Milia's eyelashes drew apart, her eyes still curtained in drowsiness. She made up her mind to close them again and return to her dream. She saw a small white candle whose wan light trembled and flickered in the fog. . .

Milia's response to her new husband Mansour and to the Middle East of 1947 is to close her eyes and drift into parallel worlds where identities shift, where she can converse with the dead and foresee the future. As the novel progresses, Milia's dreams become more navigable than the strange and obstinate "reality" in which she finds herself, and the two worlds grow ever more entangled.