The fire of the whole world was not enough for us to unite. We are so far apart that we wouldn't even meet on Judgment Day. In the ruins after the battle on the Turkish river Sakarya, soldiers find a charred notebook filled with notes. It belongs to Ahmet Celal, who was injured in the fight for Turkish independence and is recovering in a remote Anatolian village. The villagers receive their Istanbul compatriot with distrust, which over time grows into open hostility. An intelligent patriot, a supporter of Kemal's efforts to save Turkey, encounters misunderstanding from ordinary people at every attempt to bridge the gap, people who have been kept in ignorance and both material and spiritual poverty for centuries. He becomes a stranger in his own country. Time and again, he returns to the hopeless cycle of ignorance, backwardness, national decay, and burning questions about its future.
