Aunt Safiyya to End

The third chapter of Aunt Safiyya and the Monastery continues a few years after the second, and things begin with a mixed blessing for the narrator and his family: Harbi is to be let out of prison, but it is due to his poor health more than anything else. Again, Taher begins strong with the symbolism, Harbi's health coming into light after the end of the second chapter, in which we see how far Safiyya has descended into hate and madness, growing alongside Harbi's sickness.
Deviating from the earlier, much more independent feel of the characters, we can see in the relationship between the narrator and his father that the people are growing closer together over time. For instance, the narrator is trusted by his father to drive the coach away from the train station and back to the village to get Harbi into the monastery for safe keeping, a dangerous and difficult task to be sure, and one that the narrator's father wouldn't have just given to anybody. Also, in the fourth and final chapter (excepting the epilogue,) the narrator is yelled at angrily by his father, a thing which had never happened "since the time he came to consider me a man." That line alone tells us much more than about a scolding; indeed, it shows us that for the first time, the father and son are equals. The two spend very much time together over the next few chapters, and the narrator becomes a confidant of sorts for his father.
Further proof that the people are closer (making the reader too, closer) together than as we knew them at the beginning of the novel is Taher's use of village traditions. At one point, the narrator offhandedly mentions that Harbi is doing farmwork with the miqaddis Bishai, which enrages and shames the narrator's father, as that is work far below Harbi's (or the narrator's father's) level of respect. This passage is immediately followed by a festive village scene, where hookah is passed around and the people drink 'araq while telling stories to one another. It is perhaps one of the most candid scenes of the village, and yet we as readers feel a part of the celebration, not merely watchers.
While the focus of the chapter, Faris and his outlaws, was very interesting and fun to read, the aforementioned celebration was one of the most important scenes in the book. It is brief, only a paragraph, and seems to be little more than drunken, stoned men bragging to one another. In context, though, it is the fact that we are included on this moment which is most important. The paragraph itself simply sets up in the final sentence the introduction of Faris and his gang, but it still has little relevance to the actual plot. It is simply a frank moment of typical village life which we were lucky enough to be included on. To me, this was the feel of the entire book. The messages are beautiful, and important, but the way that one feels when they are reading or when they are finished with this book is that it is a a familiar story, full of familiar people in a familiar village, and we are almost sad to see that the narrator has moved and his house -- our house, too -- has fallen into decay.
Taher succeeded with his novel in making the average person who will read this (that is to say, someone with little to no knowledge or relation to the middle east) and making them feel as though they're simply jumping right back into a nameless village populated by people we know and customs we practice, even though this is not the case.