Squatters, mostly Arabs in Persia, live on a mothballed oil tanker in the Persian Gulf. The children attend a school on board; men harvest scrap metal and old oil in the hull; women keep house and raise children. Captain Nemat runs things with an iron hand, orienting new residents, keeping the books, negotiating with new buyers who may want to scrap the ship, arranging things, keeping discipline. We follow a lad who rescues fish trapped in the hull, an old man who stares at the sun, the idealistic teacher, and Ahmad, the Captain's assistant who has fallen in love with a young woman whose father wants to marry her to someone of means. What future has this sinking city?