Marwan is the only named character of the story, and his life frames the narrative. As a young Muslim boy at the verge of fleeing his home by sea, Marwan is the recipient of a letter currently being written by his father which makes up the text of the story. Exploring the theme of the Failures of Memory, Hosseini uses Marwan’s age to show the progression of time through the story. Since the father excludes concrete details like dates and ages, the reader must focus their attention on Marwan’s age to understand the chronology of the story. This creates a parallel between the reader’s relationship with Marwan and the narrator’s relationship to Marwan: Just as the narrator is singularly focused on Marwan, the reader must be as well.

The illustrations and clues from the text, as well as the significance of the narrator separating the boyhood of Marwan from when he was a toddler, imply that Marwan could be any age around four to eight. This is a departure from the real inspiration for the story, Alan Kurdi, who died at the age of three. By leaving Marwan’s age open to interpretation, the story conveys the themes of Failures of Memory and