The story of two couples in Kabul in 1998: The student couple Zunaira and Mohsen suffer under the Taliban's terror regime, which nips any expression of joie de vivre in the bud, forces women under the burqa and spreads fear and terror with arbitrary violence. The aging guerrilla fighter and prison guard Tarik, for his part, is trapped in marriage with his terminally ill wife, whom he once married out of gratitude instead of love. An incident with fatal consequences connects the lives of the four characters in a fearsome and miraculous way. - Adapted from the novel of the same name by Yasmina Khadras.