The film reflects the pessimistic mood of the immediate post Gulf War era. It adapts a sad short story by the poet and former Arab League ambassador Ibrahim Shokrallah and intercuts it with his biography. His painful description of a family's lemon tree which was cut down to build and sell a house seem to anticipate the future ordeals of his family starting with the military defeat in June 1967. Back from Canada his three children get involved in the anti-Zionist and leftist student movement of the early 1970s, are chased and imprisoned.