55 pages • 1-hour read
House of Sand and Fog
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Part 1, Chapters 1-2Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Part 1
Part 1, Chapter 1 Summary
Massoud Behrani, a retired Iranian colonel who fled to America during the Iranian Revolution, works as a trash picker along a Bay Area highway on a hot day in August. He has been unable to find a high-paying position with an aeronautics firm despite four years of searching, and has instead been reduced to working two jobs as a menial laborer to prevent his family from burning through their savings too quickly. With his daughter recently married to a well-educated Persian man from a respectable family, Behrani’s immediate concerns are his teenage son Esmail, who will need money for college, and his wife Nadi.
Browsing the legal notices section of a newspaper’s classifieds during his lunch break, Behrani finds a listing advertising the upcoming auction of a one-story bungalow in the beach town of Corona, which was seized by the county. Recognizing an opportunity to quickly increase a modest initial investment by flipping this house and selling it high, Behrani tears out the ad and decides to attend the auction.
The following morning Behrani arrives at the auction feeling confident. Although he only has $48,000 left in savings, he outmaneuvers the two other prospective buyers and secures the house for $45,000.
Upon returning home he presents the news to his wife, who reacts in anger. His son is similarly resistant to the idea of moving out of the family’s lavish Berkley apartment. Behrani becomes enraged and orders his family to pack their belongings. Although Behrani usually does his best to “discipline” himself from seeing Nadi “only as a junior officer” (33) and Esmail as a soldier, he decides it is worth using a military officer’s authority to move his family into his newly acquired home and hopefully a better life.
Part 1, Chapter 2 Summary
Kathy Nicolo, a recovering cocaine addict and alcoholic, is surprised when her morning shower is interrupted by officers from the San Mateo Sheriff’s Department. The officers explain that her house, which she inherited from her father, is being seized for failure to pay a tax for operating a business out of her home. Although neither Kathy nor her estranged husband Nick “operated any damn business out of [their] home and did not owe a business tax” (34), the officers say her home is to be auctioned the following day.
Kathy must move all her possessions out of the house immediately or lose everything. One of the officers, Deputy Sheriff Lester Burdon, takes pity on her and calls movers to relocate her belongings to a storage shed across from Kathy’s new home—a motel room.
The next day Kathy makes an appointment with a lawyer named Connie Walsh, who Lester recommends to her. Connie believes Kathy has a decent shot at compelling the county to reverse its decision, halt the auction, and allow her to return to her house.
Part 1, Chapters 1-2 Analysis
Dubus establishes Behrani and Kathy’s voices, as well as the ways their stories will come to oppose and echo one another. The house in Corona serves as the focal point Dubus uses to invite comparison between the two narrators. This is especially apparent in their respective recollections of the past and the ways social pressures have brought them to their present circumstances.
For Kathy, the house is the crowning achievement in her fight to overcome her addictions. Before she drove to the West Coast with her new husband Nick, Kathy’s family threw a big party to wish them well. This culminated in her brother Frank, a car salesman, presenting the couple with a large, red Bonneville. Kathy feels tremendous pressure to live up to her family’s expectations of her future.
Therefore Kathy lies to her mother on the phone, telling her that everything is well: “That helped, a lie about making friends and taking care of myself” (44). However, Kathy understands that her mother is secretly concerned with Kathy’s sobriety and whether she and Nick will have children. The pressure implied by that trust prevents Kathy from asking for her parents’ help when she needs it.
For Behrani, the house in Corona comes at a low point in his life. He has overworked himself in two low-paying jobs to sustain the lavish lifestyle his family enjoyed at the height of his military career in Iran, which he knows is unsustainable. The house comes to represent an absolute windfall that Behrani regards as a cosmic reward for the indignities he has endure, and it instills in him “a sense of sarnehvesht, of destiny” (25).
Unlike Kathy, who understands her possession of the house represents a performance (of recovery and stability) put on for the sake of her family, Behrani regards the bungalow as an opportunity to quit his performance of affluence, which he has kept up for his family’s sake. As Nadi has often reminded him, they “must act as if [they] can live as [they] are accustomed” (19), to attract the best possible marriage prospects for their daughter Soraya. With Soraya now married, this charade is no longer necessary, and the purchase of the house represents “a new life” for Behrani, “a life in the buying and selling of American real estate” (33).
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