In the increasingly globalized world, Atef worries deeply about the influence of the West on his children, though the couple still sends the three children to international schools for a better education. The family is uprooted yet again at the start of the Gulf War (1990) and is dispersed with Alia and Atef moving to Amman, Jordan and then Beirut, Lebanon, Riham living in Amman with her husband, Latif, and Souad and Karam attending university in Paris, France and Boston, United States, respectively.