In mysterious circumstances, the body of Zakaria Mubarak is found at the boundary of his village, Tel Safra in Lebanon. He had just returned from a long exile in Europe, the USA, and Africa, carrying with him a painting by Marc Chagall, the 'Blue Violinist,' a gift from his girlfriend in Paris. Suspicion falls on the cousins who may have killed him to get a treasure supposedly buried underneath the house built by their grandmother when she came back from America. This absorbing novel tells the story of Zakaria's murder, intersected with fables of gold, sibling strife, the love of French women, the fake promise of revolution, and sectarian enmities which have been flaring up from time to time in Lebanon for the last 150 years.