We are the product of our environment. Our families, neighborhoods, and schooling shape our decisions and our destinies. Egypt, after the second world war, was torn between the East and West. Occupied by the British for ninety years and ruled by a corrupt puppet King, it was inevitable that by 1952 the country would be convulsed by a military revolution. We follow four young people born during the occupation and learn how their lives and loves intertwine with the political events of the country. Nadia lives a binary life. She is sent to an American missionary school because it is private and exclusive, where she learns English and French in addition to her native tongue. She suffers at home from the intellectual and physical repressions imposed upon her by her conservative Moslem father. Sammy, who was brought up in England and educated in British schools, cannot escape the influence of his Egyptian roots and male dominant Moslem culture. Melanie, a product of the British occupation-her mother was British and her father an Egyptian doctor who had brought back from London his exotic bride- enjoys a semblance of a European life in a world that never completely accepts her. Hassan, idealistic and patriotic, is destroyed when he perceives the corruption of the new government and when the Egyptian army is defeated in the Suez Canal war. Through the adventures, joys, romance, and tragedy in the lives of our four protagonists we get a glimpse into life in the Middle East in the fifties and sixties.