Shanti, Jason’s mother, left his father after twenty-two years of marriage. When she left, Jason and his sister felt abandoned and cut off all contact with their mother. Now, three years after the family was torn apart, Jason visits her for the first time in a small hut on a beach in Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula. Shanti tells him the story of her life with Martin, his father. She does this by reading aloud from her diaries. The picture of a happy marriage, the one he had stubbornly clung to throughout the years, breaks down quickly and is replaced by something new. Shanti is strong and allows him to delve as far as he wants to go so that her son may finally understand that she’s a woman, long before she’s a mother.