The following section is entitled "The Wine." It's about how when the siren rang to indicate bombs, they would all hide in the basement. Then Marji's mother covered their windows with black curtains because she worried that the neighbors would turn them in for having illegal things, such as alcohol, games, and parties. Marji learned that her friend Tinoosh's dad received seventy-five lashes for the deck of cards and chess set found in his house. Despite the danger, they went to a party at Marji's uncle's house to celebrate the birth of her cousin. When the power went out, they dance in the dark. Her uncle made wine in his basement, which Mrs. Nasrine who cleaned for them as well helped to make. When the sirens came on, Marji's aunt handed Marji the baby and ran. Marji worried about her as a mother. On their drive home, Marji's father was pulled over. The soldiers smelled alcohol on his breath, so they decided to follow them home to search their house. Marji's father told Marji and her grandmother to go inside while he stalled the soldiers and flush all the alcohol, so they did. When Marji's father came in, he announced that all the soldiers wanted was a bribe, and he was disappointed that all their alcohol was gone.

In "The Cigarette" Marjane starts to rebel a bit more. First some older friends want to skip class to go to get burgers. Marji goes with and realizes that they didn't really care about the food; they wanted to see some boys. When she gets home, her mother yells at her for skipping school and tells her she will not cover for her again. Marji sneaks off to the basement. She thinks about how the government had a chance to end the war, but they refused. She took out a cigarette that she had stolen from her uncle and smoked it despite how awful it was. She was symbolically saying goodbye to her childhood.

"The Passport" takes place in July of 1982. It focuses on Marji's Uncle Taher who had suffered two heart attacks and was told to quit smoking. He worried about his son who had escaped to Holland. He wanted to be able to see him, but the borders were closed. Shortly after, they received news that Taher had suffered a third heart attack after a grenade flew near their house. They went to see him in the hospital and learned that he needed heart surgery that the hospital could not perform. They would need to get authorization for a passport to send him to another country for the surgery, but there were so many people who also needed medical attention. Marji's father talked to Khosro, who knew Uncle Anoosh from prison. He said he could make Taher a fake passport for two hundred dollars. He introduced Marji and her father to a young woman whom he was hiding in his house for her own safety. Two days later the young woman, Niloufar, was spotted, arrested, and killed, so Khosro fled the country to Sweden with his brother. He was unable to get them the passport, so three weeks later Uncle Taher died.