Part 3 Chapter 7 Summary

London is shaken by the true story of a Pakistani father who murders his only child for dishonoring the family. Rushdie is appalled, but as an Easterner, he understands the killer in a way Westerners, not fed a diet of honor and shame, cannot. Wanting to write about shame, Rushdie conceives a character whom he provisionally names Anahita ("Anna") Muhammad, an attractive, vivacious, 16-years-old Londoner. Anna eludes the author and he looks eastward again to create Sufiya Zinobia and turn her into a brain-damaged idiot, the victim of hatred for a miracle-gone-wrong. All stories are haunted by stories that might have been told and Anna Muhammad haunts this book, but she will never be written about. Two other unnamed Londoners merge into the Sufiya Zinobia character: one, an "Asian," goes berserk after being dishonored in the subway and nearly kills her...