Summary

This chapter opens on Nadia as a child, when at school she used to doodle "curlicues and miniature woodland universes” (21) in the margins of her textbooks and notebooks. Nadia is described as a troublesome child within her family and especially to her father, who was “upset and frightened” (22) by her “irreverence” (22) towards religion. After Nadia graduates university, she leaves home and never sees her family again. Now a single woman in her city, Nadia secures a job working for an insurance company, a small apartment above a widow’s house, a record player and vinyl records, and friends. When she receives a message from Saeed, she is at work, hunched over at her desk and doodling.

That night, they meet at a Chinese restaurant with a “darkened, opium-den ambience” (23). Over dinner, Saeed and Nadia discuss where they want to travel. Saeed wants to visit...