Sushmita is the protagonist of the story. She stands for everything that women of today desire. Amidst this, Sushmita gets caught in the unforgiving world of the social crossfire of the dreaded Taliban - a word that even now evokes gruesome terrorist images internationally.
It all begins with the love of Sushmita who forsakes her religion, her society, her hierarchy, her standing and everything that a woman in love typically does for the sake of her love. The love of her life is a kabuliwallah - a tall, dashing and intelligent looking young man from Afghanistan who manages to weave the dream of a family together in the desert-sprangled hilly terrains near Kabul. So she leaves Kolkata, her hometown, to set up her own new life with her lover in Afghanistan. On reaching her in-laws' place, her dreams start getting shattered, she is subjected to the same inhuman treatment that is meted out to numerous other women from the Taliban society. She learns a new meaning of womanhood... they are supposed to be born for the pleasure of men and to bear their children. She is not supposed to have a mind nor an identity of her own. In fact, things take a turn for the worst when she is introduced to her souten (husband's first wife) in bed. Moreover, the rise of the fundamentalist. Taliban makes her life more horrendous. It is at this time that Sushmita's individuality comes to the fore. She starts protesting at the treatment being meted out to her day after day, night after night. All this angers the Taliban so much that a fatwa-death sentence-is issued against her. When this happens, her real fight begins-she makes her way out of the clutches of the Taliban to freedom. Ironically, it is the Afghani women who help her in her escape to freedom. How she becomes an icon for the rest of the womenfolk and how she is supported by a section of the Afghani womenfolk forms the underlying theme for the latter part of the story.