When the Emperor Was Divine

This section is told in a split first-person structure from the shared perspectives of the brother and the sister. The children are overjoyed to be home. They notice that their mother’s rosebush is dead and that the house smells funny. They do not allow these things to get in the way of their joy to be back not affect their delight in their freedom. For some time, they simply enjoy the relief of being back in their own place. Renters occupied their home when they were gone, but they observe that their mother was swindled out of the rent money by the property manager. Even this, initially, cannot get in the way of their joy.

But then, things change. There is a key moment when the children start to perceive their neighbors differently, and they confront the fact that they are not welcomed back into their hometown:

They had all seen us leave, at the beginning of the war, had peered out through their curtains as we walked down the street with our enormous overstuffed suitcases. But none of them came out, that morning to wish us goodbye, or good luck, or ask us where it was we were going (we didn’t know).