Male protagonist :
Paolo Vida, Italo-Spanish photographer, 60 years old

Female protagonist:
Kokla, 29-year-old Afghan refugee to Switzerland, in Kabul when the novel takes place.

Ambientazione :
Kabul, primavera 2002, dopo la fine della guerra contro i Talebani. Due capitoli in flashback a Palermo.

Chpt 1 - HERCULES
Vida leaves for Kabul on a military aircraft, with the firm intention of vindicating the West by blowing himself up in a mosque. Reflections, memories, description of the flight.

Chpt 2 - KABUL
He arrives in Afghanistan and meets his chauffeur-guide Aziz, who will accompany him for three weeks. He lodges in a small apartment building with other journalists.

Chpt 3 - WAR REPORTER
Discussions with the reporters he is living with. Verbal confrontations on American society and on the role of the USA in the world.

Chpt 5 - NOTES FOR A GUIDE BOOK OF THE CITY
He decides to take photos of Kabul and take notes for an improbable guide book of the city for the tourists who will come to it. He will continue doing his job as a journalist and send all the material to the offices of the Pais newspaper in Madrid before he dies.

Chpt 6 - EMERGENCY
Visit to Emergency, the urgent surgery hospital, and to the Red Cross orthopaedics department. Good and bad points of the two institutions.

Chpt 7 - THE HAIRSTYLIST AND THE TALIBAN
He interviews Shabana, a thirty-year-old hairstylist: terrible stories about her life under the Taliban regime.

Chpt 8 - THE SHAID
Vida’s views on his vocation as martyr and on the Muslim Kamikazes.

Chpt 9 - ROZ
Vida discovers that there is a female magazine in Kabul. Encounters in the editor’s office where he meets Kokla a twenty-nine-year-old Afghan girl who lives in Switzerland. She will be novel’s protagonist.

Chpt 10 - BURQA
Vida decides to carry out a photographic scoop. He buys a burqa and disguises himself as a woman, walking around Kabul and documenting with pictures how an Afghan woman sees the outside world from inside her cloth prison.

Chpt 11 - KARZAI
He visits the President’s palace and meets Karzai who is chairing a meeting of the Pashtun chiefs.

Chpt 12 - AT THE DINNER TABLE
One evening in the house Vida stays in, at dinner with the journalists (Americans, Argentines and French). Heated discussions on Islam, the American empire, the decline of the West.

Chpt 13 - PALERMO
Flashback. Vida remembers his journey to Sicily to find the explosive for his attack. Description of Palermo, magical yet terrible city.

Chpt 14 - C4
Flashback. Again in Palermo, he meets a man who obtains the plastic explosive for him and teaches him how to use it.

Chpt 15 - ISAF
Vida goes to the International military contingent’s headquarters (ISAF) where he interviews the head of the Italian mission. Then he leaves with an escorted convoy to reach a village 30km from Kabul, where he witnesses the distribution of aid to the population. He visits the brickworks, a sort of Inferno.

Chpt 16 - KOKLA
Long encounter with Kokla in a restaurant. Animated discussions about Islam and the West.

Chpt 17 - THE CONGRESS
Vida goes with Kokla to the Afghan women’s congress, the first after 22 years of war. Encounters, interviews, portrayal of certain female characters.

Chpt 18 - ENCOUNTERS
Kokla and Paolo have lunch together at the Herat Restaurant. Reflections on technology and the speed of life in western society. Visit to a Koran school for girls.

Chpt 19 - MILITARY PARTY
Vida goes with Kokla to a military party organized by the Italian soldiers. Encounters and considerations on arms and war.

Chpt 20 - THE HOME OF THE THREE GIRLS
Vida meets Monica, a Spanish journalist who suggests he work with her as photographer. They interview three young female Afghan students who have won bursaries to study in Spain. Then they go to the National Gallery, an unpleasant museum with paintings, and have an encounter- cum- clash with the director.

Chpt 21 - NIGHTIME OUTINGS
With Monica, Vida is invited to dinner at the Italian Embassy, together with other journalists. Description of the evening with dialogues, memories, proposals.

Chpt 22 - BREAD MADE BY WOMEN
Again with Monica, he visits one of the 24 bakeries in Kabul run entirely by women.

Chpt 23 - KARTE-SEH
Vida and Kokla go to see the Afghan capital’s biggest orphanage. The sadness and horrors of war which hit the children most of all.

Chpt 24 - SHOPPING
With Kokla to do some shopping in Chicken Street, Kabul’s main shopping thoroughfare. Significant encounters with vendors and craftsmen. Important dialogues with the girl.

Chpt 25 - GOLDEN LOTUS
He has dinner in an elegant restaurant. Vida loses a tooth and tries to mend it. Intense conversations with Kokla, who is very interested in him, but he has decided not to turn back and to go ahead with the attack.

Chpt 26 - 48 HOURS
Description of the last two days of the protagonist’s life. He writes his will and prepares a letter to a friend to whom he will send all his written and filmed material to be handed over to the newspapers. With his attack he will become famous, even if it is only after his death, and everyone will want to publish his illustrated reports. He goes to the post office to send off his suitcase.

Chpt 27 - THE CHRISTIAN KAMIKAZE
Testimony in the third person of the day of the attack. Surprising conclusion to the story. Read it for yourselves in the book.