Chapter 2 Summary

Roxana arrives with her husband Yezad and two sons, Murad, thirteen, and Jehangir, nine, for Nariman's birthday dinner. The boys are instructed to sit like statues, but it doesn't last. Murad gets up and begins to explore the room. He tries to open a pair of curtains, but he succeeds only in pulling the curtain rod down. With a flash of anger, Yezad commands him to sit down again on the sofa. They are regaining their composure when Nariman enters the room. He sits in his chair, collapsing a bit as the early signs of Parkinson's disease make the last foot or so of sitting down more like falling. The boys rush to embrace him and go through their special greeting of feeling his chin and his bald head and asking him to show them his teeth. Nariman seems a little unhappy in...