Issaka comes home to Timbouctou from his university studies in the States to visit his parents after several years apart. When he arrives in his hometown, the library has been burned to the ground by al-Qaeda and the streets are empty, the occupants having fled to escape the violence the political group has brought with their presence in the area. At his home, his father has been talking with some of the elders and his uncles, but he quickly abandons the intense conversation to greet his son. When Issaka enters his room, he finds it filled with hundreds of books and manuscripts of ancient texts are stacked against the walls, saved from the library that was burned down. He opens his iPad to charge it after his long journey, and is surprised to see that it still has charge, his lockscreen has been changed, and a new app icon is on his homescreen. Even stranger, he has full internet connection and service, despite al-Qaeda having cut out internet connection throughout the town. Although it is strange and unexplainable, Issaka does not question it much. Strange things like this have always happened in his hometown. Shortly after this incident, Issaka falls ill and is in and out of sleep for several days. When he regains his strength, his father calls him into a room with his uncles, and they ask him to take the books back to the states with him to keep them safe from al-Qaeda. Moments later, the very group they are planning to escape shows up at the house. Issaka's mother sends him to the backyard to hide and re-enters the house with supernatural strength. She is pinned to the ceiling by an invisible force she wrestles onto the ground while speaking in a foreign language. In the front of the house outside of his line of vision, Issaka's father and his uncles are being executed. He wants to run back in, but a voice nearby tells him to stay. The voice suddenly has a body, and Issaka recognizes her from a dream he had while sick-- Faro. She is a genie who was trapped in one of the manuscripts before the library was burned. When she was released, she travelled into Issaka's iPad, explaining the strangeness with it, and then manifests in a phsyical form to guide Issaka. The next thing he knows, Issaka wakes up in the desert with no idea where he is. He tries to call his girlfriend from the States, but his iPad dies after only a few words with her. Faro is still there with him, and she guides him toward a mudbrick building as Issaka tries, and finally learns, how to read the book that Faro escaped from, which is full of entirely black pages. They approach the house as Issaka realizes Faro is guiding both of them back to her home.