Character Analysis
Once Marion leaves Ethiopia for America, he has to make a whole new batch of friends. They're just as eclectic as the folks he leaves at Missing, but in their own way.
Elihu Harris is a Texas Baptist, one of those who gives money to Matron that she later uses as she sees fit. When he finds out that she's been lying to him, he doesn't get angry; he just continues helping her throughout the novel. He even gets Marion out of Ethiopia and finds him a job in New York. He's sort of a bumbling benefactor.
Tsige, the Queen of Sheba, was a prostitute in Ethiopia whom Marion comforted when her baby died at Missing. She turns up as a restaurant owner in Boston years later. Her reunion with Marion is typical of the encounters that many immigrants have, finding friends from the old country in a new context and holding on for dear life.
At Our Lady of Perpetual Succor, Lou Pomeranz is a New Yorker who embraces the immigrant doctors that populate the hospital he's in charge of keeping up. He loves cricket and therefore loves the cricket-playing B. C. "Gandhi" Bandhinesan, one of the residents there. Deepak Jesudass is a star doctor in a bad situation, reminding readers of the difficulties immigrants face no matter how much talent they have. Dr. Abramowitz or Popsy is the senile doctor keeping everything together.