Strangers did not, as a rule, find their way to Chez Dom--a small, rundown Tunisian cafe on Paris' distant fringes, run by the widow Houria and her young niece, Sabiha. But when one day a lost Australian tourist, John Patterner, seeks shelter in the cafe from a sudden Parisian rainstorm, the quiet simplicities of their lives are changed forever.

Years later, living a small, quiet life in suburban Melbourne, what happened in Paris seems like a distant, troubling dream to Sabiha and John, who confide the story behind their seemingly ordinary lives to Ken, an ageing, melancholy writer.