When news arrives of the killings in Dhaka, the villagers know that the army from West Pakistan will soon be in their area. But unlike the other young men, and his beloved step-sister Moni Banu, Kamal cannot join the resistance. Born with a hole for a mouth, everyone—except Abbas Miah, the teacher who adopts him, and Moni Banu and a few friends—regards him as the village idiot. But it is he who will see the truths that others will not or cannot see.
When hundreds of villagers are slaughtered, Abbas Miah and Kamal embark on a Noah’s Ark journey in a boat, with a motley group of survivors, to find refuge in the distant floodplains until the war is over. But there can be no escape from the war and the issues it raises.
As our guide to the painful emergence of the new nation of Bangladesh, Kamal is forced both to observe the face of evil and look within to discover whether he has the capacity for true community and forgiveness.
