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Part 4: Friday September 9
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Zeitoun, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Family, Community, and Home
Crime, Justice, and Injustice
Faith, Perseverance, and Dignity
Human vs. Natural Tragedy
Islam and Islamophobia
Summary
Analysis
The lights come on at 3 a.m., and Zeitoun and Nasser pray. Breakfast is sausage, which they can’t eat, and nearly inedible eggs. They sit side by side, barely talking, and again the guard that passes by ignores Zeitoun’s request for a phone call. When the guard returns, he makes a suggestive glance at Zeitoun and Nasser, implying that they are romantically involved. Zeitoun is enraged.
Again, no one seems to care about Zeitoun’s and Nasser’s religious restrictions for their diet, meaning that they’re growing weaker every day. In addition, the two are subjected to humiliating, hurtful treatment by the guards, who seem to take pleasure in this behavior.
Themes
At midday, Zeitoun is brought to a small office to be photographed, and the photographer starts shouting at Zeitoun for looking at him the wrong way. Later that day, the guard from that morning passes by and asks what Zeitoun and Nasser are up to, saying he thought “that” was against their religion. Zeitoun starts cursing and threatens the guard, who is shocked at this perceived insubordination.
Except for the two women checking Zeitoun into the prison, everyone he’s come into contact with is openly hostile towards him, and it seems there’s nothing he can do to combat such treatment. For the first time he isn’t meek and polite, but here lashes out at the unfairness.
Themes
