"On both sides of the abyss" relates the trials of Amina Rifa'ee, a young and beautiful Syrian woman that refused to marry her father's business associate and was sent to study in London School of Economics as a compromise. Her loneliness drives her to the arms of Murad the Libyan that is fact an Israeli Mossad agent. She moves to his apartment during her fourth year of studies, while tries in vain to persuade her to serve the cause of liberating Syria from its tyrannical authorities. After a relationship of several months Murad introduces her to Kenneth Collins the Beirut American embassy's press attache. She falls in with Collins who is in fact a CIA agent, and he takes her with him to Beirut; he intends to train her as a secret agent that would the Israeli Mossad in Damascus, without her being aware to it. She's caught by the Syrian internal security service and agrees to become a double agent instead of arrest, torture and death, and thus atone for her exploitation by the enemy agents."