Summary

Section 3 begins with Kenan’s pilgrimage to the brewery. He passes the National Library, one of the first targets to be burned by the men on the hills. Kenan remembers the day it burned and how “the ash of a million books floated down onto the city like snow” (98). The memory fills him with an existential gloom, and he wonders “how he manages not to evaporate, how his clothes don’t fall to the floor, emptied of what little substance he was filling them with” (99).

As he walks, Mrs. Ristovski’s bottles prove more cumbersome than the bottles he takes for his own family. She insists in particular containers with no handles because they hold the exact right amount of water for her livelihood. Though Kenan feels obliged to help his elderly neighbor, he can’t help but resent Mrs. Ristovski as the...