Funny in Farsi: Chapter 25 Summary & Analysis

Firoozeh’s brother Farshid travels a lot, and because he’s saved so many airline miles, he often treats his family to free trips. After François and Firoozeh have been married for a year, Farshid offers them a free flight to the Bahamas, and they accept. When they arrive in Nassau (the capital of the Bahamas), however, they realize that they should have booked hotels and tours already—it’s spring break, and everything is booked through the week. Even after they find a room, the noise from the spring breakers keep them up all night.

François and Firoozeh spend all day trying to find a way to leave Nassau and travel to another island as soon as possible. Eventually, they learn about boats to the other islands. Firoozeh guesses that some of these are drug boats shipping cocaine, but François convinces her to wake up early the next morning and go to a mail boat bound for another island. The boat turns out to be an ordinary vessel, and it takes François and Firoozeh on a beautiful trip to the island of Spanish Wells.

François and Firoozeh notice that they seem to be the only tourists in Spanish Wells. A cab driver takes them to a hotel that seems to be completely vacant. They dine in the hotel’s restaurant, which is delicious but very expensive. After a few days, Firoozeh meets the owner and learns that he’s from Abadan, Iran. He worked at the same company as Kazem, and knows Firoozeh’s old neighborhood. The owner asks François and Firoozeh if they could do him a favor: serve as judges in the year’s Miss Bahamas beauty pageant. They agree, though Firoozeh is reluctant to do so—she’s spent too many years learning to overcome the “rigorous standards” of female beauty.

The next day, the pageant begins. The two other judges, in addition to François and Firoozeh, are a beautiful former pageant winner and a wealthy, drunk Canadian who owns a big house in the Bahamas. The contestants are all dressed in costumes representing their industries—one of them wears a lobster costume representing the lobster fishery. The emcee for the competition asks the contestants clichéd questions such as, “If you could solve one problem, what would it be?”, and the contestants participate in the talent and swimsuit portions of the competition.

The judges retire to discuss a winner. The Canadian is too drunk to remember the pageant, and the former pageant winner emphasizes the need for an articulate winner. François and Firoozeh are drawn to an “underdog” candidate—she’s overweight, not particularly physically attractive, and doesn’t seem to have many fans. In the end, the judges agree that this woman will be the winner.

When the judges announce their decision, the crowd screams with fury—by far the most popular candidate, a conventionally beautiful woman named Chantal, has lost. François and Firoozeh manage to get out of the auditorium before the crowd kills them. That night, as François and Firoozeh fall asleep, they can hear the crowd chanting, “Judges paid off!”