Aslam’s novel depicts history as a palimpsest connecting eras and people.

Evidence

History is thus a palimpsest in the novel. The past affects the present, and its traces can still be seen by those who care to look. It washes over places, turning them from trade routes to military conduits; over times, in the ebb and flow of the Buddhist and Islamic eras, whose traces coexist despite Taliban attempts to expunge them; and over events—David learns of Zameen’s fate in a restaurant near the World Trade Center on the day of the first, failed Islamist attempt to bring down the towers in 1993. The book is interested in just such connections, depicting them as the equivalent of those literary texts that, taken together, tell the greater tale of collective human striving. For the characters, each contending with his or her own emotional and physical pain, connection is possible through shared suffering; Lara reflects on the mutilated Marcus and feels comforted by their “fellowship of wounds” (10). — Peter Morey, Islamophobia and the Novel, 412

Categorization

• DEFINE: Introduces the palimpsest concept — a useful critical term for reading how Morey’s framework transfers to Hamid and Naqvi.
• XREF: Connects to the historical palimpsest layering idea in A Midwife’s Tale and to living-root-bridge infrastructure thinking from the Grafting & Growth article.