The novel opens with Rahima, age nine, and older sisters, Parwin and Shahla, rushing home after school. They went the long way home to avoid loitering boys, who make it their sport to watch girls. Rahima’s mother, Raisa, referred to as Madar-jan, is angry that they are late. Shahla had been the target of a boy on a bicycle. The boy lost his balance and the spokes of his bike tore the skirt of Parwin’s new school uniform. Rahima is worried; their mother tells their father, Arif, referred to as Padar-jan. Arif pulls them out of school. He rages about having a household of five women. His temper has been getting worse and worse.

When she is not in school, Rahima purchases the family’s groceries, haggling with the shopkeepers like her mother. Raisa is occupied with her infant daughter, Sitara. The mother cannot rely on Arif to shop; the neighbors already “whispered about the peculiar way Padar-jan had of walking up and down our small street, his hands gesturing wildly as he explained something to the birds” (13). Rahima likes to show off her “new privileges to come and go” (14).