Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussions of domestic abuse, sexual assault, and racist slurs, as well as allusions to suicide.

The protagonist and narrator, Nidali, describes the moments after her birth. She is born on August 2, 1977, in Boston. Nidali says that she “almost died, survived, almost died again, and now I was going to live” (3). Relieved by the news, her father, Waheed, referred to as “Baba,” races down to the nurses’ station to fill out the birth certificate.

Hopeful that his wife gave birth to a boy, he writes a boy’s name on the birth certificate—“Nidal,” meaning “strife” or “struggle” in Arabic—without confirming the sex of the baby. He turns in the certificate and goes to check on his wife, Ruz, referred to as “Mama,” and their new baby. Baba realizes that the baby is a girl and rushes downstairs. He screams for the nurse until she gives him the birth certificate back. Instead of choosing a new name, Baba simply adds an I to the end of Nidal, creating the name “Nidali.”

When Mama finds out, she becomes infuriated. She rises from the hospital bed and swears at her husband as she goes downstairs, claiming that she will fight to fix the girl’s name.