Shadows of the Pomegranate Tree, Part 1

            I really enjoyed the first half of Tariq Ali’s Shadows of the Pomegranate Tree.  The plot was easy to get into; it was really interesting to hear about the Inquisition from the Islamic perspective.  I learned about it in school, and though we didn’t exactly gloss over the abuse the Muslims endured, it seemed like it had happened in a whole different time.  Reading it from the perspective of someone who lived through it, even though it is a fictional account, made it seem a lot more real.  I think that students would benefit from reading this during their lesson on the Inquisition, because it offers a whole new angle to the same story.

Ali also included a quite shocking back story.  It was a little hard to follow at times, because it seemed as if the characters were discussing family gossip spanning back from the age of their great-grandfather, but it was riveting nonetheless.  I was glad the book did not focus solely on the historical events; the family drama aspect of the plot provided a nice balance.

            I was a little confused by the names of the characters.  A lot of them were very similar, like Zubayda, Zuhayr, and Zahra, and Asma and Ama.  Also, a few of the characters are referred to by different names; Ama is also called Amira, the Archbishop is called Ximenes and Cisneros (his first and last name) interchangeably, and Wajid al-Zindiq used to be called Mohammed ibn Zaydun.  However, I can only assume that this was common to the Islamic culture in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, so I am glad that Ali kept the names historically accurate, even though it was a little harder to read.

            The book was also told from many different points of view.  The prologue completely revolved around Ximenes de Cisneros, and then jumped to Yazid’s point of view in the first chapter.  I assumed the book would remain entirely in Yaxid’s childlike perspective, but it closely follows both Umar and Zuhayr, his eldest son; Cisneros also plays a major role throughout the book, as he started off the action in the story.  Surprisingly, the different points of view added to the plot rather than detracting from it, at least for me.  It was a very effective way to not only show the drama and violence of the time period, but also how it affected different generations.