Lin undergoes cold-turkey withdrawal

Lin undergoes cold-turkey withdrawal after his return to heroin has made numbness seem preferable to grief, shame, and pain. The withdrawal strips away that chemical refuge and leaves him facing both the drug’s physical hold and the consequences he had tried to suppress. Nazeer’s steady presence helps him survive the crisis: Lin binds himself to a bed when he fears he will seek another dose, and Nazeer stays beside him through the worst of it. The ordeal ends not in instant recovery but in a first, fragile return to ordinary movement and training.

Background and the return to heroin

Lin’s relapse follows a period of intense grief, including his continuing sorrow over Prabaker. The novel frames heroin as a refuge from feeling: its numbing effect can silence pain, regret, shame, guilt, and desire. That relief has a cost. As dependence deepens, the drug diminishes the capacity for desire and, in the account’s starkest formulation, can place the need for another dose above love. Lin recognizes that heroin has already helped drive him toward violent crimes and prison and has contributed to the loss of people he loved. His awareness of those costs, however, does not immediately free him from wanting the drug’s emptiness.

Before this relapse, Lin had experience reviving people who had overdosed. He recalls performing CPR on many users in his own country, repeatedly trying to restore breathing and a heartbeat. That history makes him familiar with the danger of heroin use, but not immune to dependence. The contrast is central to his arc: someone who has pulled others back from an overdose can still return to the drug himself, and knowledge of its risks does not make withdrawal simple or safe.

The crisis and Lin’s decision to endure it

During the withdrawal, Lin reaches a point when he believes he cannot continue. After two full days and nights of torment, an insistent thought offers a way to stop the pain: take money and obtain another dose. The temptation is not presented as a considered plan so much as a persistent pressure generated by suffering. Lin responds by making access to the drug harder. He drags a cot toward a large window overlooking the sea, tears a cotton sheet into strips, and uses them to bind his ankles and one wrist to the bed. He asks Nazeer, through a direct look, to secure his remaining wrist.

The exchange marks a change in their relationship. Until then, the two men have not met one another’s eyes with this degree of openness. Nazeer understands what Lin is asking and binds him without abandoning his own watchfulness. Lin’s fear breaks into cries, and Nazeer makes a gag from another strip of the sheet. He removes it when Lin is choking or unable to breathe freely, then replaces it when Lin signals that he does not want his cries heard. The restraints are a desperate, temporary means of keeping Lin from acting on the urge to seek heroin; the episode emphasizes his dependence on another person’s judgment and care at the moment his own endurance feels uncertain.

Nazeer’s care through withdrawal

For two days and nights, Lin remains tied to the bed while Nazeer stays close. Nazeer wipes sweat and tears from Lin’s face, massages warmth into cramped muscles, and meets his gaze as if urging him to persist. His care is practical and continuous rather than dramatic: he watches, responds when Lin needs help, and does not leave him to face the worst of the withdrawal alone. When Lin signals that he is ready, Nazeer removes the gag and releases the bonds at his wrists and ankles.

The first food Nazeer gives him is a mild broth of chicken, barley, and tomatoes, seasoned only with salt. He feeds Lin spoon by spoon. The small meal becomes a concrete measure of the change: Lin has passed from being held in place through an acute crisis to accepting nourishment and care. Nazeer’s first smile toward him follows the meal, lending their encounter a moment of quiet recognition after the strain of the preceding days.

The course and aftermath

Lin’s account explains the bodily lag that makes withdrawal so severe. Opiates suppress the body’s production of endorphins; after a person stops taking them, the body may take five to fourteen days to resume production. The gap leaves anxiety, stress, and pain without the same natural buffer. Lin describes withdrawal as a convergence of fear, physical pain, grief, and remorse, sustained hour after hour. He also explains that this state can overwhelm judgment and lead people to commit crimes, whose memory may later bring shame and self-disgust. The explanation gives context to his own past without presenting addiction as a simple failure of will.

The first five days are the hardest, while the full process takes about two weeks. Once Lin reaches the sixth morning without drugs, he knows he has crossed a decisive threshold. During the following eight to ten days, his cramps, nausea, fever, and chills gradually ease, although sleeplessness remains. Lin describes standing through the long days and nights until exhaustion finally lets him sleep. His recovery is therefore uneven: the worst symptoms recede, but rest does not return immediately, and surviving withdrawal does not erase its lasting mark.

Recovery and narrative significance

Afterward, Lin regards himself as a survivor of a disaster: alive, dazed, and permanently changed by the experience. Twelve days after withdrawal begins, his first sarcastic jokes give Nazeer a cue to start training him. Lin has already begun taking short walks with Nazeer from the sixth day, initially managing only fifteen minutes before returning to the house. By the twelfth day, he can walk the length of the beach, partly in the hope of tiring himself enough to sleep. Nazeer then takes him to the stable where Khader’s horses are kept, and they lead a white gelding and a grey mare down to the hard-packed beach.

The sequence moves from confinement to assisted movement: the bed and improvised restraints give way to walks, the beach, and the beginning of training. That progression does not imply that Lin is free of future risk, but it makes recovery visible in specific changes to what he can do. The episode also extends the book’s recurring contrast between numbness and connection. The drug offers relief by shutting feeling down; endurance depends on Nazeer’s sustained attention, Lin’s effort to resist the urge for another dose, and the gradual return of appetite, movement, and humor.