Chapter 3 Summary

Chapter three opens with Lucy and Ibrahim discussing the possibility of hiring a boy to work as mali in their garden. They discuss the ramifications, including the need to borrow tools from Smith's Hotel as they do not have gardening tools. How to pay the mali is also discussed, with Lucy deciding that she can provide funds to Ibrahim but that Ibrahim must do the actual hiring, supervising and paying.

The discussion of how to feed the mali and Ibrahim's thoughts on his current eating arrangement leads to a flashback. Ibrahim remembers formal dinners at the Pankot Rifles Mess, when the British were still in charge in India, and his father was still alive. Ibrahim has one of the formal tunic and trouser sets his father wore and remembers fondly the proper way that British officers got drunk.

The last time he had...