Shortly after graduating high school in l969 Dian Jennings mother dies unexpectedly and her father commits suicide moments later. She is suddenly all alone. The suicide note directs her to sell the house to the bank manager for $75,000. Her father had conned him into believing that there was buried gold in the basement.
Later, with the help of friends, Dian is busy decorating her new apartment just 20 miles down the Hudson in New York City. From her ground floor window, her studio is clearly visible and after some weeks, draws the attention of an art dealer.
Plans are made for a Spring showing. She works feverishly to meet the deadline, working temp jobs and creating a whole new group of friends among whom is an older Persian man Momar, or Mo. Mos charms evaporate when suddenly his behavior turns bizarre and he becomes her stalker. A truce is set to free her for the Holidays and she agrees to meet Mo the day after New Year’s her birthday.
The cab that Mo sends heads for Idlewild Airport and she is taken kicking and screaming aboard a private jet where she see five men and one woman in Persian attire. Oh, oh. A beautiful woman named Jasara reassures Dian that she is in the hands of Friends a covert international group of good guys. Jasara shows Dian a friendship ring like her own, the emblem only showing palmside. She is instructed to trust no one who does not display the emblem. Landing in Tehran, Dian is paraded before mobs of fanatics and false documents are produced to show her identity as an infamous Jewish journalist Debra Stern. She is depicted as a Western degenerate who spreads scurrilous lies about Hesbolah, Elfatah and other such sacrosanct entities. As she tours the country, she is reviled. Interrogated by a half dozen abusive men, one good-looking young man Moustafa is particularly offensive. Back in her locked room with a frightening portrait of the Ayotallah, she is visited late at night by a would-be savior. She repulses his groping and crowns him with the portrait off the wall and finishes him off with a chamber pot. Immediately, another official bursts in demanding to know what is going on. Dian explains and the old man is circumspect. As the culprit stirs the old man lays him out, clutching his chest as he drags the unconscious man out the door. Next day, police charge her with double homocide and she is removed to new digs a dorm in an empty school. She scrounges around and makes a concoction that burns out the staring eyes of yet another even larger portrait. Her new keeper is a suspicious old crone and when she sees the desecration, she runs out screaming. A timid young man named Mohammed tells her the old lady claims to have seen her cast a spell on the portrait and she escaped. Now, the real A wants to see her. Mohammed conscientiously translates for her at the conference all terrorist organizations.
Her appearance creates a furor and she is actually shoved before the A and proceeds to tell him off. The audience becomes an excited unruly mob. Amidst the excitement, Dian puffs her bottle of body powder. Screams of Poison and she is grabbed and dragged offstage through the crowd, Mohammed in tow. Captors or rescuers? She is pulled unceremoniously behind a man who shows the ring but not his face. No matter. The trio escapes in an old Jeep. Sleep. She awakes screaming starvation and the Jeep stops and the driver comes to her, his face still obscured by his headdress. Then he pulls her close and kisses her. Shock! Moustafa! Oh, no. Mohammed says he seized the opportunity to throw off the tyranny of his repressive regime for Friends.
They are overtaken by men on horseback who lead them away to a fabulous tent city. Desert thieves? No, just a huge group of Friends. Their leader, the Sultan, is a complex and charismatic man.
