5. An effective symbol that appears in the story “A House for Us” by Etidal Osman is the lead-colored marble that the narrator and Rami fight over, which symbolizes the religious and territorial conflicts between their nations. The two children are friends that like to play marbles together. Every time they play, the narrator gets the green ones, Rami gets the blue ones, and they argue over the single lead marble. In the end, the narrator ends up giving the marble to Rami because he says he “know[s] this lead” (Osman 152). Once, the two children end up arguing over their religion, because Rami believes that his home city, Bethlehem, is the city of the Lord’s House, while the narrator believes God lives in Heaven and has no house on Earth.
