All month Saba had failed almost every test she'd faced, and though she'd seized one last chance to see if this trip had changed her, had taught her at least a little of how to live in this culture, she'd only ended up proving her relatives right: she wasn't even equipped to go for a walk on her own.
-- Narrator (The Suitcase)

Importance: On her last day in Addis Ababa, Saba goes for a walk and finds herself stranded at a busy intersection, unable to cross to the other side. She ends up taking a taxi from one side of the street to the other, and she views this as a symbolic representation of every way in which she has failed to assimilate into the "city of her birth" (1). She believes this failure indicates that she does not belong in the place where she is from, and this saddens her.

You say you lived...
-- Herr Weill (The Wall)