The Year of the Elephant, Chapter 1 Summary and Analysis

The narrator (Zahra) returned to her home town after a long absence. She felt like a stranger, and was full of despair and anxiety. The source of her despair was the fact that her husband recently sat her down and told her he was divorcing her. This was a terrible blow for a Moroccan woman. To further complicate Zahra's position, her close family members all died, and she was alone except for a few distant relatives.

The town was just flooded, and Zahra compared the devastation of the town to her own inner turmoil. Images of the flood caused Zahra to remember the Jewish merchants she used to know in the town, especially a woman named Rahma. She was a larger-than-life figure, and she seemed to have a strange power about...