Passports

The passports symbolize fragile safety and conditional belonging. For Ma, the navy booklets promise escape from a drowning city and a legal path to reunite with Baba, so she treats them as more precious than money or jewelry. Their theft and recovery show how easily a future can be stolen or destroyed by a single act of desperation. When flights are canceled after all the struggle to protect the documents, the passports also reveal the limits of paperwork in the face of shifting political fear.

Water

Water represents both everyday need and uncontrollable danger. The family’s life depends on drips in rooftop tanks, ferried jugs, and rationed baths, which connects survival to infrastructure that never feels secure. At the same time, floods ruin crops, topple trees, and help destroy Boomba’s rented room, while the river at the jetty nearly drowns Ma and later swallows...