55 pages • 1 hour read
House of Sand and Fog
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BetaPart 2, Chapters 50-52Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Part 2
Part 2, Chapter 50 Summary
Lester has Behrani park his car in the tax office’s lot. He’s especially anxious since the tax office is right next to the Hall of Justice, where he fears he might be recognized. Lester orders Behrani to proceed while he waits with Esmail in the car, but the colonel refuses, and Lester has no choice but to escort them to the tax office himself.
As they walk to the office’s doors, a police officer who Lester trained recognizes him and stops the deputy to talk. The young officer doesn’t say anything about Lester’s situation, and the three continue toward the tax office. Lester jams his fingers into Behrani’s back, hoping to intimidate him. Behrani seems unmoved, and Lester realizes he is drawing outside attention.
Suddenly, Esmail grabs Lester’s gun from his belt, and Behrani twists one of the deputy’s arms behind his back. Passersby take notice and yell for the police. Although the gun is unloaded, Lester decides not to tell Esmail so that the Behranis won’t recognize his bluff. Behrani says something to his son in Farsi, and Lester breaks free just as two police officers arrive and order Esmail to drop the gun. Esmail turns to the policemen, who see him holding Lester’s weapon and shoot the boy two times.
Behrani runs to his son’s side, attempting to apply pressure to a wound in his shoulder. Lester makes a split-second decision to stay and help Esmail. Soon an ambulance arrives to retrieve Esmail while a couple of police officers place Behrani in the back of a patrol car. Lester is left alone in a swarm of police officers, who question him.
Part 2, Chapters 51-52 Summary
Back at the house, Kathy is increasingly frightened by the logistics of Lester’s plan, which doesn’t hold up under scrutiny. She re-enters the house to check on Nadi, who is fast asleep. Trying to keep busy, Kathy gathers broken pieces of glass out of the window that Lester had shattered.
Lieutenant Alvarez tells Behrani, who is being interrogated by the police, that Lester corroborated his innocence and he is free to leave the police station to visit Esmail. Running full tilt, Behrani makes his way to the hospital, where he is led to a room in which he prays for his son’s safety. Behrani reveals that before he was shot, he told Esmail to keep the gun pointed at Lester’s chest. He now blames himself for his son being shot. A doctor enters the room and informs Behrani that Esmail has died.
After briefly crying over his son’s body, Behrani leaves the hospital and makes a run for the Hall of Justice, where he hopes to find and confront Lester. Stained with Esmail’s blood, he attracts too much attention from the staff and decides to drive back home.
He bursts through the front door and rushes a shocked Kathy. He brutally strangles her until she stops moving, then he heads to Nadi’s room, where he finds her sleeping. To save her from the pain of learning about Esmail’s death, he suffocates her as she sleeps. He changes into his military uniform, writes a will leaving the house to Soraya, moves Kathy out of the house, and returns to Nadi’s room, where he lies next to her and tapes a plastic bag over his head. As he dies, he thinks about his wife, his old friend General Pourat, and his home country.
Part 2, Chapters 50-52 Analysis
These climactic chapters detail the consequences of Lester, Behrani, and Kathy’s tragic flaws, which lead to Nadi and Esmail’s deaths. The police shooting of Esmail is the culmination of the pride-driven game that Behrani and Lester have been playing, disregarding Esmail’s safety to preserve their pride. Behrani’s fear of losing his son leads to a moment of clarity when he reflects on his service to the corrupt Iranian government and draws a parallel between the government’s collapse and the events leading up to the shooting: “For our excess we lost everything” (329). Behrani viscerally understands the folly of his stubbornness and willingness to risk everything over a piece of property that shouldn’t have been taken from its owner in the first place. Just as Behrani turned a blind eye to the cruelty enacted by his government and SAVAK, he has willfully ignored his participation in the injustice perpetrated by the county against Kathy. This is made even more painful because Esmail and Nadi both tried to appeal to his sense of judgment. As he prays for his son’s safety, Behrani seems to wish he could retroactively listen to their advice and find compassion for Kathy: “if You heal my son I will return her father’s house” (330).
Behrani’s desperate desire to find compassion for Kathy evaporate as soon as he learns of Esmail’s death. He attempts to strangle Kathy to death before murdering Nadi and killing himself. Behrani’s dramatic turn toward violence should be understood as the final expression of his pride, which has been wounded beyond recovery. In taking it upon himself to kill Nadi to save her the pain of Esmail’s death, he violates her personal agency by deciding what is best for her without consulting her, counting it as a “last-moment detail that can only be left to a father or husband” (336). This moment is the book’s clearest distillation of how Behrani’s pride intersects with his earnest, loving desire for his family’s well-being. His decision to kill Nadi in her sleep stems from his sincere belief that he knows what is best for his family. The same set of impulses that helped him endure humiliation and hard work at the beginning of the novel influence his decision to spare Nadi the pain of their son’s death.
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