Raja colors his elderly mother Zalfa's hair in their Beirut apartment while the two gently bicker and tease each other.

Raja receives a writing residency invitation from an American foundation, his first such recognition despite having written nothing in 25 years.

After Zalfa is mistreated by Raja's brother Farouk in Dubai, Raja purchases her a first-class ticket back to Beirut.

Government corruption triggers a banking collapse that wipes out Raja's and Zalfa's entire life savings.

Zalfa defies Raja's warnings and joins the anti-government protest movement, getting tear-gassed by police in the streets.

During a COVID-era walk through the city, Raja and Zalfa encounter Madame Taweel, a local gangster who becomes Zalfa's closest friend.

Raja's father throws young Raja into the Mediterranean to teach him to swim, revealing his harsh and demanding parenting style.

Micheline, the most beautiful girl in Raja's class, selects him as her dance partner for the school talent show.

Masked fighters murder Joe and Yves during a night car ride, and Boodie — a classmate — steps in to spare Raja's life.

Boodie keeps Raja locked in a garage apartment for months and pressures him into a coercive sexual relationship.

Raja escapes his long captivity and navigates a war-ruined Beirut in a dress, clutching his kitten Mr. Cat.

An enormous explosion rocks Beirut's port, and Raja and Zalfa are on the balcony together when the blast hits.

After the port explosion destroys their home, Yasmine and Nahed arrive uninvited at Raja's apartment door.

Arriving at the writers' retreat in Virginia, Raja discovers Boodie is the foundation's president and confronts him furiously.

Zalfa dies peacefully in her sleep, and weeks later Nahed moves back in with Raja to help him grieve.

The novel opens with Raja and Zalfa living together in his Beirut apartment, where their decades-long bond is captured through their loving but combative rapport. Raja's adult life is shaped by the Lebanese crises he survives — the banking collapse, the anti-government protests, and the COVID pandemic — all of which strain his finances and reshape his daily routines. Flashing back to his childhood, the narrative reveals a father who bullied him for his effeminacy, setting the stage for a lifetime of navigating familial rejection. The civil war years bring the defining trauma of Raja's life: his classmate Boodie murders two friends, holds Raja captive for months, and forces him into a coercive sexual relationship. After escaping, Raja gradually rebuilds his life until the 2020 port explosion again upends his household, forcing his estranged relatives to move in. The novel culminates in Zalfa's peaceful death and Raja's painful confrontation with Boodie at a writers' retreat, after which he accepts Nahed's support as he mourns.

The headline events of Raja's and Zalfa's life in Lebanon.

Raja and Zalfa eat edibles together and sit on the balcony watching the city as night falls.

Farouk calls Raja in desperation asking to borrow a large sum of money to escape a loan shark; Raja flatly refuses.

Zalfa agrees to move to Dubai with Farouk, selling all her possessions including a beloved family heirloom table.

Raja insists on buying the family table from his mother so that it will not leave the family permanently.

Zalfa moves into Raja's apartment and immediately establishes her own firm conditions for how they will cohabit.

During the 1981 Israeli invasion, a mechanic named Mansour shelters with Raja, they sleep together, and Mansour leaves a generator before fleeing to Jordan.

On their first day of school, Raja and Nahed are the only two students without French, and Farouk shames them both.

Raja's father discovers Raja has organized his Matchbox cars into a tea party and erupts in rage.

Raja's father refuses his request to take piano lessons, deeming the hobby insufficiently masculine for a boy.

Boodie brings the lonely and frightened Raja a tiny kitten, which Raja names Mr. Cat.

Boodie brings Raja women's dresses to wear during dance lessons and then initiates their first sexual encounter.

When Boodie brags about having sex with Micheline, Raja explodes in rage and screams at him to leave.

Raja walks alone to the Beirut port blast site and breaks down weeping in public at the scale of the devastation.

Raja and Nahed bond over being body-shamed by their mothers and over the shared experience of queer identity in their family.

Raja receives a condolence email from Boodie after Zalfa's death, thanks him briefly, and then blocks the account.

The secondary events of the novel flesh out the domestic and political forces that shape Raja's everyday life. Raja's complicated relationship with his brother Farouk is established through Farouk's request for money and his mistreatment of Zalfa, while Raja's determination to keep the family heirloom table reveals his deep attachment to Lebanese history. Zalfa's firm establishment of cohabitation conditions asserts her dominance in Raja's home and signals the beginning of their adult partnership. Flashbacks to Raja's childhood illuminate his father's enforcement of rigid gender norms — punishing the tea-party car scene and refusing piano lessons — while a 1981 wartime encounter with a mechanic named Mansour marks one of Raja's earliest quiet acts of self-acceptance. The captivity chapters deepen through the arrival of Mr. Cat, the introduction of dresses during dance lessons, and the explosive fallout when Boodie brags about sleeping with Micheline. After the port explosion, Raja and Nahed begin repairing their fractured bond, while the final chapter closes quietly with Raja blocking Boodie's email and reluctantly accepting a life without Zalfa.

Significant secondary moments that shaped Raja's world.

A young male neighbor flirts suggestively with Raja across their balconies, and Raja realizes he is too old to pursue it seriously.

Zalfa storms into her bank, shouts at a worker, then pivots to comforting the woman, and negotiates a sizeable cash withdrawal.

Raja confronts Zalfa after learning from his own students that she has been attending protests, arguing with police, and getting tear-gassed.

Raja is irritated to discover that Zalfa has long known his cousin Nahed is also queer and deliberately never told him.

Young Raja secretly arranges with Nahed to receive one of her Barbie dolls in exchange for a future birthday gift.

At a family gathering, Nahed wrestles Raja and defeats him within seconds, leaving him humiliated and furious.

Israeli planes invade in 1967; Zalfa rushes to collect the children from school while Raja's father calmly asks for a beer.

Raja and Micheline execute their ballroom dance flawlessly in front of their classmates, a performance that surprises the entire school.

Locked in the dark apartment, Raja realizes Boodie's true motive: he wants dance lessons solely to seduce Micheline and sleep with her.

A wounded Boodie returns to the apartment after an absence and Raja cleans his wound before their uneasy routine resumes.

Boodie hands Raja a gun and warns that the other fighters want Raja dead for having witnessed the murders of Joe and Yves.

Zalfa rushes to the hospital the moment Raja calls and insists that Raja be allowed to keep Mr. Cat over his father's objections.

Yasmine calls Raja a slur upon moving in, but Raja realizes she is too frail and diminished to truly wound him anymore.

Nahed researches the writers' retreat foundation online and warns Raja not to trust the people running it.

Madame Taweel dispatches an armed contact to extract Raja from Virginia as Boodie tearfully declares he has never stopped loving Raja.

This pool traces the emotional pivots and revelations that alter the course of Raja's life. Early scenes in the present establish Raja's hard-won self-acceptance — flirting across balconies, reckoning with Zalfa's secrets — before the narrative spirals back to formative moments of shame and discovery in his childhood. The 1967 invasion crystallizes the contrast between Zalfa's fierce protectiveness and his father's cold indifference, while the wrestling defeat at Nahed's hands captures the family's gendered cruelty in miniature. The civil war chapters contain the novel's most shattering revelations: Boodie's self-serving motive for the captivity, his manipulation of Raja's emerging sexuality, and Zalfa's unconditional response when Raja finally calls for help. The later chapters bring quieter but equally significant shifts — Yasmine's cruelty failing to wound Raja, Nahed's loyalty during the retreat crisis, and Boodie's shocking refusal to acknowledge the abuse — all of which confirm how far Raja has come in knowing and defending himself.