Synopsis

Kualid lives with his mother and grandfather on the outskirts of a Taliban-dominated and war-torn Kabul. He's twelve years old, has a keen gaze, and two slightly protruding incisors that have earned him the nickname "mouse." He earns his living by shoveling potholes along the roads leading into the city, hoping for a reward from passing trucks. Kualid has an imagination, the imagination of all children, or at least the imagination of a child raised in a war zone. He knows Asmar, the serpent of light that, projected from the curved spout of a teapot, visits him every full moon... But he has one worry: he can't, he just can't, dream. Or rather, he can sometimes do it during the day, when he's awake, but those are, at best, wishes, his cousin Said told him, who teases him a little for this. It's at night that Kualid can't dream. He didn't succeed even when he stole the videotapes the Taliban had tied to a machine gun as a trophy, to remind everyone that music and images are forbidden. Forbidden like kites, and like so many other things in Kabul. It was his encounter and clash with Samir, the calligrapher working with the Westerners who had opened a hospital in the city, that introduced him to the world of drawings and colors. It was the discovery of that world that would allow Kualid to finally be able to dream.