Sea Prayer

Beginning the story in the green outdoor spaces of the narrator’s youth frames the story to contrast the two experiences of Homs; the narrator’s and Marwan’s. The full-page images of watercolor landscapes bring the reader into a palate of greens, yellows, and contrasting reds. These saturated colors match the intensity of the narrator’s memories. Objects like trees and rolling hills are not separated by darker outlines but are part of a cohesive composition. This style matches the narrator’s ability to remember in a subjective way and establish the theme of Connecting to Home Through Nature. The specificity of the narration invokes more senses than sight, establishing Marwan’s father as a detailed narrator and suggesting that “home” is ephemeral; for example, he recalls the mattresses on the roof to imply the warm summertime weather and the close bond of the narrator and his brothers. However, despite his ability to recall these events with accuracy, the small paragraphs and common line breaks leave a lot of information deliberately out of the story. This is paralleled by the translucence of the water-color designs and its free use of negative space.

The poem rehashes the lists of what the father remembers with specificity, giving the letter a slow, sprawling feeling. The lack of rush is elevated by the visual format which places the text in the corners of the pages. While the text is unavoidable, it is not loud or intrusive. The watercolor illustrations are given the place of prominence. By doling out the text slowly, Hosseini ensures that the illustrations connect groups of pages visually.

When blank or nearly blank pages occur, they serve as a point of transition. Early on, the illustration is separated from the plain white page of the text (13). The much smaller image of the table setting is more detailed and more complicated in color and line work, embracing more blacks and muted colors. When the father laments how the boy has forgotten these places the father remembers so well, this admission is placed on a blank page. At times, the text is removed from the smaller illustrations controlling the pacing at which the reader takes in information.

These early pages evoke a sense of distance from this time, partly by describing Marwan as a toddler and partly by avoiding typical story elements like dialogue and character descriptions. The narrator hence invokes a bittersweet feeling. While family members like the narrator’s brothers and parents are referenced, they are referred to only by their relationship to Marwan. This simplifies the language and allows the text to be easily understood without details like names. This demonstrates the care that the narrator feels to include his young son and always frames the letter around what is best for Marwan. The short length of the book and the vibrant illustrations also invoke an association with children’s literature. However, while the diegetic audience is Marwan, the book’s eventual content offers a tense contrast to its child-friendly format. Similarly, the author contributes to the theme of Loss of Identity by erasing people from the visuals and their names from the narrative.

The hazy memories of relations and the simple past tense suggest that this version of Homs no longer exists. Keeping this unspoken, even to Marwan who, it is presumed, already knows this, builds up tension for the reader who may not understand the stakes for this family. Excluding these details about the present day, including the subtext surrounding the absence of Marwan’s mother or other family, builds up this suspense.

Hosseini builds up the theme of Failures of Memory by complicating the binary (the then and now) of Homs. The past is not so far away that the next generation is removed from it, but they cannot remember it fully. Just as the fate of the other family memories is never confirmed, this loss is not a direct death. Instead, the grief is complicated and hard to fit into the brief paragraphs. This is represented through the fragmentation of the memories in the text. While many objects are described, they are not the ones illustrated. In this way, either Marwan or his father cannot fully picture what is being described. These incomplete memories feel false to the narrator even as he believes them to be true.

Throughout the early chapters, the narrator repeatedly uses the pronoun “we” to imply the community that he shared in this past. This will contrast the later repeated use of “you” in the next sections, which isolate Marwan and suggest that he is going through this experience on his own. The “we” also adds to the ambiguity of Marwan’s family as it doesn’t directly specify which family members were present for each memory. Nevertheless, the narrative suggests that how truthful and accurate the narrator is trying to be matters much less in the end than the inability of anyone to capture what this Syria was like in the moment.