After an exorbitant land tax imposed on a country of mainly Coptic-speaking Christians by the caliph’s governors in ninth-century Egypt sparks a peasant revolt, Bedeir is dispatched to the Nile Delta as an escort for a church-appointed emissary whose mission is to persuade the rebels to lay down their arms. The events that befall him bring about a gradual personal transformation, through which his eyes are opened to the commonalities that bind Muslims and Copts.