When Smaragda arrives from Constantinople to Symi at the end of 1874 on the ship of the elderly Moskovos, she does not expect to find happiness on the island with many privileges and skillful sponge divers. This happiness, however, will be marked by many years of childlessness, until the day she embraces the five-year-old orphan Yosif, whom her compatriots will call "the Arab," making his integration into their advanced society for the time difficult.

As the years go by, Smaragda will experience painful losses and a heavy betrayal, which will force her to leave Symi for Rhodes shortly before the dawn of the new century. In Rhodes, where the breath of the Ottoman is more suffocating, she will infiltrate the male-dominated business community of the island with her fragrance, Rodantho. And while the Turkish rule gives way to Italian rule and the Greeks struggle to maintain their national identity, her family will try to survive under the extremely adverse conditions imposed by the Great War, the Asia Minor Catastrophe, Italian fascism, as well as World War II, German occupation, and the great famine that ravages the Dodecanese at the end of the war.

The story of a family in Symi and Rhodes, turbulent and tumultuous like the sea surrounding the two islands, from the end of the 19th century to the mid-20th century, with a female figure as the connecting thread.