"December, 1907. Close friends Hanna and Zakariya return to their village near Aleppo after a night of drunken carousing in the city, only to discover that there has been a massive flood. Their neighbors, families, children-- nearly all of them are dead. Their homes, shops, and places of worship are leveled. Hanna was once a wealthy libertine, a landowner who built a famed citadel devoted to the pursuit of pleasure and excess. With the loss of his home, wife, and community, he becomes an ascetic mystic obsessed with death and the meaning of life." -- Adapted from jacket.