The Submission

Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2011

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Chapters 3-4Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Chapter 3 Summary

Mohammad Khan enters the story at the Los Angeles airport, where he is being interrogated as he tries to return home to New York. Mo, as he calls himself, is an architect. He comes from a middle-class family and is the son of an engineer. Though of Muslim Indian lineage, he is very secular. He curtly answers the officers’ questions: No, he knows nothing about jihad. No, he’s never been to Afghanistan. No, he’s not a terrorist. After sorting through his bags, despoiling his toiletries, and asking him inane questions, airport security finally releases him.

After returning to New York, Mo heads toward Ground Zero, observing the dust particles and debris. He looks at the skyline as only an artist or architect can and feels nostalgia for the lost towers. He had felt indifferent to them, considering them representations of forward momentum, a rebuke to nostalgia, small business, and culturally vibrant streets and neighborhoods. But now he feels nostalgia for them, viewing the Manhattan skyline as an architectural collaboration between generations.

Chapter 4 Summary

Claire flashes back to September 11, when her husband Cal was killed. She had been taking her anger out on him by swimming briskly in their pool. She recalls their joint decision that she would stay home after giving birth to their son, William, even though she felt it a waste of her Dartmouth education and Harvard law degree.

Claire has vivid memories of herself and Cal together. She considers how he, like his family, chose to make money rather than become a sculptor because he felt he didn’t have enough talent. Instead, he became a philanthropist, a concerned liberal who fought for causes, whose conscience urged him to disassociate from his parents’ golf club because it did not have any black or Jewish members. Claire reflects that it was Cal’s hand she longed to hold upon first discovering Mohammad Khan’s name.

Flipping through his folder labeled “art,” Claire notices a drawing of a sculpture very similar to “The Void” with Ariana’s name on it and smiles. She shares the vision of the memorial garden with William, who is six, telling him that it will be a lovely place where he can be with his father, even though he won’t see him. William draws crayon pictures of himself and his dad.

Elsewhere, Paul awakens from a fitful sleep. His phone rings; the caller is a Daily News journalist named Alyssa Spier who says a source divulged that a Muslim won the memorial competition. Troubled, Paul schedules a meeting with Fred, editor of the Daily News. Paul asks Fred not to air the story, comparing it to a national security emergency. Fred agrees to hold the story, for a time.

Chapters 3-4 Analysis

In these two chapters character development begins. In Chapter 3 we meet Mohammed Khan at an airport and get a sense of the hassle that Middle Eastern and South Asian people experienced in the aftermath of the tragedy. The lengthy list of inane questions, and the abruptness of the whole incident, demonstrates the reactionary, ineffectual nature of the interrogation.

Chapter 4 provides a much fuller picture of Claire, one of the main characters of the book. Although not born rich, she was amply provided for by her wealthy husband Cal, who abandoned his first love, sculpture, to become someone whose goal was acquiring wealth. We also learn that he was a philanthropist, but one who took easy stands, like walking out on a racist golf club when he didn’t enjoy golf anyway and simply writing checks as his contribution to humanity.

This chapter also introduces Alyssa Spier and her intent to write an explosive story about the memorial garden. Her introduction sows the first seeds of major conflict, and her continued presence will kickstart many of the altercations to come.