An entire village in northern Iraq is wiped out when misinformed and panicked American soldiers stage a nighttime raid there. Cennet, a young Turkmen girl who has never before left home and is the only survivor of the raid, has no choice but to set out for Kirkuk in search of her older brother, a barber named Azim. When she reaches Kirkuk she learns that Azim has been badly hurt in a bomb blast and taken to Turkey for treatment. Desperate to track him down, Cennet sets off on an arduous journey, her sense of resolve strengthened by blind fury and the fact that she has nothing to lose. A pair of smugglers agree to help her navigate the perilous mountain passes of northern Iraq and cross illegally into Turkey. When one of them ravished her she tries to kill herself. This time, she is rescued by the members of a radical Islamist organization who help her reach Istanbul, where she soon loses all hope that her brother is still alive and finds herself caught in the clutches of a charismatic religious figure who views her as an expendable instrument with which to carry out his devastating plan.