Falcon

The falcon appears only once in the novel, during Mariam's first and only journey into Herat, the city she has dreamed of from her isolated kolba. On the way to Jalil's house, she rides in a horse-drawn gari driven by an elderly man who points out the sights. Among the open-fronted cubbyholes where shoppers buy oranges, pears, books, shawls, and even falcons, the falcon is listed as one of the exotic goods available in the city's bazaars. This single mention places the falcon among the marvels of Herat that Mariam has never seen, a creature of the wider world that her father Jalil has described to her but that she has been barred from experiencing. The falcon, like the city itself, remains distant and unattainable, a symbol of the life Mariam longs for but cannot reach. Its appearance in the catalog of Herat's wares underscores the city's richness and variety, contrasting sharply with the poverty and isolation of Mariam's existence in the kolba. The falcon is not a character or a recurring symbol; it is a fleeting image that contributes to the novel's depiction of a world of commerce and freedom from which Mariam is excluded.