Spring, 1990. After years of searching in vain, a stranger presses a scrap of paper into Zina's pocket. It's from Aziz: the man who vanished the day after their wedding almost two decades ago.It propels Zina on a final quest for a secret desert jail in southern Morocco, where her husband crouches in despair, dreaming of his former life.Fadel pays powerful testament to a terrible period in Morocco's history, known as 'the years of cinders and lead, ' and masterfully evokes the suffering inflicted on those who supported the failed coup against King Hassan II in 1972.