"My past was behind a curtain. I had to go to Feruzeh. I had to see her
so I could open the curtain of both the future and the past." Two young
people from foreign lands meet in a shop in Cambridge: Brani Tawo, a
Kurdish political refugee from Turkey, and Feruzeh, who had fled to the
UK from revolutionary Iran. Slowly, their love begins to grow, fed by
stories, a shared love of literature and a subtle recognition of their
mutual displacement. Brani Tawo narrates vignettes from his family
history, vivid tales that evoke old legends: shepherds struck by
lightning, soldiers returning home with war trauma, blood feuds that
destroy families, bears mauling villagers in search of stolen cubs and a
photographer who carries news to the villages in the form of the
portraits he takes. These dark, inherited memories, combined with his
own melancholy nature and chronic insomnia, weigh on Brani Tawo, who
often seeks contemplative solace in graveyards. Over time, however,
drawn by Feruzeh's quiet radiance, he begins to reach a freer place
within himself. Feruzeh also harbors grim family secrets, and when she
suddenly returns to Iran to attend to an emergency, Brani Tawo knows
what he must do ... Sins and Innocents is a warm, intimate love story
redolent with the (often harsh) music of Central Anatolian village
society as well as the Cambridge sophistication of Wittgenstein, Brooke,
Grantchester Meadows, colleges, churches and cafés.
