Jerusalem, 1914. The Ottoman empire holds the city, the war has emptied the food from the shelves and the young men from the streets, and an officer of the occupying army stops his horse outside a house in the first neighbourhood built beyond the old walls. What follows is a forbidden love story that runs from the alleys of Jerusalem to the mountains of Persia, carried by faith, superstition and a fate none of the four principals is able to outrun.