In the first chapter, Eli receives an unexpected letter from her estranged childhood friend Homa. The framing of this chapter is perfect, and I actually listened to it again after finishing the entire book, and it is beautiful how many little clues and motifs are present already in that prologue before the story jumps backs decades to the 1950s in Iran, when Eli and Homa first meet. After the death of her father, Eli and her mother are forced to move downtown, away from their friends, their servants, their family. Eli’s mother refuses to work, claiming her royal ancestry, and constantly judges their new neighbors, fearful of the evil eye and the consequences of their certain jealousy. On the other hand, 7-year-old Eli is overjoyed to be welcomed as a friend by Homa, who teases her in a matter-of-fact tone and invites her to play hopscotch, cementing an inseparable childhood friendship. The girls cook and study and one day skip school to eat ice cream in the Grand Bazaar until one day, Eli catches her mother in bed with Uncle Masood (her late father’s brother). The two quickly marry, enabling Eli and her mother to return to the wealthy classes. After just a few months, Eli and Homa lose touch until Homa appears in Eli’s class senior year. She is just as brash as ever, and Eli, despite her embarrassment about Homa’s lack of social knowledge, cannot help but to be drawn to her old friend. Indeed, they quickly become inseparable again, and Eli, despite herself, finds herself seeking Homa’s approval of the boy she is seeing. Homa, for her part, is a devoted student and committed political activist, determined to be the nation’s first female judge.
At the end of the year, several classmates get married, but Homa and Eli, as well as Merdad (the boy) elect to go to Tehran university, the most prestigious university in Iran. Here, their friendship solidifies even more as they grow into adults together. Eli struggles continuously with jealousy, from her childhood envy of Homa’s living father to her suspicion that Homa is flirting with Merdad at a party. Nonetheless, the two young women are deeply connected to each other, fighting and forgiving, until Eli makes a grave mistake, confiding about Homa’s communist political engagement to someone who can pull exactly the strings that lead to Homa’s arrest. 

The rest of the book follows the women as adults, despite their estrangement. While we remain primarily in Eli’s perspective, we also get tidbits from Homa’s perspective, reflecting briefly on the abuse she faced in prison, the relief she felt with Abdoul, à college classmate who was smitten with her from the outset but whom she only agreed to marry out of desperation and necessity to raise her daughter. It is this period during which Homa and Eli have entirely lost touch, except for one chance encounter at the Grand Bazaar, until Homa’s strange message: a request to harbor her now-teenage daughter at their home in New York to help her escape from the trauma of the war with Iraq. Having never succeeded in having children of their own, Eli and Merdad agree, forging their own bond with teenage Behar and reconnecting with still-politically-active Homa.

This was a beautifully told story and well-narrated on audio. The characters were so well-developed, with hints dropped in meaningfully and subtly throughout the novel, building consistent personalities even as the characters matured. I loved each of the women, as well as the men they loved. The focus on female friendship, though, made this story stand out, placing it in a camp with Elena Ferrante’s Neopolitan Novels.