Mr. Pirzada comes to dine

1.Mr. Pirzada was from a city in the former country of Pakistan called Daca. He was not familiar with the culture in America, and it seems that the main reason he joined the family for dinner was for company. His huge family and everything he knew was left far away across seas when he came to America to study the foliage of New England. The kind family invited him for dinner because he seemed to share a similar culture and beliefs as they did.


2. The narrator associates his coat with Mr. Pirzada because each time he came to eat with the family he would always have a coat on. It was the little girl’s duty to hang the coat up.


3. The event of India and Pakistan drawing closer to war and eventually going to war changed the tone of Mr. Pirzada’s dining. The following sentence explains how the tone changed. “What I remember during those twelve days of the war was that my father no longer asked me to watch the news with them, and that Mr. Pirzada stopped bringing me candy, and that my mother refused to serve anything other than boiled egg and rice for dinner.”


4. Halloween serves as a turning point in the story.


5. The division of the country of India into Pakistan and India in 1947 is an example of division. Also, the division of Mr. Pirzada’s family for a year while he was in America is also an example of division. He valued his family very much and this division was a big loss for him. “Each week Mr. Pirzada wrote letters to his wife, and sent comic books to each of his seven daughters, but the postal system, along with most everything else in Dacca, had collapsed, and he had not heard word of them in over six months.”


6. One example of loss was the loss of Mr. Pirzada’s presence at dinner time in the family. Also, the loss of communication between Mr. Pirzada and his family back home showed the loss of something he was very passionate about.