Jumpy Joshi, feeling guilty for sleeping with Saladin's wife, tries to find Saladin somewhere to stay. He takes Saladin to the Shaandaar Café to meet Muhammad Sufyan, a former academic and political activist. While Muhammad is willing to rent a room to Saladin, his wife Hind is horrified by the half man, half goat who now resembles the devil. Joshi tries to explain to the café owners how Saladin miraculously survived the terrorist attack. Mishal and Anahita, the café owners' daughters, are fascinated by "radical" (147) Saladin and they convince their mother to allow him to stay.

After settling into his new rooms and reflecting on how he escaped the hospital, Saladin contacts Mimi Mamoulian. Mimi is his former colleague who worked on the television show in which Saladin was a voice actor. She tells Saladin that he has already been replaced by a white man, so that he has "lost work as well as wife, home, a grip on life" (156). Mimi also mentions that she has begun a relationship with Billy Battuta, a man with a less than stellar reputation. Saladin tries to warn Mimi that Billy is "a con-man, basically" (157), but she insists that she is aware of his reputation” Mishal and Anahita remain fascinated by Saladin and explain to him how their family makes money by rending rooms to immigrants who have “little hope of being declared permanent” (159).