Summary
Chapter 4 begins with a description of Sufiya Hyder, daughter of Raza and Bilquìs Hyder. Then the narrator depicts Bilquìs' upbringing. As a young girl, she witnesses a massive protest near a local cinema. People are angry about a film that is being shown, believing it to be showing sacrilegious content. The issue persists and the owner of the cinema, Mahmoud, insists on continuing to show the film.
A bombing occurs at the cinema and Bilquìs' father dies in the explosion. Traumatized, she wanders the streets naked, after her clothes have been burned off. The narrator says that Bilquìs goes on to marry Raza Hyder, a military man. Initially they are somewhat happy, but as Bilquìs grows older she becomes increasingly paranoid. During the afternoon each day, she becomes frightened of the warm wind, known as "the Loo," that appeared in the afternoon as it reminded her of her father's violent demise.
At the end of the fourth chapter, the narrator reflects on what he would have written in a realist novel. He says that he would have described his sister, a twenty-two-year-old engineering student, whose daily life is indicative of what living in modern Pakistan is like. He says that he is, instead, forced to write about Pakistan in this fragmentary manner, incorporating elements of the fantastical. He says he is writing a kind of "modern fairy tale." He says he will shift his focus back to Sufiya and Omar.
The next chapter begins with Bilquìs talking to Rani Humayun. Rani is betrothed to Iskander Harappa. They live in a large house, with many other women, in the town of Karachi. Rani doesn't get the wedding reception she imagined because there is a war going on, as the tensions have erupted on the Kashmiri border following the enactment of Partition. Around the same time, Bilquìs discovers that she is pregnant and tells Raza, who is thrilled to hear the news. Bilquìs tells Iskander and Rani that soon they will have a son to marry Iskander's unborn daughter.
The narrator describes the rapid expansion of Karachi, as immigration leads to a growth in the population. He also reiterates his feelings about the meaning of being from a place and how he believes the idea of "roots" is a fictional construct. He thinks that this idea is something that is used to trap people in specific places and that no one is ever truly attached to a single place. He also explores the idea that he is writing about a place that both is and is not really Pakistan.
Much to Raza's disappointment, Bilquìs gives birth to a daughter, named Sufiya Zenobia. The narrator says that she is the heroine of the story. Raza flies into an intense rage and demands an audience with a supervisor. He screams at the doctor and violently pokes at Sufiya in her swaddle. The narrator notes that Sufiya, after her parents accepted her gender, seemed to blush, suggesting that she was aware of a sense of shame from the beginning. The next chapter begins with a description of a folk story about a frog in a well. The narrator says a frog croaking in a well will be scared by the louder croak of another, larger frog. Rani grows increasingly unhappy, as she is left in Mohenjo, the Harappa country estate in the province of Sind. She sits most days and takes up sewing. Raza heads off to war.
While Raza is away, Sufiya falls ill with a brain fever. She is treated with various expensive medicines and is healed, but shows signs of a mental handicap. Bilquìs is ashamed and believes that her condition is God's way of punishing her for cheating on Raza in the past. When Raza returns, he is crushed by this news. Simultaneously, his relationship with Iskander deteriorates when they fight over Atiyah "Pinkie" Aurangzeb, who goes on to become Iskander's mistress. This permanently sours the relationship between the two men.
Analysis
Shame continues to play a large role in this part of the novel, driving the characters' actions, often leading them to anger or violence. In the first chapter of this section, a film being shown at a local cinema is fiercely protested, as the people in the city are upset by a romantic scene in it. They believe it makes the film indecent and offensive. The owner of the cinema insists on continuing to show the film, despite increasingly intense opposition, eventually leading to a bombing. Here, the narrator portrays the way in which the shame surrounding sexuality and romance causes a great deal of harm. The people's desire to suppress the film becomes so intense that it ends in a terrible act of violence. As Rushdie explores throughout the book, shame continually has terrible consequences, as it leads characters to justify their cruelest actions.
The other major shame-driven moment in the novel occurs when Sufiya is born. Raza fully expects to have a son and is obsessed with the idea of having a male heir to carry on his name. He is furious when he learns that Bilquìs has given birth to a girl. Sufiya reportedly blushes after her parents express their unhappiness about her gender and the narrator says that people believed she felt shame from the beginning. This feeling is only heightened when Sufiya becomes ill and, after healing, subsequently shows signs of a mental handicap. Both of her parents are crushed by this news, further adding to young Sufiya's sense of shame. Raza and Bilquìs' shame hurts Sufiya immediately, as she is unable to understand why her parents are upset with her, but feels their disappointment. This is the beginning of her absorbing the unprocessed shame in the world around her. The narrator frames her fate as particularly tragic because she did not do anything to bring this upon herself, but still suffers. This also foreshadows the violence that this precipitates later in the novel, as the shame she takes in has a backlash. This shame goes on to grow within her and eventually consumes her.
The theme of political violence also appears prominently in the scenes involving the cinema. The cinema ends up being bombed, after the manager decides to continue showing the film people are angry about. The explosion kills Bilquìs' father and leaves her traumatized. In the aftermath, she becomes upset whenever there is a warm afternoon wind known as "the Loo." This section demonstrates how shame catalyzes political violence, leading people to commit atrocities that they justify on the basis of social norms. At the same time, it also looks at the lingering aftermath of this violence, as characters like Bilquìs lose loved ones as a result of this random brutality. The narrator also observes that the planter of the bomb is not known, as they were many likely culprits who could have done it. Here, he suggests the randomness of this act, as so many people were angry about this issue and others like it. This description implies that the shame that drove this bombing was so present at the time that it could not be attributed to one person, but was more indicative of the state of the social atmosphere at that time.
The motif of home appears a number of times in this section. The narrator frequently interjects with comments about what he is writing about. He discusses his struggle to write about Pakistan and notes that, having left, he is often imposing his idea of an imaginary country on the real Pakistan. He says that the events of the novel are not literally things that have happened there, but instead are a heightened or mythic representation of things he observed. Similarly, he notes that he does not believe in the idea of roots and rejects the notion of people being tied to any particular place. In this way, the narrator defines his style in opposition to "realism," as he is not interested in portraying daily life in Pakistan. Instead, as he describes it, he is interested in using fantastical events to explore his ideas, as he seems to believe they actually come closer to portraying the truth of the oppression, violence, and shame to which he bore witness.
The oppression of women plays a significant role in this section of the novel. One of the chapters begins with Rani and Bilquìs talking excitedly about marriage. What they do not know is that a great deal of pain and disappointment awaits them in the near future. Rani is sent to the estate of Mohenjo while Bilquìs is hurt by the news that Sufiya will likely remain in a childlike mental state for the rest of her life. Both women quickly begin to feel trapped in their circumstances, ignored by their husbands who have begun a rivalry over another woman. They find, almost immediately, that their marriages make them feel isolated and angry. In these moments, the narrator highlights the way in which his female characters are given so little say in the positions that they end up in. While men like Iskander, Raza, and even Omar are free to choose their own paths, Rani and Bilquìs are entirely subject to the choices of their husbands.
