In a typically mixed Baghdadi neighbourhood, the stories of a novelist and her neighbours unfold and intersect, as their lives are torn apart by extreme sectarian violence while nightly curfews trap them inside their homes.
Baghdad (2006), all over the city, people of different religions are being forced out of their homes on a daily basis, and neighbourhoods are being divided by concrete walls.
At night, under curfew, the residents remain trapped inside their houses.
Sara hunches over her computer obsessively scouring the internet: How many dead today? As her daughter sleeps fitfully against a muted background of mortars and gunfire, her mother scribbles numbers on scraps of paper and sticks them to a map of Baghdad stuck on the wall. At least if she keeps track of the attacks she can try to predict where the next one may happen…
Although Sara is a novelist, she cannot find the words to describe her plight. As she contemplates leaving with her daughter, their stories intersect with other survivors in Baghdad, struggling against the odds to create their own sense of security.