Beirut, summer of 1954. The streets were filled with demonstrations against the Baghdad Pact, a military alliance between Great Britain, Iraq, Turkey, Pakistan and Iran to counter Soviet expansion in the Middle East. While security forces mingled with young communists, Mary al-Saman, a young Christian woman from Beirut, met Salim Mizrahi, an Iraqi Jew who had immigrated to Lebanon. He pulled her out of the human vortex and rescued her from the tumult.