Passing quoted string of directory name as an argument

running the script

I'm calling the shlelfish.sh script below from Objective-C's NSTask. It has an arguments property. That property is an Array. I need to include
the name of a directory in that array and it needs to be a string; single or double-quoted. When the string of the directory
name is passed to the script it seems like it's equivilent to the following:

./shelfish.sh "~"

ls: ~: No such file or directory

Each time I try with either ls or cd or the command I actually need to run which requires a directory it fails with the same error.

Is there a good way to strip the quotes or am I just trying to do something bone-headed?

shelfish.sh

#!/bin/sh

# Shell Script attempts to display list the contents of the first argument given
ls $1

Also isn't the actual script. Just wanted to get it down to the smallest example possible.

#!/bin/sh

ls $($1)