Elderly Characters in "Shadows of the Pomegranate Tree"

In the first section of reading for Shadows of the Pomegranate Tree, Tariq Ali strikes a skillful balance between painting a sweeping historical portrait of the plights of the people living in the Iberian Peninsula in the 16^th century and creating detailed, developed characters that the reader can connect to. On this level of individual character development, I found some of Ali’s descriptions and usages of the elderly characters interesting. There are really four main elderly characters in the novel: Ama, al-Zindiq, Great-Aunt Zahra and Great-Uncle Miguel. In a way these four characters can be seen as functioning together in the text to represent the past and the old—to be living reminders of an al-Andalus that can never again be. But each of these characters are also individual representations of the past and change that gets shown through their individual characteristics.

The first old person we meet in the novel is Ama, specifically as seen through the eyes of Yazid. Ama is an elderly servant in the Banu Hudayl household, whom the children to find to be funny and even crazy in her outdated, archaic, and superstitious ways. She’s described at the beginning of Chapter 1 as being gap-toothed and haggard, clearly a person to whom time has not been friendly. Yazid even wonders if she is going senile because of her eccentric ways. But looking at Ama in the broader context of the novel, this old woman seems to be at least one representation of the passing of time and the impacts that it could have when so much has changed. When Yazid asks Ama why she was talking to herself, she replies, “I was talking to the shadows of the pomegranate trees. At least they will be here when we are all gone,” (9). Ali thus uses Ama to show one possible outcome of time: not so much bitterness as defeat, longing, and loss.

Other elderly characters depict the passage of time in different ways. We next meet al-Zindiq, the old man who lives in the mountains that Zuhayr visits regularly. The old man is learned in religion, philosophy, and literature, and enjoys his talks with the young man through which he can pass on his knowledge. Al-Zindiq (who also came from humble origins like Ama) chose to study and develop his knowledge. In this way he seems to have handled time better than Ama, who dwells in the past and seems crushed by time. Yet al-Zindiq lives up in the caves, secluded from everyone except his most regular young visitor, where all his learning and wisdom is not used to its fullest potential. Al-Zindiq is an elderly character that has retreated into himself instead of fully engaging with the world.

 Great-Uncle Miguel is an example of a character who has responded to the profound changes that have occurred during his long life in a very active way. His conversion to Christianity is condemned by his family as selfish and cowardly, but it is none the less an active, engaged response to the changes that have wreaked havoc on the other elderly characters. He is the elderly character who has exercised the most agency in the face of all the changes that have happened over 70 some years. Great-Aunt Zahra, his sister, is a character whose growth in terms of the outside world has been literally stunted since her twenties when she was sent away to a mental institution. She is released into the real world in old age, and must deal with the drastic changes that have occurred over the past 50 years which the other elderly characters have at least had a chance to adapt to gradually. She comes to terms with unrequited love and emotional turmoil from her relationship with her father, only to die in the midst of this emotional upheaval.

Each of these characters seem to be showing different possibly ways to reacting to a world that is greatly changed from the world of their youth. Ali doesn’t seem to be suggesting that any particular character’s way of dealing with age and time is necessarily better than another’s (even Miguel, who shows the most amount of agency, made the choice to convert that he seems regretful of), but rather demonstrates how vastly different the reactions can be.