Two men who never meet — one rich and Muslim, one poor and Christian — are pulled through the same reversal of fortune, until each ends up living the other's life.

A young Alexandrian refuses his father's fish trade, fails at his own, and leaves for Europe — returning ten years later to a city and a family that have moved on without him.

Two centuries apart, one question: a man in the present searches for the truth behind the shrines of Sultan Hamed, while the countryside of 1798 rises against Napoleon's army.