Part 2, Chapters 8 and 9 Summary

Chapter 8 - The first part of the chapter is a stream-of-conscious narrative of the experience of a prisoner, Jean-Claude Julien, held captive in a Christian/Muslim war zone (the implication is that he is the prisoner spoken about by Charlie Everson in the previous chapter). Reactions to the sounds of war, the various mental exercises undertakes to keep himself sane, fantasies about women and sex, memories of his kidnapping and of seeing a man impaled on razor wire, imagined conversations with his father ... all, as narration portrays them, move through his brain randomly and intensely. This section concludes with commentary on how the prisoner despairingly comes to believe he'd been forgotten - by his government, his employer, his family, and even the people who kidnapped him.

In the next part of the chapter, Bill has temporarily moved in with...