"Daud the Arwadi, a successful trader in his prime, has his world turned upside down when the caravan carrying his fortune is ambushed en route to Damascus. Takla, a young serving girl in a convent, encounters a mysterious stranger who sets her life on a new course. And then there is Shams, an old billy goat, who lives high above Damascus on Mount Kassioun with his flock of goats, who one day loses his bell. Feeling a sudden sense of wonderment, he leaps off the very top of the mountain, and begins a journey into the unknown such as no billy goat before him had ever undertaken. After many adventures and amorous encounters with endearing female goats, Shams dies, and his skin arrives at the shop of Abu Kerim, a Damascene musician and drum maker who immediately senses that this skin is special. 'The quality of a drum depends on the animal it is made from. Not all animals are dumb, you know, ' he tells his friends, 'and the skin of an animal can speak things you couldn't imagine.' And so begins a journey which takes Daud from one end of Syria to the other and back again, following the beat of a drum, following his own fears and hopes, following love until all is given up, and then returned, though not at all as he might have imagined"--Publisher's description, p. [2] of cover