Silence and noise are a repeated motif in the text. People are characterized by silence compared to the noise of their environment. By contrasting silence and noise, the story reflects on the powerlessness of individuals and how they surrender to a larger force.

The story begins with examples of positive, natural noises. The father’s fond memories of boyhood involve waking to the sounds of his grandfather’s farm. Rather than emphasizing the people he remembers, the author describes the sounds of the environment like the animals and wind. These examples show the character Connecting to Home Through Nature. Marwan’s grandmother is represented by the sounds from “the clanking of her cooking pots” (9). This gives the impression of a moment of stillness during which the character does not see the chaos but only hears it. He surrenders to the positive forces of home.

The second half of the book equally isolates the narrator from direct memories of people. The “mothers and sisters and classmates” who can be found in the rubble are seen and not heard (29). When voices are mentioned, Marwan and his father do not hear direct words but instead crying and “worrying in tongues we don’t speak” (33).