1it brought forth a vague memory of a storm on arwad island, when he was just a boy, when the mediterranean rose up and swallowed the lower-sitting homes, the blue-green sea sitting inside living rooms and bedrooms and kitchens. the water breached and dodged the phoenician stones surrounding the island without any difficulty at all. why does the author include this flashback? to present various images of nature’s strength throughout history to prove zeitoun’s good fortune and his ability to overcome adversity to emphasize the social differences between eastern and western cultures to recall zeitoun’s foreign birth and the universality of struggles against nature