Sulaymaniah, Iraqi Kurdistan, in the 1940s. When his wife Kaleh goes into labor, her husband Jwamer runs to get the midwife. By ill luck, he runs into the middle of a political demonstration and is seriously wounded and arrested by mistake as the ringleader. After a rigged trial, Jwamer is sentenced to ten years in prison. He serves his sentence and, as soon as he is set free, goes in search of his wife and child.

In a typically mixed Baghdadi neighbourhood in 2006, a community of ordinary people try to live their everyday lives amidst the threat of unpredictable violence. At the heart of these intersecting stories we find Sara, a single mother and novelist, who regains her will to write after witnessing the forced exile of her Christian neighbour and best friend Sabiha. With the news of Saddam Hussein's sudden execution shortly before the New Year, Sara and her neighbours brace themselves for an uncertain future. Yet, like a miracle, each is able to sustain a fragile sense of hope.