57 pages • 1 hour read
S. A. ChakrabortyThe City of Brass
S. A. ChakrabortyFiction | Novel | YA | Published in 2017A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapters 1-5Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 1 Summary: “Nahri”
Content Warning: This novel explores racism, enslavement, and misogyny. It also discusses murder, rape, and self-harm.
Nahri waits on a street in Cairo for two male clients. She gathers that they are Turkish by noticing their features and the style of their coat. Nahri is a young woman with sharp features and black eyes. She easily tricks her clients into following her directions and spending their money to prevent an illness that does not exist. The French, led by Napoleon, have just taken control of Egypt from the Ottoman empire. There is budding political conflict due to the occupation.
After her clients leave, Nahri reflects on her situation, lamenting that she will never have enough money to make it to Istanbul to study “respectable trade and actual healing instead of this ‘magical’ nonsense” (7).
Yaqub runs a pharmacy down the block to which Nahri often refers her clients. Yaqub is older and protective, urging her to leave the city and find a husband to protect her. They have a mutually beneficial business partnership.
Yaqub chides Nahri for trying to lead magical ceremonies called zars. He warns her that appropriating a tradition that is not hers will end poorly. He accuses her of practicing magic, but she swears that it is just an illusion. Nahri does not think that magic is real, but belief in magic and possession are widespread and zars are ceremonies that heal spirits inside of people who cause afflictions. They call this “possession.” Nahri has always had special abilities to sense illness and heal people. At this zar, she works with a 12-year-old girl named Baseema. In the middle of the ceremony Baseema freezes, starts sweating, and says, “WHO ARE YOU?” to Nahri (18), but no one else hears it. Nahri feels scared as Baseema watches her leave.
Chapter 2 Summary: “Nahri”
Lost in an unfamiliar neighborhood, Nahri begins to walk home through a cemetery when Baseema finds her and accuses her of doing magic. Nahri denies it because she doesn’t believe in magic. After an explosion of light that leaves Nahri covered in sand behind a tombstone, a warrior man appears and speaks in a language she has never heard but has always known for reasons she does not understand. He tells her the language is called Divasti.
Nahri realizes that she mistakenly summoned the warrior djinn, Afshin, during the zar for Baseema. Baseema reappears, inhabited by an ifrit (a cursed magical being), controlling an army of ghouls who want to kill Nahri and Afshin.
After Nahri’s body heals itself unnaturally quickly, Afshin says that Nahri is the next Banu Nahida (a term of respect for female Nahids). He is shocked because the ifrits’ people tried to kill them all.
After killing Baseema, Afshin orders Nahri to find a carpet within a tomb. They find a locked door and Nahri asks Dara for a knife to pick the lock, but Dara simply bursts the door open with his power. Nahri is almost devoured by ghouls, but Afshin carries her body away on a flying carpet.
Chapter 3 Summary: “Nahri”
Nahri wakes up in a strange place and finally looks at Afshin and realizes that he is beautiful. He corrects her previous assumption that he was a djinn by telling her that he is a daeva and those who call themselves djinn have no respect for their culture. He won’t tell her his real name, but it’s not Afshin.
He asks her about her family, origins, and lifestyle. He says that it’s against their law for her to return to the human world and divulges that he thinks she is a “shafit,” or half-daeva, half-human. He explains that Nahid is a family of daeva healers. Afshin says it’s hypocritical for Nahid to have bred with humans, and he is shocked that she exists.
A creature called a peri who looks to be part man, part bird, and part mosquito, named Khayzur, comes at the request of the daeva. He calls the daeva Dara, revealing his real name to Nahri and highlighting that “Afshin” is his family name. The Afshin family has always protected Nahids. They discuss her fate and decide that Dara must escort her to the city of Daevabad where she will be safest, because the ifrit who are hunting her cannot enter there. Dara is hesitant to take her to Daevabad because of a war that happened 1400 years ago. However, it is his duty as an Afshin to protect her, and he decides that he must put his own history aside and bring Nahri there to keep her safe.
Chapter 4 Summary: “Ali”
The story now focuses on Ali, the son of a king and queen from different tribes in Daevabad. Ali meets with a man named Anas, a shafit, who tries to help other shafit living under the discriminatory regime in Daevabad. In Daevabad, shafits do not have the same rights as djinn. Ali has been giving them money to help with medicine and books, but tonight he has a few questions because he heard rumors that they were using the money to buy weapons to use against djinn. Instead of answering directly, Anas invites Ali to come on a mission with them tonight to see how they use the money to help shafits.
Ali disguises himself as a rich nobleman and goes into the Daeva district in his city with Anas and a shafit shapeshifter named Hanno. Daevabad has a district for each of the six tribes that live there. There are seven gates in Daevabad. The Geziri gate is simply a stone archway, while the Daeva gate is a beautiful pale blue with patterns and brass statues of lions.
They head into a tavern and see a 10-year-old enslaved girl, and Hanno buys a baby from Turan, the landlord. After seeing a necklace that Ali offers to buy the slave girl, Turan traps them in the room and calls the royal guard. As they escape, they kill Turan and his guard.
Surrounded by the royal guard, Anas insists on sacrificing himself to buy them time to flee. He argues that Ali can do more for shafit than he could ever accomplish. He says that he knows Ali will do just that. The chapter ends with Ali leaping across a roof to follow Hanno.
Chapter 5 Summary: “Nahri”
Nahri has been flying on the carpet with Dara for a week when she discovers a way to escape so she does not have to go to Daevabad: Dara is scared of water. They stop on one side of the Euphrates river in a town called Hieropolis and discover that it is reduced to rubble.
Once in an abandoned temple, Nahri insists on using the carpet to sleep and then burns it so Dara cannot follow her. She ponders the fact that staying with him is her chance to learn about her family, history, and abilities, but she decides that her freedom is worth more than those things.
On her way out, she turns around and decides to steal his priceless emerald ring. As soon as she touches it, she is thrown into a memory of Dara’s in which he is enslaved, tied to an enslaver who forces him to sack a city and murder many people. Once Dara grants his enslaver’s wish that his cousin kneels before him, his body is no longer possessed in the memory. He wakes up terrified but regains control.
Dara was enslaved, but he is not anymore. The temple they were camping in begins to crumble around them because of the ifrit and their ghouls. After he restores the burned carpet using his fire magic, Nahri forces him to tell her his real name and answer her questions before she joins him.
During their escape, Dara explains the history of their people. Daevas have souls, but instead of being made of earth (like humans) they are made of fire. They used to roam the earth with immense power and could imitate any creature and live for eons. Khayzur and his people, the peri, are made of air. Marid are made of water but have not been seen for millennia. Long ago all the elements kept to themselves, but when humans were created, the daeva began to play with them like toys. Eventually a human king named Suleiman was given the ability to control the daeva and summoned them all to be judged. The daevas who received Suleiman’s judgment were forgiven but changed forever—they had bodies similar to humans that only lasted a few centuries. The daevas hunting Nahri and Dara, the ifrit, are those who did not go to Suleiman to be judged. Suleiman bound them to their original daeva bodies, and they have been testing their limits for 3,000 years and trying to reclaim their power.
Suleiman’s confidant was a member of the Nahid family. She was the only daeva he trusted, and he supposedly gave her the ring that gave him power over the Daevabad race. This ring was passed down through generations of Nahid rulers; with the ring they can undo all magic, including ifrit curses. Nahid blood is poison to ifrit.
Eventually Dara and Nahri’s makeshift carpet begins to crumble and they crash land in the shallows of the river. Nahri again considers fleeing and Dara gives her the option: the life she lived or the life she doesn’t know. She takes his hand.
Chapters 1-5 Analysis
Chapter 1 is exposition: It provides insight to the setting of the book and Nahri as a character. By recounting the history of the region, S.A. Chakraborty characterizes Nahri, her Turkish clients, and the physical setting. Nahri is shocked that the snobbish Turks were coming to her for help because “when the Franks and Turks weren’t fighting over Egypt, the only thing they seemed to agree on was that the Egyptians couldn’t govern it themselves. God forbid” (1). This introduces the idea of self-determination, for which Nahri fights throughout the book, both individually and on a greater scale. It also introduces the influence of God, whose name appears throughout the book both sarcastically and earnestly. Nahri uses “God” ironically here, but it also hints that a larger force is governing their lives.
Nahri’s first true encounter with magic occurs in a cemetery. She was using the area to help her navigate home, and coincidentally, in the end, it does lead her to what becomes her home. Nahri sees that “[t]he spiky crenellations and smooth domes of the tombs cast wild shadows against the sandy ground” (23). The shadows represent the small truths that she has been ignoring that hint at the truth of her life—that her body heals itself, that she knows languages she never learned, that she can sense others’ ailments. Nahri’s feeling of fear in the cemetery reflects the shock and horror of the discovery of magic alongside the truth that she herself is part of that world.
In the cemetery, Nahri meets Dara for the first time, who appears as a warrior in response to whatever possesses Baseema’s body. When she lays eyes on Dara, she notices that “[h]is face was covered like a desert traveler…his eyes…greener than emeralds, they were almost too bright to look into directly” (29). Her immediate perception of Dara foreshadows the dynamic of their relationship: He hides most of himself, and the parts that he reveals are too difficult, brutal, or unbelievable to face.
There is a constant juxtaposition of Nahri’s human life in Cairo and the truth of the magical world into which she has just crossed. This is evident when Chakraborty juxtaposes Nahri’s need for a knife with Dara’s power. Nahri has always survived in the human world mostly without powers, but her world pales in comparison to the world from which Dara comes. The magical carpet also represents this juxtaposition. Nahri uses her skills as a thief to find a normal, dirty carpet in a tomb, and Dara uses it to fly them to safety. This contrast is also present when the magical world is translated into human terms as Chakraborty writes from Nahri’s perspective. Nahri refers to the bony creatures chasing her as ghouls, but they are later revealed to be ifrit. Similarly, even though Baseema was clearly not in control of her body, Nahri refers to her as Baseema because she did not know what possessed her.
Chakraborty writes the first three chapters from Nahri’s perspective because she is the reader’s human point of entry for this magical world. Nahri is slowly introduced to the world alongside the reader. Chapter 4 is the first chapter in which Chakraborty writes from Ali’s perspective. The narrative has already alluded to the existence of Daevabad, so when Ali’s story begins in Daevabad, the reader has a small foundation upon which to build this world.
As Dara introduces Nahri to his world, Chakraborty introduces the idea that The Powerful Control the Narrative. When Nahri calls him “djinn,” the word humans use for spirits like him, Dara says that “Daeva who call themselves djinn have no respect for our people. They are traitors, worthy only of annihilation” (41). Because Nahri has never before met a djinn, she accepts Dara’s statement as truth. In the simplest example of this phenomenon, Nahri asks Dara’s name and he refuses to give it. However, when Dara asks Nahri’s name and she asks why she would give him what he refused, he says, “Because I have the water” (42). Because at that moment Dara has the thing that Nahri needs, he demands the truth. Chakraborty hence establishes early that holding power means controlling a narrative.
Scenery often reflects the reality of the setting or the people it represents. For example, when Ali describes the seven gates in Daevabad, it is apparent that the Geziri tribe prioritizes “function over form” (65), whereas the Daevas’ gate reflects their commitment to shiny, beautiful things. In Ali’s storyline, Chakraborty writes that “there was no sign of sun in the misty sky […] fog shrouded the great city of brass […] rain seeped off the jade roofs of marble palaces and flooded its stone streets” (57). This day marks a turning point in Ali’s life in which his personal beliefs and his familial ties come into conflict. The rain and fog obscuring the city’s beauty represent the turmoil and confusion within Ali and the flooding represents the rising tension between his two allegiances.
Chakraborty begins the rising action as both Ali and Nahri experience major developmental moments. Chapter 4 ends with Ali taking a literal and figurative leap into the unknown. Having turned into an accomplice to the Tanzeem, he is fleeing his own royal guard and approaches a seemingly impossible jump to the next building that will lead him to freedom. The jump across the buildings represents Ali’s leap further into his lies to his family and connections to the Tanzeem. Chapter 5 ends with Nahri similarly making a physical and figurative decision regarding her future. Throughout her time with Dara she has tried to find a time to escape. Her decision to stay with Dara marks the first time she chooses the truth over freedom. Both of these leaps introduce the theme of Choosing Between Freedom and Belonging. In these moments, Ali chooses freedom while Nahri chooses belonging. They both make the opposite choice of where they began: Nahri, with no family or knowledge of her history, chooses belonging, while Ali, whose family and tribes have determined his entire life, chooses freedom.
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