Content Warning: This section refers to descriptions of violence and sexual assault.

The novel opens in Nablus in the West Bank of Palestine in March 1963. Salma uses her coffee cup as a divination tool, reading the grounds to ascertain what the future holds for her and her daughter, Alia. As she examines the cup, she thinks back to when she purchased it and why: The tray that the set of cups had come with reminded her of one purchased for her long ago by her mother and lost when she and the family were forced to flee their home.

Salma’s daughter Alia is getting married the following day, and Salma makes last-minute preparations for the ceremony while remembering her other daughter Widad’s marriage 10 years prior. The mood had been decidedly different: Salma’s husband had just died, everyone was grieving, and Widad had cried while the imam was speaking. Widad had also resented her parents’ choice of husband, but Salma knew that the man would take her daughter out of Palestine to Kuwait, where she would be safer.

Salma had several miscarriages. She has three children who survived: Widad, Alia, and

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