Rūza is a devoted reader and scholar, with a gift for writing. But after leaving school, she's forbidden from joining her classmates to study Arabic literature in Damascus. Instead, she must return to her father's house in the Shindagha district of Dubai, and await her family's decisions on her future.

It's the mid-1960s - a time of independence movements and the rise of Arab nationalism, before the founding of the United Arab Emirates. Rūza watches and listens in silence, pouring out her anger in her secret diaries. She tosses the notebooks into the waters of Dubai's Creek, since it is shameful for a woman to write so creatively, but she longs for the freedom to express herself...