Amwaj tells the story of a young Ibrahim who was born and raised in Kirkuk to a family of Sunni Arab farmers and landowners. Kirkuk of his childhood was an idyllic place, where Arabs and Kurds lived together, and Christians and Muslims were neighbours in every sense of the word. But things changed with the start of the Iran-Iraq War when Ibrahim was conscripted into Saddam Hussein's army to fight for Iraq. After the traumatic war, he left the country to escape the political tensions, ending up teaching Arabic Literature in Libya, then in Qatar. Passing through these countries accentuated Ibrahim's memories of home, as did his sadness at each successive wave of violence that engulfed it and his memories.