Cities Of Salt Chapter Summary

Cities of Salt

The rhythmic cadence of life in Wadi al-Uyoun is startled after foreigners wearing dark sunglasses and big smiles arrive and try to blend in with the culture around them; this disruption doesn’t go unnoticed by the people who call the wadi home. When foreign men come smiling and asking questions, the people of the wadi know that a storm is on the horizon; it’s understood that nothing good can come from strangers who are already familiar with the wadi before they even introduce themselves to the locals. Munif’s Cities of Salt details the consequences of being unknowing participant in a social, cultural, and political revolution. What made the wadi an oasis to all was the apparent simplicity by which it functioned. “People were

The land held a resource that some people in the world were willing to pay big bucks for. The inhabitants of the wadi and the surrounding areas weren’t consulted about the matter because this was a matter of politics and economics, nothing personal. The Emir didn’t know that one country’s profit would depend on another’s subjugation and devaluation and that he was about to grab the short end of that stick. The resulting exploitation of a community of workers, their families, and their land led to violence and injustice; a nomadic culture was essentially bulldozed for not developing according to Western standards, marginalized for failing to keep up, and then left in the dust. “Within moments the people had become like a flame, or a tempestuous wind. In moments the barbed wire was buried under the sand, and the human waves plunged forth.” (Munif) These people had been displaced and disempowered with no safety net to catch them as they fell; this of course created resentment towards the ones exploiting the land as well as the leadership that allowed them to set up shop in the first place. This resentment tended to manifest in violent outbursts, such as the uprising of Harran’s working class and the Emir fleeing the