Part 1 Chapter 2 Summary

Rushdie visits his family a few weeks after Russian troops invade Afghanistan. They live in the fashionable, highly desirable army-owned "Defence" neighborhood accessible only through "nice-guy" arrangements. Rushdie visits a poet friend and innocently mentions the execution of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto. He is hushed because a nice-guy informer is present. Returning to London from Karachi, Rushdie learns his friend has spent months in jail for knowing someone who knows someone somehow involved in gun running in Baluchistan. They say he was hung upside down and beaten like a newborn. Wherever Rushdie turns in the East, he finds something of which to be ashamed, but no one there notices it any more. Everyone has grown "civilized." After the Soviet invasion, the West feels obliged to support ul-Haq's dictatorship, but the Pakistanis could get rid of him "in the usual way." Shame on...