Summary

Chapter 46 is another flash forward to the present, and dawn has arrived. The narrator muses that he has already died in a way, and is now living out the last moments of his life “as a thought” (377). He likewise describes himself as a blue diamond from a lump of coal, and considers the apocalypse as God burning an early draft of his work. He suggests that God’s book would have been better had all his heroes not been unequivocally good.

Chapter 47 begins the day after Mustafa’s resignation, with the town largely in ruin after the riots and fires the day before. The narrator reflects again on his relationship with Zuhal, sure that he will never see her again and reassured that even if he did, she would sense his desperation and he would lose her for good. He debates whether to...