Sitara, the protagonist and point of view character, is the second child born to Suleiman Zamani, an advisor to the Afghan president, and his wife. She has an older sister, Aryana, who was born while her father was attending university in Oklahoma and died as an infant, and a younger brother, Faheem, who is three when the story opens. She is described at one point as having honey-colored hair and green-speckled eyes, but when she is in the US, Americans do not consider her white, though people are rarely correct in their guess about her nationality or ethnicity, which leads to her sense of feeling foreign.

As a child, Sitara is brave, spirited, and bossy. Intelligent, inquisitive, and fearless, she likes to win at the games she plays with her best friend, Neelab, who teases her about marrying Neelab’s brother, Rostam. Sitar is interested in books, stories, stars, and fairy tales. She admires her beautiful mother and adores her intelligent, kind, quick-witted father, who coaches Sitara to fulfill her potential. After the Saur coup, however, Sitara’s brave spirit is wounded, and she becomes cautious and fearful. She thinks, “I had always been my father’s spirited girl […] But the absence of my family made me reconsider who I was” (146).