When they arrived “it was soon all too evident that we were outsiders to the capital”. This places extreme limitation onto the freedom of women in the girl’s position, as demonstrated by the difficulty in even finding this one certain swimming pool. There is deeply ingrained shame and “evil” power attributed to the sight of woman’s body, and strict religious consequences for such a sight. The consequences “If any man were to see you,” her grandmother exclaims, “you’d be done for, and so would your mother, and father and your grandfather she was frightened she wouldn’t go to heaven”. It is here that her “friend Sumayya had sworn that the swimming pool she’d been at had been for women only.” It is clear that the belief systems of the girls people allowed for no intermingling but rather a segregation of the genders as this was not socially, religiously or politically acceptable, as well as the hoops women had to go to in order to enjoy swimming, whereas men could just hop right into the ocean. The girl convinces her grandmother to visit the city that is home to her beloved sea. This pattern is portrayed again as the grandmother is hurting her knees on the pavement in order to answer the Islamic call to prayer, “her knees that knelt on the cruelly hard pavement” revealing “her tattooed hands that lay on the dirt.” The tattoo matching the one on her chin, a marked woman, almost as if taken by the customs so ingrained in her like the very tattoo it symbolized. No matter the pain it caused, the customs were to be upheld. Their beliefs ingrained so strongly that even “In this heat the girl still had to wear that dress with long sleeves, that head covering over my braids”. In her town, her grandfather was “the celebrated religious scholar” and yet the grandmother is weaving tobacco, highlighting the inequality found among the sexes, with the women left to the duty of menial labor. Her family ties turn into burdens, holding her back from the joys of youth and friendship. It is here that her strongest tie and relation is to that of her grandmother, her only family left, who “has welded the girl so close to her that the village girls no longer dare to make friends with me”.
At her rural origin, she is restrained to the task of working in the tent “amidst mounds of tobacco”. In this story it is clear that women where the girl is from are quite disadvantaged and held back by their religious beliefs and customs in stark contrast to the bustling city where “bared arms”, “tight pants”, and “girls’ hair,” color the city of Beirut.
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