Summary

In Chapter 1, in Part Three, Kemal and Saleem, Hamid and Saira’s sons, returned home; they had lived abroad to attend school in England. During the summer, the family visited Hasanpur, and Laila saw the ancestral home through a new lens. She no longer idealized the manor and was disturbed by the “poverty and squalor, disease and the waste of human beings” (173). Since her grandfather’s death, Laila felt less withdrawn within herself, but she continued to question the traditions of her family and her liberal education.

In Chapter 2, Laila discovered that Kemal met Sita while he was in London, but he brushed off the acquaintance. Later on, they bonded over a similar feeling of disconnection from the family and Laila confided that “without having gone away physically as [he] did [she has] never lived completely with the others” (179). Kemal told her that...