The short story A Handful of Dates, by Tayeb Salih uses many different themes and literary techniques to tell a story of an innocent young boy discovering life's hardships. The story begins with three introductory paragraphs which contain background information about the grandfather, and a boy from whose perspective the reader receives the story. These paragraphs reveal that the boy is young, innocent, very intelligent, and possesses a great love for nature. His grandfather is a man of power, who is very tall and has a beard which is described to the reader as being beautiful and soft. The story then moves on to the neighbor Masood, who inherited a large sum of land from his father, but gradually was forced to sell the land to the boy's grandfather due to an excessive number of wives. The action of the story describes a day of harvesting in Masood's date field, where various people from the town appear and help the effort as well as eat some of the dates. When the harvesting is done, the grandfather as well as four other men divide the product and take their share away. This sickens the boy, who runs into the forest and throws up the dates which he had eaten. Salih uses different literary techniques as well as various themes in order to describe the loss of innocence.
             The first three paragraphs exhibit many examples where Salih attempts to illustrate the blissful, pure youth of the boy as well as his love for nature. The boys speaks of "The mosque, the river, and the fields- the landmarks in our life." Here, the child uses imagery to portray nature as a prominent part of his life. Salih also expresses the boy's mind by
             stating "I loved to give rein to my imagination and picture to myself a tribe of giants." When describing his grandfather, the boy states "as for his beard, it was soft and luxuriant and as white as cotton wool,"(Sali
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