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Part 5, Chapter 8
Themes
and Colors
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in The Forty Rules of Love, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Love and Spirituality
Connections Across Distance and Time
Appearances vs. Reality
Storytelling and Truth
Summary
Analysis
Kimya. Konya, December 1247. Kimya has been married for seven months but hasn’t had sex with Shams once. He barely even comes in her room, and when he does, he just wants to talk or read stories with her. Kimya pretends to be happy but feels anxious. Her main confidant during this time becomes Desert Rose. One day, she asks Desert Rose for advice on making herself attractive to Shams. Desert Rose is reluctant, saying that after leaving the brothel she pledged to make herself pure, but Kimya insists that she has only pure intentions, and Desert Rose reluctantly agrees to help her.
The lack of sex in Kimya and Shams’s marriage has parallels to Ella’s marriage to David in the present. Kimya’s feelings of shame about seemingly not being attractive to Shams reflect Ella’s own feelings of inadequacy. This passage also parallels the awkwardness around sex in Ella’s first meet-up with Aziz, showing how spiritual connections and physical connections are different things, both being important to relationships in their own ways. Kimya’s conversations with Desert Rose also explore the role that intimacy plays in friendships.
Active
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