The Swallows of Kabul Imagery

The Swallows of Kabul Imagery

The Chanting of the market women

At the market scene, the women are busy preparing their market goods and wait for the customers to come and purchase them. The narrator notices that the women are busy chanting at passersby requesting them to buy their products. The author writes, “A few spectrums of women, segregated inside their grimy burqas, extend imploring hands and clutch at passersby; some receive a coin for their trouble, others just a curse. Often, when the women grow too insistent, an infuriated lashing drive them backward. But their retreat is brief, and soon they return to the assault, chanting their intolerable supplications."

The imagery of flies and snot

The smell of the rotting tomatoes and onions at the market attracts flies and snots, which depicts the sense of smell to customers. The author writes, “Others, encumbered by brats whose faces are covered with flies and snot, cluster desperately around the fruit vendors, interrupting their singsong litanies only to lunge for the occasional rotten tomato or onion that an alert customer may discover at the bottom of his basket.”

The imagery of Atiq Shaukat

Atiq is not happy, and he looks at his watch angrily while clenching his teeth. Atiq's actions portray the sense of sight. The author writes, "Atiq Shaukat looks at his watch and clenches his teeth in anger. The executioner must have arrived a good ten minutes ago, and he, Atiq, is still dawdling in the streets.”

The Russian Tidal wave

Mohsen was a happy ten-year-old kid who was innocent, and he enjoyed what life had to offer because his father was a rich man in the Afghan city. Mohsen's joyousness was disrupted when the Russian tidal wave of invasion struck the peaceful town. The author writes, "And then came the Russian tidal wave, with its apocalyptic armada and its triumph massiveness. The Afghan sky, under which most beautiful idylls on earth were woven, grew suddenly dark with armored predators; ats azure limpidity was streaked with powder trails, and the terrified swallows dispersed under a barrage of missiles. War hard arrived.” The author's description of the Russian tidal wave depicts the sense of sight to readers.

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