In Tehran, 1973, ten-year-old Roya Shirazi struggles with chronic bedwetting, which her almost-twelve-year-old brother Arash mocks cruelly each morning. She tries to control the problem by avoiding water before bed and using the bathroom obsessively, but wakes up soaked anyway. Her father Kamran ignores it silently, while her mother Parvin washes the sheets with frustration and pity.

Shame consumes Roya at school, where she imagines classmates can smell her. The narrator notes that later in life Roya will be self-conscious about her large nose, eventually trying to reframe it as Persepolian nobleness. In class, distracted by paranoia about her smell, Roya is called on by Aghaye Ghorbani to name a favorite word and panics, blurting out "bini" (nose), prompting laughter from classmates and deepening her humiliation.

At dinner, her mother shares cooking tips like using baking soda with pomegranate molasses, envisioning a domestic future for Roya that Roya already privately rejects, dreaming instead of open space, freedom, and passion. That night, Roya again denies herself water and prays to wake up dry. Arash complains about the smell, and Roya stays silent, knowing he is right.

In an adjacent room, Kamran and Parvin whisper about his impending job loss and a possible position in Qom that would separate the family; the worsening economy is driving people they know to desperate measures. Roya dreams of enormous flowers blooming from buildings and goats' eyes. She wakes to a hissing sound and a pressure around her: Arash is standing over her bed with his pants unzipped, urinating directly onto her.