Summary

Chapter 1 opens the novel with a first person but omniscient narration lead by a 13-year-old girl named Bahar. It is 1988 in Razan, Iran, as Bahar’s mother, Roza, achieves spiritual enlightenment atop a greengage plum tree. Bahar reveals that at that same moment, her brother, Sohrab, is hanged. He is to be buried later with hundreds of other political prisoners.

Bahar decides to build a treehouse in the greengage tree. As she does so, Bahar reveals that before Roza met Hushang, Bahar’s father, she had fallen in love with someone else. Hushang was so enraptured by Roza, that he married her the day they met, even though he knew she loved someone else. As she reminisces on this, Bahar finishes building her treehouse.

In Chapter 2, Bahar sees her aunt, Turan, approach her family’s house. Turan married an older man at a...