Baghdad, 2006. All over the city, people of different religions are being forced out of their homes, and neighbourhoods are being divided by concrete walls. At night, under curfew, the residents remain trapped inside their houses. Sara obsessively scours the internet—how many dead today? As her daughter sleeps against a muted background of mortars and gunfire, her mother scribbles numbers on scraps of paper and sticks them to a map of Baghdad. At least if she keeps track of the attacks, she can try to predict where the next one may happen. Sara is a novelist, but no matter how hard she tries, she cannot write. It would all just be a lie anyway. Maybe she and her daughter should leave this unlivable place? Yet everything that matters to her is here, and Reema seems alright; she tells jokes, plays tricks. But Reema knows much more than she tells her mother.

When Sara’s closest friend and neighbour, Sabiha, a former actress and a Christian, is forced into exile by a sectarian gang, Sara begins to fight back. But the random killing of Reema’s school bus driver causes Sara to rethink things, and she starts to look for a way out. Sara and Reema’s story intersect with those of their neighbours: Kamal, a former prisoner-of-war in Iran; his pregnant wife Mona, who can’t forget her children from a past marriage; and her mother Nermeen, whose son was ‘disappeared’ by the regime. In spite of a fresh bomb attack, Sara regains a renewed sense of defiance and resistance. She takes her daughter to the Tigris River for the first time. Sitting at the riverbank, they agree that Baghdad belongs to them, and they will not leave it.