Jakob, in his mid-50s, sits in the waiting room of a psychiatric clinic and requests admission. He experiences the world as a single catastrophe: twenty years have passed since his entire circle of friends fell victim to the AIDS epidemic. This loss has left a pain that has burrowed into every corner of his personality. And now, an endless civil war rages in Yemen, his homeland. Jakob just wants to forget, but in his mind, he hears voices: Satan and the 14 Holy Helpers want him to confront his memories. Jakob thinks of his happy childhood in a brothel in Cairo, the religious discipline of the boarding school in Beirut. In San Francisco, he witnessed the liberation of gay people, which soon turned into a gruesome dance of death. Through a multitude of voices and narrative layers, the novel confronts Eastern and Western ways of life and cultures.