The Middleman
It is a story about a man from Iraq living in South America and working for a ranch owner called Ransome. His name is Alfred and although originally from Iraq he is an American. Ransome has a beautiful Latina wife called Maria and Alfred is attracted to her. Ransome and his coworker Bud leave Ransome's house to attend to some business. Maria asks Alfred to drive her to the village. When they arrive there Alfred notices that it's not a village but a camp of guerillas. There Maria meets with a man she seems to know very well. His name is Andreas and the lover connection between him and Maria is obvious. Alfred realizes that the reason she made him drive there is to traffic weapons for none other reason than to backstab Ransome.
They get back home and Ransome is waiting for Maria, he tells them that Bud was attacked by a group of guerrillas but Alfred knows that Ransome ordered them to do it. That night Alfred and Maria spend together and in the morning a group of guerillas arrive to attack Ransome with Andreas as their leader. At the end Maria is the one who coldly kills her husband and leaves with Andreas. Alfred leaves the place and feels obliged to tell his story of a middleman.
Analysis
It is a story about a man being entangled into the dangerous world of weapon smuggling and fighting for power. He is the middleman and at the end he is left unscathed and feels obliged to talk about what he experienced.
A wife's story
It is a story about a woman called Panna who left her husband in India to come to America for her job. Her husband visits her and they spend a lovely week together. At the end he tells her that he came to take her back but she refuses.
Analysis
It is a story about a woman breaking free from binding traditions and despite the hardships enjoying the freedom life in the western world comes with.
Loose Ends
It is a story about an assassin from Miami and he tells his story how he became the way he did. He works for a man named Velasquez. At the end he gets jumped by some people while he's on the run because of the business that he's done and looses his car and has to steal cars in order to move. He ends up in a motel owned by Indians and shows his distaste for them. He rapes one of the young girls there that showed him the room and goes on to stealing another car and hitting the road.
Analysis
It is story told by the criminal who describes the crime life in an ironic way.
Orbiting
Renata is a daughter of an Italian family that migrated to America. It's thanksgiving and she is remembering her ex boyfriend Vic who left her to go orbiting-meaning finding life elsewhere other than New Jersey.
She talks about her family and her current boyfriend Ro. Ro comes from Afghanistan. Renata invites him to family thanksgiving dinner. She is embarrassed at first at his old-fashioned manner but later realizes how proud she is that she is with this man who suffered a lot and who is far more a man than the other men she knew.
Analysis
It is essentially a love story and loving the other person even more for their scars-metaphorically and literally. It is also a story of self-discovery.
Fighting for the rebound
It's a story about a man quickly moving from one relationship to another. He is currently with a girlfriend from Philippines who sees herself too good for him and she leaves him for another older man.
The man gets into another rebound relationship and soon gets a call from his ex girlfriend to meet with her because the guy she left him for doesn't love her.
The Tenant
It is about an Indian student named Maya who had bad luck with men in her life. She realized that Indians even though in America are vastly controlled by their tradition; Indian men want Indian wives and Indian mistresses. She has a weird tenant that she believes might have a strange angry perversion with her but it turns out he only wants her to move out.
Analysis
It is a story about a woman feeling alienated and lost because of the confinement of her traditions.
Fathering
It is a story about a man tracking his lost child from Vietnam and now finding himself in a situation where his wife doesn't accept the child. Nevertheless the little girl is the most important to him and her protection is the only thing that matters.
It is a story about a girl from Trinidad illegally coming to America and finding a job as a maid in an American family who treat her with kindness and respect. Expectedly, she falls in love with the husband and he cheats on his wife with her while she is away from home.
Analysis
Jasmine came to America out of ambition and without a birth certificate and being there illegally she is living the fantasy of being whatever she decides to be.
Danny's girls
It is a story about a young Indian boy working for a guy named Danny who brought in desperate girls from India to set them up with American men so that they get American citizenship. One day there came a girl from Nepal called Rosie who was different from other girls and the boy falls in love with her. Seeing that the boy spends a lot of time with Rosie Danny decides to pull him away from her. Angry at being humiliated by Danny in front of his love interest he goes into her room angry and she gives him the green light to get into her bed.
Analysis
The somewhat cliché difference between a woman the Indian boy knows is for marriage and the one he knows is for happiness is included in this story.
Buried lives
It is a story about an English poetry teacher from India named Mr. Venkatesan who dreams about leaving the pitiful life behind and going to the west. His parents died when he was young and when life was before him so he had to sacrifice his youth to take care of his sisters and the rest of the family.
Feeling as if he wasted his life he gets into a connection with a middleman to illegally go to Europe. He ends up in Germany and there he stays at a place of a woman called Quennie. He falls in love with her so he feels reluctant to go further. He gets discovered by a German tourist in Queenie's hotel and the tourist is about to call the police when Queenie enters the room and announces that Mr. Venkatesan is her fiancé and is getting German citizenship.
Analysis
It is a story with a happy ending; a hopeful story where all of the decisions made in life make sense and happiness is worth the wait.
The management of grief
The last story is about Indian families living in Canada suffering grief of losing their loved ones in a plane crash. Shaila lost her husband and two of her sons. The story describes the way these people cope with the deaths of their families-some, following their family influence, remarry and go on with their lives, some decide to go somewhere where no one will know them or their story and some, like Shaila, live haunted by the ghosts of their loved ones.
The story ends with Shaila, after she started to move forward with her life, hears the voices of her family telling her it's her time and she drops her stuff and begins to walk.
Analysis
This story captures the numbness and the delusional hope of suffering the terrible pain of loss of loved ones. It captures the depression and inability to move on with life after that life seems to have ended with that loss.
