Salt Houses

At the beginning of the novel, Salma reads her daughter Alia’s future using coffee grounds. To do so, she upends a coffee cup and waits for the residue to dry. The coffee cup she uses during this pre-wedding ritual is part of a set purchased by Salma not long after she and her husband were forced to flee their home in Jaffa. Their orange groves were set on fire by Israelis, and although her husband had initially wanted to try to remain in their home, it became clear that a forced displacement of Palestinians had begun and that they were no longer safe. Because their exit had happened so quickly, the family had left many of their possessions behind, including a coffee set purchased for Salma by her mother. The replacement set, one of the coffee cups from which Salma uses for divination, was selected because it resembled the first.

This establishes the importance of loss and displacement to the narrative. Through Alyan’s depiction of the family’s internal displacement within Palestine, she demonstrates the impact that loss of home has on her characters: Salma and her family are displaced from lands where they had lived and farmed for generations, and part of that displacement is the loss of their home and their possessions.