Summary Of Tahira Naqvi's A Man Of Integrity

Tahira Naqvi’s short story “A Man of Integrity” begins with a happily married doctor named Sami receiving a letter from an unknown woman by the name of Nadira. As the story progresses, Nadira continues to send Sami letters and even begins to call Sami at his office. Sami becomes paranoid that his wife, Zaheen, will discover the interactions between Sami and Nadira, which would likely lead to Zaheen and Sami’s marriage falling apart in the way that Sami had seen happen to close friends. With all of the mystery surrounding Sami’s apparent admirer, there is only one question that the reader is left pondering: Is Zaheen taking on the persona of Nadira? I believe that Zaheen and Nadira are one and the same. Details within the story hint toward the

In the first letter Nadira sends to Sami, she says “[w]hy do you not go home to your wife, your two children?” (367). This sounds like a question a concerned wife would be asking her husband. When Nadira calls Sami for the first time, she asks ”[i]f you’re so happy why do you sit here in the office, long after the last patient’s gone?” (372). This question would be a common question for a wife to ask her husband because she is wondering why he doesn’t come home and spend time with his family instead of waste time at

The significance of this envelope is that it is the same type of envelope that encased Nadira’s letters to Sami. Sami becomes nervous and asks himself questions such as: “What did the letter say? Why had Nadira betrayed him? How long had Zaheen known” (377). These questions lead Sami to suspect that Nadira had sent a letter to Zaheen, but I believe that the letter had always belonged to Zaheen. Given these two plausible scenarios, I believe that the letter had always belonged to Zaheen, which would only point to one outcome: Zaheen is Nadira. I think this scenario is far more likely due to the fact that there is more evidence in the story that points to Zaheen being Nadira than there is evidence opposing that Zaheen is