Book 1, Chapter 2 Summary

Salim talks about his family's mixed heritage. Although they are from northwestern India, they are considered Arab. They are Muslims with customs and attitudes of Hindus. He doesn't know a lot about them, because they are not the kind of people who record the past. They live in the moment. Europeans, who took the area from the Arabs, have written any history he knows. Now the Europeans were being driven out. Outside his hometown are stockades where, at one time, slaves were kept before they were sent overseas. Unlike slaves on the west coast, slaves were not sent to American plantations. Many went to Arab families. Others became members of the family they joined. These slaves are fiercely dependent on the family's protection and prestige. Salim's family had two slave families who had been with them for three generations, and the...