Summary

The overseers do not let the migrants onto the deck until nightfall, afraid they will try to escape. On the second day on the water, the Ibis passes Raskhali, Neel Halder’s old estate, which he could feel in the “river’s bends and turns” (365). Neel learns that Aafat is from Canton and as Aafat tells him stories about where he’s from it provides Neel an escape. Aafat tells Neel about how foreigners, especially white foreigners, are labeled aliens and forbidden to enter Canton except for a strip of land near the water where the government permitted them to build factories. Aafat tells Neel that he’s the son of one of the foreigners and a Chinese woman who did laundry for them. As a mixed race child, he could never be accepted by either tribe.

On the Ibis, the female migrants must...