In Tehran, August 1987, while their husbands are away on a camping trip, Roya recounts being swept along by Leila's bold, restless energy through Bazaar-e Tajrish. The bazaar bustles with vendors selling flowers, kabobs, sweets, and carpets, with an old woman and her daughter cooking nearby.

Leila abruptly pulls Roya into a thin, dirty side alley ending in brick apartments. She kneels and presses her ear to the asphalt, insisting Roya listen for angels and djinn drumming beneath the earth. Hesitant and self-conscious, Roya kneels too but hears nothing, feeling embarrassed and excluded from Leila's vision. Leila taps out a rhythm and explains one must listen beneath the sounds.

To demonstrate her point, Leila takes Roya's finger and places it on her own closed eyelid, showing how the closed eye still searches for Roya's face, then says that is how she has been searching for Roya. She leans in and kisses Roya on the lips. Despite the risk of being seen, Roya kisses her back; the kiss lasts only seconds but reorients Roya's entire sense of her life, like a painting flipped right-side up.

Leila pulls away and apologizes, but Roya tells her not to be sorry, saying she now understands the eye and the angels' drums. They rise and rejoin the bazaar's ordinary bustle. Roya reflects that after this first kiss, she would have accepted any possibility or wonder offered to her.