After Markus and Marjane break up, she spends more than two months homeless in Austria in winter. She blows through her savings and is soon digging in trashcans for food, smoking butts she finds on the ground, and sleeping on a park bench. She gets sick and passes out, waking up in a hospital. After some rehabilitation, she recalls that Zozo owes her mother money. She goes to her house and is shocked to learn that her uncle has been in Vienna looking for her, and her parents are desperate to hear from her. She has been gone for three months and gave no word to anyone. She talks to her parents and asks to come home to Iran on the condition that no one will ever ask her where she has been the last three months. They agree.

However, this will not be a proud homecoming. In the hotel awaiting her flight, she smokes against the doctor’s orders, preferring “to put [herself] in serious danger rather than confront [her] shame. [Her] shame at not having become someone, the shame of not having made [her] parents proud after all the sacrifices they had made for [her]” (90). She puts on a veil and admits that her time in Europe was a failure and that she needs to go home.