A Somali girl student, having grown up and living in Townsville, North Queensland, Australia Townsville, witnesses her draughtsman husband being enticed by an Indonesian girl to leave his wife and young child to open an East-African-style restaurant in Aceh, NW Sumatra. Halima, meanwhile, consummates her own love affair with Edward, a middle-aged Indonesian-born educator, and is preselected by her minor party for a suburban parliamentary seat which she eventually wins by two–rather delayed–votes. A woman journalist born in Iceland but active in North Queensland arranges a coalition between Labour and Halima’s minor party on condition that Halima, the Somali girl, becomes Prime Minister of Australia. Edward, her lover, ringing her from Bhutan, is told about it and made aware that it is all over between them.