Brick Lane: Chapter 17 Summary & Analysis

A boy has been stabbed and no one, not the newspapers or the residents of Tower Hamlets, can get the story straight. His name and character changes with each telling. Nazneen and Shahana stand outside a grocery store, listening to people gossip. Nazma seems intent, especially in front of Razia, on blaming the boy’s death on drugs. It’s too bad that so many young men are deep into the drugs these days, she says. Razia pretends not to hear them.

Nazneen and Razia are walking home from the grocery store, and they see a funeral procession pass by. In one of the cars is a white woman who smiles at Nazneen as if she knows her, as if she is a familiar object of some kind. Nazneen wants desperately to ask Razia if she is being talked about, but it is difficult to talk to Razia about real things now. Razia never jokes anymore, and never does any impressions. They walk past a store called Fashion Fusion. It seems to sell saris to white girls, and Razia is roused to talk finally. She wonders how people can spit on her for being a Muslim while outfitting themselves like the people they claim to hate. What is wrong with people? she asks.

One evening, the girls and Nazneen are alone in the apartment. Chanu is working. Shahana is saying she doesn’t want to move to Bangladesh. Not even, Nazneen asks, to meet Mumtaz auntie? Bibi asks to hear a story of Mumtaz, so Nazneen tells them of Mumtaz’s jinni given to her by her father. She broke the bottle the jinni lived in, telling it that she was giving it its freedom and in return it had to give her wisdom. Time passed, though, and Mumtaz never heard from it. Finally, after a village woman came to Mumtaz with a problem—she had eight children and her husband would not stop sleeping with her—Mumtaz asked the air what she could say to the woman to help her with her dilemma. This time, the jinni answered.

The jinni told Mumtaz that the woman should line up all her children and tell her husband that if he wants another child, he will first have to pick which of the eight he wants to kill. Kill one and she will replace it.  After this incident, the people in the village often came to Mumtaz for advice and Mumtaz obliged them, asking the jinni and often speaking in tongues. Rupban was the only skeptic. She thought Mumtaz’s jinni act was a complete fraud.

Finished with her story, Nazneen leads the girls to the bathroom to brush their teeth. There, she thinks of a jinni tale she had never told them. When Nazneen was eight or nine years old, Rupban became possessed by an evil jinni. The jinni made her sharpen sticks and try to poke Hamid’s eyes out with them. It made her stop washing. Things got so bad that Hamid called on an area holy man, Manzur Boyati, to come and perform an exorcism. Exorcisms were considered great entertainment in the village, and everyone came out to see Rupban shed the jinni.

The holy man called on a volunteer from the crowd to help with the exorcism. One of Rupban’s servant boys raised his hand. He was a moody boy who kept a mongoose on a leash. The exorcism proceeded as planned, with the holy man transferring the jinni from Rupban to the body of the servant boy. When the holy man began questioning the boy about why he would torture Rupban, he answered in a wicked voice that she had stepped on his shadow. The boy then proceeded to yank on the holy man’s beard to the point that the holy man asked the crowd to intervene. He insisted that the boy was faking and was trying to kill him.

When the servant boy was finally pulled away from the holy man, the holy man demanded the chance to avenge himself on the boy. The crowd began to fight about what should be done. Eventually, a compromise was reached: the holy man would be permitted to put the boy in a headlock if he solemnly promised to rid him of the evil spirit.

Rupban eventually got better, and even though Nazneen overheard the servant boy bragging that he’d humiliated the holy man on purpose, she insisted on believing in the exorcism. Now, though, she can only wonder why Rupban always seemed to believe in bad jinn but not good.

Nazneen sees little of Karim at the moment. He is busy with Bengal Tiger activities and with his spiritual instruction. When she does see him, he tells her he’s researching divorce, and he talks about their future wedding, which he thinks should be a simple, small affair. Nazneen does not know what she wants to happen. She can go to Bangladesh with Chanu and the girls, but that could end in ruin. She could stay here and marry Karim, but then what? She supposes she should wait and let fate decide, but, having cut a chili and gotten some of the heat into her eye, she cries out in pain and then exhilaration. She will decide what happens to her, she thinks. She will act.

Later, though, Nazneen is left with only the ghost of her determination. She vacillates back and forth, torn between Karim and her family. One night, after praying, she finds a Qur’anic verse about two oceans divided by a reef and containing the question “which of God’s blessings would you deny?” Both sides of the ocean have coral and pearls. Which is the right ocean? It reminds Nazneen of Chanu cutting his toenails in bed and coming over to her, kissing her forehead, and saying he has never once regretted his choice of bride. Her girls are beautiful, she thinks. She is a lucky woman. She vows that she will not deny God’s blessings.

Chanu talks less and less, while Karim talks more and more. Karim is energized by the Lion Hearts’ latest leaflet, which claims that Islam is a religion of hate and violence. Karim, still dressed in his Panjabi pajama and skull cap, is furious with such claims. Everyone is always talking about Islamic terrorists, but never Catholic terrorists or Jewish terrorists, he says. Nazneen wants to talk to him, but she doesn’t know what to say. He’s so angry all the time now. Karim tells her that the Lion Hearts might have started the war, but the Bengal Tigers will finish it.

In a letter dated September 2001, Hasina writes that Monju has died. Hasina is glad that her friend is now relieved from her suffering, and she is grateful to report that Lovely is making good on her promise to start a new charity. It will help child victims of acid attacks, and Monju’s son will be its first beneficiary. Lovely calls the newspaper to announce the formation of the organization.

Hasina had the chance to give the good news to Monju before she died, and she could see the joy and relief in the woman’s eye. Then Monju told her a secret. When her son was two years old, she smacked him across the legs in a fit of frustration. She thought it might have been that smack, rather than the acid, that was causing all his leg problems. Hasina pretends to go ask a doctor about it and comes back, telling her the doctor said it could not have been the smack. It was not Monju’s fault. Monju almost smiles. She tells Hasina that secrets kill and asks her if Hasina has any she would like to get off her chest. The next day, when Hasina comes back to unburden herself, Monju is gone.