After decades of ambivalent work as an interrogator with the Iranian regime, Hamid travels on a diplomatic mission to New York, where he encounters his estranged family and retrieves the ashes of his father, whose dying wish was to be buried in Iran. Tucked in his pocket throughout the trip, the ashes propel him into a first-person excavation of a lifetime of betrayal, and prompt him to trace his own evolution from a perceptive boy to a man who, on seeing his own reflection, is startled to encounter 'a beautiful, indignant thug.'