Afghanistan, 1952. Abdullah and his sister Pari live with their father, Saboor, and stepmother in the village of Shadbagh.

Work is in short supply and they struggle through poverty and brutal winters.

To Abdullah, Pari is everything: more like a parent than a brother, Abdullah will do anything for her.

At night they sleep together in their cot, their limbs tangled.

One day the siblings journey across the desert to Kabul with their father, having no sense of the fate that awaits them there, for the event which unfolds will tear their lives apart.