The adventures of a left-wing revolutionary, Manos Simonides, who during the difficult years of the war goes underground and hides in a boarding house in Jerusalem. In the same place, which is a small Babel, other refugees from Greece, Egypt and other allied countries also live and hide. Among them are people of different religions, a Greek who fought in the Spanish Civil War, an Austrian former minister with his wife, various adventurers, traffickers, agents, intellectuals, communists and fascists. Manos falls in love with Emmi, the Austrian's wife, but she, while she loves him passionately, does not have sexual intercourse with him, preferring to surrender to the abnormal appetites of a trafficker.