her father wanted, a core element of her Identity Rewritten by Survival. The blue wedding dress she chooses and hides away represents the collision of her suppressed femininity with this deep-seated desire. It is a garment for a woman, yet in the color of the man she wishes she could be. Ultimately, the symbol of blue encapsulates the tragedy of her life: a constant striving to embody a gender that was imposed on her as a condition of her father’s love, leading to the eventual erasure of her own identity.

Milk is a complex motif that initially symbolizes femininity, purity, and life-giving sustenance, but becomes irrevocably tainted by trauma and forbidden love. It is the central element in the village dairy, the clandestine space where Bekija and Dhana’s relationship culminates, an event that illustrates The Repression of Queer Desire in their violently heteronormative society. The dairy, filled with the substance of life, becomes the site where Bekija’s future is destroyed. As her encounter with Dhana unfolds, her “dress swims in pulp of milk and mud” (55), a powerful image that signifies the end of innocence and the mixing of pure desire with the grime of social consequence. 

After the encounter, Bekija attempts to wash the blood from her thighs with milk, a futile gesture of purification that emphasizes the impossibility of cleansing the trauma or its implications under the Kanun. From this moment on, milk is a symbolic reminder of a formative event in her life. It shows a life-altering moment where love and violence became inseparable, forcing Bekija to kill her female self to survive and creating an emotional wound that never heals.