The iron gate opens onto a small courtyard in Douma, in the mountains of Lebanon. It is August 1943.
Beneath a low grapevine, a family is having lunch.
An old man is speaking, although nobody is listening particularly carefully. A young woman carries a pot from the kitchen. Two children are quarrelling over something that will be forgotten before the afternoon is over. A chair scrapes against the stone floor. Someone calls for more bread.
The house is crowded, the afternoon warm, the future entirely unknown.
Among them sits Emile, twenty-one years old, with dark hair and an impatient manner. His father is telling him something about the house. Emile nods without listening. He is thinking about a young woman he hopes to marry.
He cannot possibly know that one day he will own this house, grow old beneath this vine, and become a photograph on a wall.