Summary

The following chapter is titled “The First Visit”, and changes back to Niloo’s first person perspective 16 years earlier, in Oklahoma City, 1993. Niloo is under the impression Baba is coming to stay with them forever. Kian, Niloo and their mother are preparing for Baba to visit them in Oklahoma. Niloo is 14 years old, going through puberty, and starting to think about leaving home for college. Her mother is concerned with Niloo not becoming a “dokhtare kharab” or “broken girl”, and if she wears shorts at the airport her father will surely think she has become one (96). Niloo tells her mother her father will not think this, since “he’s seen my grades” (97). The other kids at school struggle to accept her so instead she studies as hard as she can. Pari has started dating an Iranian immigrant named Nader, who Niloo finds irritating...