Storytelling
The novel is about the art of storytelling every bit as much as it is about the story it tells. It is a reflection of postmodern sensibility in being constructed narratively to mirror the nomadic wandering of its characters. Stories loop within stories and storytellers circle within storytellers. The imagery focuses on the manner in which the storyteller is aware of the fact that they are relating a narrative:
“Last night I was pursued and persecuted by ghosts. I went out and met in the street no one but drunkards and bandits. They wanted to take all I had, but found nothing on me. At dawn I went home, then slept until noon. That is why I am late. But I see anxiety in your eyes. You do not know where I am leading you. Fear not, I do not know, either. And will that unsatisfied curiosity I read on your faces be answered one day? You have chosen to listen to me, so follow me to the end. . . . The end of what? Circular streets have no end!”
The Gates
Gate imagery is prevalent but not omnipresent. The reference to gates is not rare, but the narrator holds back just enough to endow the imagery with a mysterious ambiguity despite explicitly describing how the gate imagery is to be understood:
“Know, too, that the book has seven gates pierced in a wall at least two yards thick and with the height of at least three strong men. As we proceed, I shall give you the keys to open those gates. In truth, you possess the keys yourselves, but you do not know it, and even if you did, you would not know how to turn them, still less under which tombstone you must hide them.”
Nomads
Like the gate imagery, nomads are not explicitly referenced that often, but the concept of wandering is always lying just beneath the text. Sometimes it is used for context and often it appears as subtext. The nomadic concept of wandering is a kind of metaphorical reflection of the loose and eccentric construction of the narrative itself:
"We are nomads; there's something exciting about our life, but it isn't an easy one. Everything is false, and that's what we're about. We don't hide it. People come for that, for Malika, who is no more a dancing girl out of the thousand and one nights than I'm the man in the moon. They come for the lottery. The wheel of fortune is rigged, of course. They suspect as much, but accept it all the same. Only the donkey that smokes and pretends to be dead is real—it's a donkey I've trained and it costs me dear because I feed it well.”
Gender Ambiguity
The centerpiece of the plot of the book is built upon gender confusion and ambiguity. It is essentially the story of a father raising his daughter as a boy in order that she might enjoy all the privileges of patriarchal society. But the purchase of such rights always comes with a price and gender dysphoria in any sense is never a rollicking ride on the rollercoaster of fun:
“The truth goes into exile. I have only to speak and the truth moves away, is forgotten; I become its gravedigger and disinterer. That is how the voice is: it does not betray me. And even if I wanted to betray it, reveal it in all its nakedness, I could not. I would not know how. I know its requirements: avoid anger, avoid tenderness, do not shout, do not whisper—in short, be ordinary. I am ordinary. And I trample underfoot the image that is unbearable to me. God, how heavy that truth weighs upon me! I am the architect and the house, the tree and the sap, a man and a woman. No detail must disturb the harshness of my task, whether from the outside or from the bottom of the grave. Not even blood.”
