After a 9-year embargo, the people of Baghdad have learnt how to get by: trade. The rich sell, the poor have already sold everything to survive, to get medication or to send their children studying abroad. Leyla has taken over her father’s antique shop. Jewellery, carpets and furniture are piled high with no-able to buy, except the ‘nouveaux riches’ and those carpets shipped discreetly out of the country. She works with Hatim, trained but now jobless economist, who tries to find second-hand books on the local market since no new edition has entered the country. They reminisce about the time when Baghdad was synonymous with culture and good living.