Sheep
Tolan writes, "For a month before the war, it had felt to her that the end was coming." Not just the disintegration of the state, but the end of us as a people," Dalia remembered. Alongside this fear was a determination, born from the Holocaust, “to never again be led like sheep to the slaughter." “Dalia’s reflection incorporates the allegorical sheep to underscore the vulnerability which sponsored the Holocaust. Dalia confirms that she will not voluntarily allow her destruction to transpire like it did during the epoch of the Holocaust. She is intent on safeguarding herself instead of exposing her life to destruction like a naïve and vulnerable sheep.
“Breaking the back”
Tolan elucidates, “The bus roared up the curving highway toward the crest of the famous hilltop at qastal; here, a great Arab commander had fallen in battle nineteen years earlier, breaking the back of his people’s army and opening the road to the Holy City for the enemy.” The commander was a noteworthy individual whose fall jeopardizes his army. After his descent, the army is demoralized which increases the vulnerability to the adversaries.
“The breath, the currency, the bread”
Tolan expounds, “For nearly two decades, since he (Bashir Khairi) was six years old, Bashir had been preparing for this journey. It was the breath, the currency, the bread of his family, of nearly every family he knew. It was what everyone talked about, all the time: return. In exile, there was little else worth dreaming of.” Tolan employs three consecutive metaphors to underline the unqualified significance of returning to Bashir Khairi. Being in exile is not as satisfying as being in his home; the place where he spends his exile cannot replace his home. Thoughts concerning returning inspire and energize Khairi while he is in exile.
Goodwill
Tolan writes, “Dalia's family had been spared the atrocities in Bulgaria by acts of goodwill from Christians she was raised to admire and remember. Now, she believed her people had a destiny on the land of Israel.” Dalia’s family would have perished due to the widespread murder of Jews by the ‘pro-Nazi government.” The Christians’ goodwill surmises that not all Christians endorsed the murder of Jews.
Cowards
Tolan reports, “Dalia was aware she had grown up in an Arab house, and sometimes she wondered about the previous residents. Had children lived here? How many? How old? In school Dalia had learned that the Arabs had fled like cowards, with their hot soup still steaming on the table.” The Arabs are deemed cowards because they flee leaving behind their possessions. Branding them cowards is intended to discredit them. Psychoanalytically, the cowardice is attributed to the life instinct which drives them to flee before they are murdered in the ongoing religious war. The rampant persecution of Arabs reduces their courage; hence, they run way instead of putting up fights that would culminate in their deaths.
