Atdtda34: Return of the repressed, 964

[Paul Nightingale]

Reef is mentioned once, 'scavenging weapons wherever he could'; the realist
might wonder how he transports the items mentioned here (cf Yashmeen with 'a
pile of Cyprian's discarded clothing' on 962). Nonetheless this single
reference to one of the protagonists sees him, so to speak, living off the
land as the section emphasises the unnatural and the fruits of war. Hence,
'[t]he countryside [is] filled with Turkish soldiers ...' etc. Then dead
soldiers 'appear in increasing numbers' and 'the streams of refugees
[swell]'. Reef, the named individual, is isolated as he follows the war:
'abandoned encampments' and 'the dead, who had begun to appear ...' etc
emphasise his discovery of what is left behind, traces of warfare/history.

Rumour is again fertile, perhaps as an early draft of history. Then, later
in the section, 'collective dreams' and 'legends' are the stuff of the
popular imagination, not the same as the 'rumor' with which the section
begins: 'the dark terror behind transmuted to a bright future ahead', albeit
'the bright hope becoming a popular, perhaps someday a national, delusion'.
There is a tension here between popular imagination and the way it will be
co-opted for ideological purposes. Moreover, the 'bright future ahead'
contrasts sharply with Reef's trajectory in the first paragraph, where it is
warfare that is 'ahead'.