Youssef is sentenced to a year in jail. Aunt Zohra lives in fear of her husband’s return, while her younger sons go into “free-fall” at school and fight constantly with other boys in the neighborhood. Doria thinks of how Hamoudi’s prison record has prevented him from finding a legitimate job. 

Doria says that if a fortune teller had predicted Youssef’s fate, she would not have believed it. She muses on how uncertain predictions of the future really are, and how even accurate prophecies may be only a small and misleading part of the truth. A fortune teller in Morocco told Yasmina that a man would come across the sea to marry her, but not that he would ultimately leave her. A Tunisian man in their neighborhood, told six years earlier by a clairvoyant that he would soon come into money, bets on the horses every day and experiences each loss as a fresh blow.

Yasmina is enjoying her training courses and has already made new friends, including her teacher, a Frenchwoman from Normandy called Jacqueline. Doria reflects that her mother is far more outgoing than she is and more willing to cross cultural boundaries.