Summary

The penultimate section of Bastašić's novel opens with Chapter 8, in which Lejla and Sara decide to stop in their home town on their way to Vienna. All the people who still live there are old. "Their spines were curved almost to the ground" and they act shocked to see a young person wandering their lonely streets (149). Though she has not seen or talked to her mother in years, Sara decides to take a secret trip down her old street. When she sees how fat, ugly, and unpleasant her mother has become, Sara cowers behind a bush and makes no effort to reconnect. Her mother's ugliness horrifies her: "She was deformed, as if a giant toddler had taken her into his clumsy hands and disfigured her like Play-Doh" (151). When her mother hears a rustling in the bushes, Sara runs away, terrified, and...