Time I offers a description of prewar Beirut with Mounir wanting the female narrator of this section to write the script for his film. As Time I progress the violence that is mentioned as happening in Beirut escalates into what becomes the Lebanese Civil War. At the end of Time I the narrator tells Mounir that she cannot write a film for him given that Mounir repudiates the narrator's suggestions for film on the grounds that they are too violent and political.