As I finish Chapter 2 of Shadows of the Pomegranate Tree by Tariq Ali, I start to feel more tension and sadness because the changes under Christian rule are beginning to affect the family’s daily life, identity, and beliefs. There life completely changed thanks to it, so it is affecting a lot everyone and changing their old reality into this. Now in this chapter I realized that it is no longer just a political change, not it is something more personal that is taking away their culture and traditions. A quote that stood out to me in this chapter was:
“They knew that the world they had grown up in was slipping away, that the old customs and beliefs which had shaped their lives were now under threat” pg 42.
This moment really impacted me because it shows that the characters are aware of what is happening, but they feel powerless to stop it, which made me feel frustrated and sad because they loved ther past reality and thanks to this Christian rules their reality is changing and they can´t do anything. I chose this quote because it clearly represents the main idea of the chapter, which is the loss of culture and identity, and it helped me understand the emotional struggle the characters are going through.