Summary
Iskander ascends to power, becoming the leader of Peccavistan. He is commemorated in various images. The narrator notes that a complex series of rigged elections allowed him to take this position. A war followed which led to a great deal of bloodshed. Western forces attempted to hold onto power in the region, as they had significant business interests to attend to. Arjumand recalls all of this from a more distant point in time, as she continues to idolize her father and believe that he is a great man. Iskander installs Raza as his right-hand man, leading the military and acting as an advisor.
Arjumand also takes on an active role in politics, ransacking the homes of various famous movie stars and jailing enemies of his father's administration. Iskander is interviewed by a British television station and claims to be the "incarnation of the people's love." The narrator notes that Iskander hinges his whole political ideology on being opposed to the wealthy and being a champion of the "people," despite being a member of the upper class. The narrator notes that much later Iskander is jailed and hanged when his grasp on power slips.
Both Arjumand and Rani are put under house arrest after Iskander falls from power. Raza claims leadership for himself and sacks Mohenjo, taking its various treasures with the help of his military forces. While spending time with Arjumand in confinement, Rani shows her the shawls she has been knitting which vividly depict the cruelties of Iskander's rule, revealing the truth about who he was to Arjumand. This shatters Arjumand's former image of her father, as she imagined him to be the greatest man who ever lived. Haroun is tried for the murder of his brother, the young boy, Mir, who was viciously killed in the early part of Iskander's reign.
The narrator shifts focus back to Sufiya. He takes note of the continued growth of the beast within her. She is kept in bed and sedated for a lengthy period of time, following her violent outburst at the wedding. At the same time, Raza attempts to consolidate his power through various military conflicts. He also attempts to quell disorder in the country. His daughter Good News delivers her first granddaughter and subsequently is impregnated twenty-seven times. Her physical health and beautiful appearance suffer as a result of all of these births.
Bilquìs becomes increasingly unhappy, as she suffers from years of strife and trauma. She is described as finally being "broken" by the decline of Good News, who she viewed as the single bright spot in her otherwise cruel life. Omar gives up his formerly debaucherous ways after marrying Sufiya. The two of them never sleep together, as Sufiya has the mental state of a child and is constantly under sedation.
Omar begins sleeping with Sufiya's nursemaid, Shahbanou, and Sufiya becomes aware of it. Though she is a child, she perceives that there is something happening from the sounds they are making during sexual intercourse. She realizes that though he is technically her husband, there is something she cannot do for him. She becomes a serious insomniac.
Shortly thereafter, Sufiya flies into a violent fit and attacks several young men. Their bodies are found with the heads missing. The narrator reveals that Sufiya hypnotized them with the beast's eyes and they followed her and had sex with her. After this, she brutally killed all four of them. Talvar tells Raza that he possibly saw Sufiya sleepwalking the night of the murders and Raza is shocked and disturbed by the possibility that she did this. He discovers a bloody burqa in her room and realizes she committed the murders. He has the burqa secretly burned.
Analysis
Political power and dictatorship are another theme revisited in this section of the book. As Iskander's regime is toppled, the narrator shows how flimsy the basis of his rule always was. While Iskander is a charismatic figure during his ascent to power and a brutally repressive one once he gets it, he is quickly ousted when Raza betrays him. This exploration of the end of his reign shows that this sort of leadership, which hinges on the intense personality of a single individual, is inherently unstable. He came to prominence because of his charming speeches and professed dedication to his people, but in reality he quickly proved to be essentially the same as the corrupt leaders before him. In the absence of truly loyal friends, Iskander ultimately ends up dead, powerless, and alone.
Storytelling appears as a motif again in the form of Rani's shawls. In her solitude, Rani takes up the activity of knitting shawls. These shawls contain various vivid scenes of life in Karachi. She spends a great deal of time working on them, with a painstaking attention to color and detail. These images tell the story of Iskander's life, revealing the truth behind the facade of propriety he constructed. It depicts his dishonesty and cruelty as a leader, showing times he betrayed, cheated, or killed people. She shows these shawls to her daughter Arjumand, who is devastated to learn the truth about her father. This moment demonstrates Rushdie's belief in the purpose of storytelling. He is literally showing an instance in which a storyteller, who works in a medium that is not writing, is able to peel back the layers of a person to show who they truly are.
Shame also appears once again, as Sufiya's possession by the beast takes a major turning point at this juncture in the novel. It is the beginning of Sufiya's transformation into a frightening panther creature. This comes about as her internalized shame grows stronger. After overhearing Omar, her husband, having sexual relations with her nursemaid, Sufiya becomes aware that she is not really Omar's wife in certain regards. She becomes fixated on the idea of sex and subsequently is overcome by the beast. She goes out, hypnotizes four young men with her eyes, has sex with them, and then decapitates them. The evidence of this crime shocks and disturbs the nation. By escalating the severity of her actions to murder, the narrator shows the terrible aftereffects of Sufiya's accumulated shame. Not only does she feel that she has let her parents down, but she also believes that she has failed Omar in some essential way. Her shame grows because she is not fulfilling another role that society has prescribed for her. This is particularly unfortunate in that, again, she has done nothing inherently shameful, while the people around her, like Omar, are constantly engaging in selfish behavior to meet their own needs. She has become the conduit of other people's shame, acting out the violence they attempt to suppress.
The oppression of women appears prominently in the section detailing Good News's life as a mother. Good News has many children with her husband Talvar—twenty seven in total. All of this birth takes a huge toll on her body, ruining her health and physical appearance. This physical drain eventually ends her life. In this description, Rushdie explores the way in which the pain and wear of childbirth goes thoughtlessly unacknowledged in the world of the book. The sacrifices that Good News makes are, like Rani's, indicative of the suffering thoughtlessly inflicted on wives, as their husbands focus entirely on what they want out of the relationship. Talvar only cares about having more children and shows no regard for Good News's wellbeing.
This part of the book deals extensively with the crumbling of various narratives. Iskander's regime collapses and is supplanted by an equally brutal one led by Raza. Arjumand learns that her father was a despicable and dishonest man. Good News's storybook romance ends in a marriage that leaves her with nothing but a body that is continually taxed by constant childbirth. Sufiya feels an even more acute sense of shame and is driven to commit a terrible act of violence. In all of these instances, the characters' roles are detrimental to them, as they learn the truth about what their situations actually are.
