Summary

In Part Two, Chapter 1, the first-person narrator feels lonely and isolated from her friends and family. Aunt Abida and Zahra moved to their own homes, after they married, and Asad was living in Delhi. Saliman, a maidservant kept Laila company when she did not want to sleep alone. Following Baba Jan’s death, in Chapter 2, Uncle Hamid and Aunt Saira redecorated the house with western finishings. Aunt Saira did not observe purdah and she was “not confined to the zenana as her sisters-in-law had been” (120). Laila attempted not to displease her aunt and uncle as they attended to their many affairs and social functions.

In Chapter 3, Laila continued to feel unsure of her own identity and caught between her internal and external worlds. While she struggled to reconcile the two, her friendships with other girls at school helped her “blurred, confusing double image...