The aftermath of the blast
Right after the bomb blast, Mansoor “was unable to hear himself. But when he crawled over to shake them, a sharp pain erupted in his hand and he looked up to see a torn leather shoe pressing down on it and then a disfigured man disappearing over him and the bodies’” which illustrates that most bomb victims are wandering around aimlessly in shock, unable to care for themselves or others.
The courtroom
When Vikas, Sharif, Deepa, and Afsheen attend the public hearing after the bomb blast, they see the poor state of the neglected justice system: “But when the four victims, or kin of victims, sat in the court and saw the terrorists, observed the state of the room in which they were being processed--the cobwebs blousy in the corners, the guano dissolving the floor, the twitchy fan above barely containing the fire of the afternoon--they became dispirited.”
The cremation of Vikra's sons
During the cremation of his sons, Vikras “noticed that outside the ring of burning flesh and wood, little snotty children ran naked playing with upright rubber tires. Behind them a cow was dreadlocked in ropes and eating ash and the wild village children kicked it in the gut.” He gets angry at the children because he demands more respect from them, but they seem indifferent and solely focused on their play. Moreover, the image also explains that the ash of his children is probably going to be eaten by the cow as well.
Mansoor's dorm room
Mansoor shares his dorm room with Eddy, who “plastered the walls with posters of seminude women from Maxim magazine. In the day, with the sun beating against the windows, the room emitted a rank yellowish glow--the glow of an adult store. Mansoor had not known how to resist this assault on the walls. Perhaps he didn’t want to resist” because he, a Muslim, enjoys the new freedom of being far away from his parents, and because he wants to disprove the stereotype of the radical Muslim which emerged after 9/11 and has been applied to him as well.
