Major Pettigrew's Last Stand

The Major compares his romantic quest to that of Don Quixote or Sir Galahad as he navigates traffic north. He finds the street where Mrs. Ali lives and disapproves of the “obviously foreign excess” (303) in the lawn decorations of a neighbor, only to see a white woman with dyed hair emerge from the house. A pregnant woman answers the door at Mrs. Ali’s address and says she must call her father.

Her father, wearing a nametag that says “Dave,” arrives. He says that Mrs. Ali will not be attending Adbul Wahid’s wedding because there is not room enough in the car for Dave, his wife, and his mother. Dave thinks it is best for Mrs. Ali “to make a clean break with the past” (306). Dave suggests he wants Mrs. Ali to learn to be happy at home and has not welcomed her help in his shops.

Mrs. Ali enters and insists on seeing the Major. She accuses her brother-in-law, Dawid, of intercepting the letters she wrote to the Major. Dawid leaves the two to speak in a back room where his mother, an older woman, is watching TV. As the two converse, they conclude that the older woman must have taken the Major’s volume of Kipling from Mrs.