Summary

In this section, the narrator continues to describe the townsfolk. She remarks that the townsfolk do not realize that they are living in an “illusion” (246). The narrator then turns her attention towards the marketplace in the city. She describes it as having a “green smell” (246). The only fruit available at the market is that which has been dried and preserved from the year before.

The narrator shifts her attention towards an old woman who sells flowers at the market. The old woman lives in the mountains, and while she sells her flowers, she eats bread and buttermilk. After calling the reader’s attention to a goat eating some flowers near a mosque, which was built by Tamburlaine’s wife, the narrator recounts an anecdote about Tamburlaine’s wife.

The beginning of this anecdote tells of the wife’s desire to build a mosque for...