Brick Lane: Chapter 20 Summary & Analysis

Nazneen holds Hasina’s letter in her hand. It is like a butterfly, whose fragile wings have the power to disturb the world. She is almost finished packing. The computer is packed, the books are packed. But she is not going. She prepares to pay a visit to Mrs. Islam, but when she opens the door, the old woman is there with her two sons. Nazneen invites them in and makes tea. Mrs. Islam tells her that 200 pounds will settle the debt, but Nazneen calmly informs her that she will not pay. She has done the calculations herself and she and Chanu have repaid the debt and 300 pounds in interest.

Mrs. Islam’s sons begin to break things. They shatter the glass showcase. They threaten to break Nazneen’s arms. She invites them to go ahead. Mrs. Islam is horrified that Nazneen would accuse her of being a money lender. Nazneen stands her ground. Then Mrs. Islam indirectly threatens to tell Chanu about Nazneen’s affair with Karim, but Nazneen says Chanu already knows everything.

For once in her life, Mrs. Islam is shocked. She gives in, and one of her sons mumbles that Nazneen and Chanu already paid too much anyway. Mrs. Islam begins beating him with her bag, crying and letting out a sound of animal-like despair. When they’re gone, Nazneen cleans up the broken glass and thinks to herself that God did, indeed, provide a way—and she found it.

Nazneen is taking the Tube to see Karim. She’d called him earlier, telling him that she had something to say to him that could not wait. She sees now that the Karim she has loved this entire time is really only in her head. She’d thought that unlike her and Chanu, he knew exactly where he fit into the world, but the reality is he’s just as lost as everyone else. When she gets off the train, she sees him standing next to the clothes shop they’d talked about on the phone. They walk for a bit and stop in front of a street juggler. It occurs to Nazneen that they could have done this before—gone out together in teeming London, and no one would have seen them.

Nazneen tells Karim that Chanu is leaving for Bangladesh tomorrow, and that she and the girls are staying behind. Then she says what she has really come to say: that she does not want to marry him. Karim is obviously pained, but he says he understands. She has to put the children first. She sees that he is, while hurt, actually relieved. They go to a café together and Nazneen notices that Karim is no longer stuttering. He says he only stutters when he’s nervous, and when she points out that he never stuttered in English, he corrects her. Maybe she just never noticed, he says. She realizes that, wanting him to be something that he’s not, she’s pieced Karim together in her mind from pieces of cloth, and now the seams are showing.

Afterward Nazneen goes for a walk around the estate and runs into Dr. Azad, who has just been to see Tariq. Razia’s son is coming along well in his fight against addiction. Nazneen begins to wonder why he lent Chanu the money for the plane tickets. She thinks maybe he’d hoped to save someone else’s marriage, since his is beyond repair. She asks him if his wife has left him, and he says not exactly. Then she asks him directly why he gave Chanu the money, and he says it was for a simple reason: Chanu is a very good friend.

The day of departure has arrived. Nazneen drifts around the apartment, her eyes roving over the boxes and furniture labeled either to be shipped, sold, or given away. She plans to tell Chanu of her decision an hour before they are scheduled to leave the apartment. She can see that he is nervous and excited. In a quiet moment, he admits he has never been a perfect husband or father. Her heart full, and having yet to tell him of her plans, Nazneen says she is lucky that her father picked an educated man for her.

Chanu leaves to run a few last-minute errands, and Nazneen looks out the window at the Bengal Tiger march playing out on the estate grounds. The crowd is large and diverse, made up mostly of boys and old men. There is a small pack of very passionate white people. The Lion Hearts, the reason the Bengal Tigers are marching in the first place, have not shown up.

Chanu comes back, his briefcase full of soap from a nearby shop. He talks of his plans for the Dhaka soap factory. Once it’s profitable, he says, he’ll move the family to a bungalow in Gushan with a guest house. He leaves again and Nazneen goes to bed. Bibi wakes her to tell her that Shahana has run away.