1. Flashback/Foreshadow

"Looking back now, I realize I have been peeking into that deserted alley for the last twenty-six years" (pg 1).

This concluding sentence of the first paragraph establishes where the book will go from here. The reader understands that there is an event from the past haunting our narrator, and it is going to become the basis of the novel. It seems proper that the next chapters flashback into our narrator's childhood and the events that still haunt him in the present. On first reading, this sentence seems to only hint at a flashback. However, it was not until I had read eight chapters in that I realized this sentence is also a foreshadowing. Kind of ironic, but is a foreshadowing from the past, but it is in the present for the reader. Anyway, the part of the sentence "Looking back now" establishes the upcoming flashback. However, the "deserted alley" is a grotesque image the reader will soon come upon in chapter 7. This chapter fully introduces why Amhir feels guilty to the present day.