Red and white caterpillar (Metaphor)
A marching band emerges from the gates of the Salvation Army that Lenny describes as a “red and white caterpillar.” The members of the band march in unison, which makes their arms and legs look like a caterpillar's legs. Their costumes are red and white. The Salvation Army gains significance later in the novel because outside of it is where Masseur's mutilated body will be found.
Creamy calves (Metaphor)
Mother gets up from bed and “[h]er calves gleam creamily.” The white of Mother's legs makes them resemble cream. This is just one of several moments where Lenny describes the people around her, including her family members, using sensual metaphors.
Leaden eyes attracted to the magnet (Metaphor)
The men in the street watching Ayah are described as having “their leaden eyes attracted to the magnet leaning against the gatepost.” Ayah is so attractive that men's eyes go to her of their own accord, just as magnets attract metal or lead. Ayah's beauty is a source of power, but it also sometimes causes men around her to act violently.
Silken web of gossip (Metaphor)
Listening to Ice-candy-man speak, Ayah is “wrapped in the silken web of his gossip.” In this metaphor, Ice-candy-man is a spider and Ayah is his prey. The metaphor is meaningful because their relationship will become one of hunter and hunted.
Lioness with cubs (Metaphor)
Protecting her house from the angry mob, Mother becomes “a lioness with her cubs.” Just as a lioness protects her cubs—with violence as needed—from threats, so too Lenny's mother is intensely protective of her children.
Like an accusing eye (Simile)
The Brahmin who looks at Lenny and Yousef judgmentally in the park has a “vermilion caste-mark on his forehead [that] glows like an accusing eye.” The Brahmin's caste-mark is bright red and resembles an eye looking accusingly at someone. In this simile, an outward symbol of religion because a source of harshness and judgment against people of lower castes or other religions.
Like swarms of locusts (Simile)
The Sikhs attacking Muslim villages move in massive groups of thirty or forty thousand “like swarms of locusts.”
Blooms like a dusky rose (Simile)
“Ayah’s face [. . .] blooms like a dusky rose in Godmother’s hands.”
Like a cobra (Simile)
When Lenny calls Adi by the name Sissy, “[h]is flushed face holds the concentrated beauty and venom of an angry cobra. And like a cobra striking, in one sweep he removes a spiked boot and hurls it at me.”
Gossip like a torrent (Simile)
“News and gossip flow off [Ice-candy-man’s] glib tongue like a torrent.”
Like a gigantic eggcup (Simile)
Lenny describes a Parsee altar in this way: “It is like a gigantic silver eggcup and the flames are dancing above a bed of white ashes.”
Like sturdy pistons (Simile)
Riding his bicycle, Imam Din’s legs are “like sturdy pistons.”
Eyes shining like amber (Simile)
Sharbat Khan’s eyes “shine like amber between his bushy lashes.”
Like a pistol-shot (Simile)
Lenny hears “the pistol-shot-like report of a punctured tire.”
Like a magician (Simile)
Ice-candy-man “moves his body and his arms like a magician conjuring images.”
Like a layer of ashes (Simile)
After the fires, “the moonlight settles like a layer of ashes over Lahore”
Gun like a dark jewel (Simile)
The pistol that Adi and Lenny discover looks “like a dark jewel in its setting.”
Like cocks in turbans (Simile)
The sweeper men at Papoo’s wedding are “like cocks in tall, crisply crested turbans.”
Like patient sheep (Simile)
Describing the Papoo’s wedding, Lenny notes “I weave through the male guests squatting like patient sheep.”
Like night animals (Simile)
In Lahore, refugees in abandoned houses are “lurking like night animals in the twilight interiors of their lairs.”
The tyranny of magnets (Metaphor)
Ayah’s power of her admirers is similar to “the tyranny magnets exercise over metals.”
