The chap­ter titled “H—NARIN” takes place by the Riv­er Tigris in 2014, where Nar­in and her Grand­ma reg­u­lar­ly escape to con­nect with nature after relo­cat­ing to Zêrav with rel­a­tives. They rest on a rock near decay­ing build­ings, once vibrant eater­ies filled with tempt­ing aro­mas of grilled fish, par­tic­u­lar­ly mas­gouf, amid live­ly neon lights. Nar­in, adher­ing to her faith, refrains from eat­ing fish and feels a pang of sad­ness at the site’s cur­rent des­o­la­tion, wish­ing to have wit­nessed its for­mer glo­ry.

Their peace­ful moment is inter­rupt­ed by Grand­ma spot­ting a scor­pi­on. This leads into a whim­si­cal con­ver­sa­tion about how every­thing in the world communicates—the sounds made by nature and the spir­i­tu­al con­nec­tions they form with it. Grandma’s pro­found reflec­tions on exis­tence high­light that even silence and death hold con­ver­sa­tions that con­tin­ue beyond life. Nar­in, curi­ous yet appre­hen­sive, men­tions Grandma’s ten­den­cy to speak to poten­tial­ly haz­ardous crea­tures.

Sud­den­ly, Grand­ma becomes seri­ous, sens­ing some­thing in the riv­er. When Nar­in fol­lows her, they dis­cov­er a float­ing body, a sight that stark­ly con­trasts their ear­li­er mus­ings. Grand­ma rec­og­nizes the tragedy, shar­ing her sor­row for a lost life, and she attempts to retrieve the body from the strong cur­rent. How­ev­er, despite her resolve and gen­tle prayers, she can­not bring the corpse ashore. This encounter makes Grand­ma recon­sid­er shar­ing the inci­dent with their fam­i­ly as it ties into the unset­tling rumors of dis­ap­pear­ances in the area, with whis­per­ings of peo­ple going miss­ing and oth­ers return­ing trau­ma­tized.

The Tigris, once a beau­ti­ful and live­ly riv­er, is now pol­lut­ed with waste and has become a for­got­ten grave­yard of vic­tims, lead­ing to a fat­wa against fish con­sump­tion. The atmos­phere changes dras­ti­cal­ly as it becomes evi­dent that con­tent­ment in their nat­ur­al sur­round­ings is over­shad­owed by the lurk­ing dan­gers and silent hor­rors that the riv­er now embod­ies. Grand­ma con­tin­ues to speak to the ele­ments around them, but an invis­i­ble men­ace haunts their tran­quil retreat, empha­siz­ing the ten­sion between the beau­ty of nature and the dark real­i­ties of human exis­tence.