August, 1984. A migrant called Rose arrives in America from Mount Lebanon and, after working as a peddler, sets up as a costumier in New Orleans with her Creole landlady. In the easy-going world of “The Great Babylon,” she first finds commercial success and then love but the latter is cut short when her soulmate dies of yellow fever. Heartbroken, she moves to Lake Charles by the Texas border and makes a new life for herself. Almost a hundred years later, a young surgeon leaves her residency at a Houston hospital and travels to Lebanon shortly before the Israeli invasion. While working at the Gaza Hospital, she meets a first-year medical student called George when she operates on his cousin who has been badly burnt by a phosphorous shell.