Twelve-year-old Nour, the first-person narrator, is the youngest of three daughters. She resembles her father, Baba, and has her curls shorn when her family believe a masculine resemblance will protect her on her perilous journey from Syria. Indeed, this guise leads men to grant her a boy’s respect, as Abu Sayeed sees her as his son, and Yusuf gifts her his penknife, charging her with the protection of herself and her sister Zahra. Still, Nour never stops feeling like a girl, and with her menarche at the end of the novel, the menstrual cramps make her feel stronger.

Nour shares her father’s passion for storytelling, but she is also distinguished by her synesthesia, which causes her to see colors in the tones of people’s voices, or to see letters behind colors. Additionally, she was born in America and is the only one in her family who does not speak fluent Arabic. With her unusual sensory experiences and her broken Arabic, Nour feels like an oddball and outsider. She consequently takes refuge in storytelling—both the tale of Rawiya that she inherits from her father and Abu Sayeed’s geological teachings.

While Nour enjoys recounting Rawiya’s adventures, she finds that her own expedition—a harried flight from the ongoing Syrian violence—is not just challenging, but often overwhelming.