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Tayeb Salih resorts to figurative structures and stylistic
embellishments for aesthetic purposes. His artistic creative talent is
clearly manifested in his manipulation of figurative devices such as
similes, metaphors, interrogations, exclamations, interpolations, etc.
For example, if a tourist came to the village in winter he would see "a
dark cloud descending over the village". (lines 2-3). The text reader
or hearer would soon infer that the village has a wet winter and that
the 'dark cloud' was no less than a rain cloud. He would be shocked to
discover that the dark cloud would be "a swarm of those sand-flies
which obstruct all paths to those who wish to enter our village".
(lines 4-5) Salih uses the resourcefulness of the simile to indicate
that the village is wrapped up in a thick dark, and impenetrable air-
borne cloud of sand-flies which secludes it from other villages and
fortifies it against any imminent invasion. In summer, the village sky
is clouded by swarms of horse-flies, "enormous flies the size of young
sheep" to which sand-flies are comparably "a thousand times more
bearable". The similitude of horse-flies to 'young sheep' intensifies
the reader's awareness of the predicament of the village population.
In line 47 the swollen face of the feverish preacher is likened to "the
lung of a recently slaughtered cow"; a simile which shows the havoc
horse-flies played with the preacher's face.
Other similes and metaphors could be listed:
(a) The preacher makes an allusion to the doum tree of Jandal where
Mua'wiya took over the Caliphate from Ali by way of fraud, an
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