Senses

The last call for the flight to Stockholm is announced over the speakers. Shadi stands outside the gate and holds her mothers skirt as tight as she can. The mother caresses Shadis braided hair, and then tears her fingers apart from her daughter, and a man forces Shadi onto the plane. Shadi is eleven years old and all alone on her way to an unknown world. She ends up at an orphanage for unaccompanied children in Stockholm. But flashbacks from the war and nightmares make it hard for Shadi to tell the difference between reality and fantasy. The only thing she wants is to be with her mother again. And so one night she hears her mothers voice in the hall.

Zanyar Adami looks down at Bagdad from an airplane heading to Sweden. His mother is still down there at the airport. His father isn’t even there to wave goodbye. At the time, Zanyar is only five years old. 23 years later Zanyar, soon to be a father, sits in his kitchen in a suburb of Stockholm. His father, Taher, sits in front of him. Any day now, Zanyar will become a father himself and he knows that he can’t wait anymore. He has to confront his father with the question he has been afraid to ask all his life: How could Taher leave him in the midst of a war and then send him to Sweden all by himself?