Gigi’s father(Shamel)’s friend Maurice died suddenly when they were young, single adults. Maurice’s death causes him to want to get married. This chapter is all about the character Gina. Gina is Shamel’s favorite niece and he often shows favoritism towards her compared to her siblings. He goes out to eat with Gina and runs into his friend Ali. King Faruk who is known for forcing unwanted attention on women he is interested in arrives. This causes the party to want to leave because he keeps glancing at Gina. Ali spent the majority of the summer vacationing with Shamel’s family and grew closer to Gina. After some time, it was clear he had feelings for her. He informs Shamel and he is upset but allows him to ask her father for the blessing to marry her. Her father, Makhlouf denies Ali his blessing and says Gina is to marry one of her cousins. Gina sneaks out to see Ali and is disowned by her father for going against his wishes. The two get married, but it is soon clear that Gina is now interested in another man. They get divorced and Ali passes away after becoming the president’s doctor. There is a rumor that he was poisoned for spreading rumors.
This chapter demonstrates how important to tradition arranged marriages were and that sometimes family members were forced to marry each other. It shows what happens if you go against the laws of tradition. Shamel used to love Gina but as mentioned at the beginning of the chapter, they haven’t seen each other since she was disowned. They usually don’t even speak about her. Through Ali’s death we can also get an idea of how dangerous the political world is.