Trauma is the body’s response to a situation or event that a person experiences as harmful and life-threatening. Consequences of such an event may include shock, denial, and lasting impacts on physical, mental, emotional, and even spiritual well-being. Sitara experiences trauma when she survives the Saur Revolution after witnessing the murder of her family, and the effects of this traumatic stress linger into her adolescence and adulthood in the form of anxiety, migraines, and sleep disruption. The ongoing grief she feels over the sudden and violent loss of her family, friends, home, and safety, as well as the guilt Aryana feels over surviving, complicate her trauma, which is triggered by the sight of soldiers or men in uniform and makes her wary of confiding in and reluctant to trust people she does not know. Grief and trauma can be healed if dealt with appropriately, and Aryana’s character arc in the novel involves confronting and expressing the hurt she has carried for 30 years.

Near the end of the novel, Aryana realizes that she has metaphorically buried her family by not speaking of them. Like the ring from Ai-Khanoum she keeps in her jewelry box, she has kept memories of her family hidden, as if a shameful secret, and has thus denied them a presence in her life.