Kyriakos Rousias went to America at 15. At 43, he lives in Gaithersburg and works in Frederick, a researcher at the National Institutes of Health. He doesn't talk much about his family, he doesn't talk much about the past.

In the summer of '98, unexpectedly, he returns to his village for the first time. And he runs into another Kyriakos Rousias. He hears that voice piercing the pomegranate and peeling the almond.

He is looking for some Maro with an olive-shaped tear on the back of her calf. He wonders what a person's gaze is like at the moment they make a fateful decision. Pages about the untraveled paths of the mind. About forbidden emotions. About the same charcoal that burns two men.

[Excerpt from the text on the back cover of the edition]