Pages 130-140

Nataliya Korostensky

Pg. 130-140 Shame Blog
(Edited by Noelia Valero)

Summary:
-We learn of Sufiya Zinobia’s purity and innocence. She was never loved, appreciated, or shown affection like Naveed. She was labled as her mother’s shame.

-Sufiya Zinobia’s blushing: she was born blushing and continued to frequently blush throughout the years. Basically we learn she has developmental issues (that seemed to get intensified by the time she spent in Q) that cause her to blush frequently.

-Bilquis employed a Parsee ayah named Miss Shahbanou who complained about being scauled by water which was almost boiling because of Sufiya’s embaressment (blushing).

VOCAB: Ayah- A native nurse for children; also, a lady's maid.
http://www.wordnik.com/words/ayah

-Sufiya’s blushing was not all internal; it was in large part because she absorbed her surroundings and blushed because of the world she was living in. Basically, Sufiya experiences shame for all the things people do shamelessly around her. Her mother explains it as an outcry for attention.

-Blushing: psychosomatic event –“a sudden shut-down of the arterio-venous anastomoss of the face floods the capillaries with the blood that produces the characteristically heightened colour.” (p132)
(Mind has the ability to influence the body by direct nervous pathways)

-The year in which Isky Harappa and Raza Hyder were 40 years old Iskander found out that his cousin, Little Mir, cozied up to President A. and was about to get a promotion. Iskander is furious (jealous). He is sleeping with Pinkie Aurangzeb who is a widow but leaves her after finding out this news. He decided to put an end to everything that was a distraction or limit on his spirit. He cleaned up his act (stopped gambling and sleeping around) and his political vocabulary. He also decided to cut communication with Omar.

-Isky’s daughter Arjumand is thrilled about her father’s transformation and is later on in life labeled the “virgin Ironpants”. She hates her own mother and Omar. Her father tells her to overcome her gender because they live in a “man’s world”. She takes this advice to heart and binds her breasts when they begin to develop.

-Meanwhile, Omar has aged (silvered) and stayed at the top of the medical and academic field. He wears all grey’s in an attempt to subdue his physiognomy (appearance) because he is still fat and ugly. His hypnotic eyes and voice have not changed (he used them to sleep with white women at academic conferences). For a while he stopped visiting Isky because he has returned to Q to visit his mothers because his brother, Babar, is dead (murdered). All that is left of his brother (whom he had never seen) is a bunch of notebooks.

-Babar was raised very much in the shadow of his older brother (the mothers idolized him, keeping medals, news paper clippings, school books, etc. to honor their first son). Babar burned all these things and entered the streets of Q at age 20. As soon as he left the house, Q experienced an earthquake.

*Possible reference to the 1974 Hunza earthquake that was ranked a 6.2 earthquake. The earthquake killed 5,300 people with approximately 17,000 injured. A total of 97,000 were reported affected by the tremor. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1974_Hunza_earthquake)
-Babar proceeded to celebrate his birthday by getting drunk in a cheap bar.
Good source for help with references: http://postcolonialstudies.emory.edu/salman-rushdie/