A dying woman’s wish sends her son on a train journey from the steppes of Uzbekistan to the Russian hinterland in search of his father’s grave. Just as the traveler’s home city of Samarkand is situated on the border between East and West, Khamraev balances his film on the edge of two cultures, evoking the soul of Russia and the crumbling beauty of what was once the Silk Road.
The setting is Central Asia during the Russian civil war. In the post-revolutionary twenties, when the power in European Russia was (officially) "fully in the hands of the workers and peasants", but the fight against the Basmachi rebels was in full swing. When a Red Army detachment captures Sultan Mazar, the brains behind the Bazmachi contingent, a decision is made to escort urgently the prisoner to the Bukhara province. The difficult mission is entrusted to a grizzled mountain trapper and conscientious revolutionary called Mirzo. His expertise is essential to traverse the precarious paths and steep mountain ridges along the way, impossible terrain for the inexperienced. A group consisting of Mirzo, his brother Kova, the Sultan, his daughter Zaranghis and slave Saifulla set off on this journey. They are forced to fight on the mountain ridges as well as negotiate the natural dangers and harsh elements.
Despite the restoration of Soviet power in the area, Basmachis continue to arrive from across the border, bringing death and destruction to peaceful villages. One of the bands of rebels is led by Khairulla who is pitted against the militsiya (local militia) leader Maxumov. At first it seems hopeless for Maxumov as the rebels capture most of his men, winning them over to his side. He has only one strategy left; to give himself up, and try to explain to the people that Khairulla has deceived them, turning the soldiers back to revolution. Later in pursuit of his enemy, he chases Khairulla across a river. He has only one bullet left -- the seventh, and he must not miss his target!
A Bolshevik army officer and Uzbek who has been nursed back to health by a young Uzbek woman to whom he is now married, gains responsibility for the local village in 1929. He is urged by comrades in Tashkent to have the local women drop their chadors and veils but he is also told that he should not force this on anyone. His wife declines to take off her veil, so a 14 year old girl steps forward to set the example, over the objections of the local Muslim clergy and most of the village men. After the girl is killed, and the commissar is shot, his wife takes him to the hills to nurse him back to health once again. She begs her husband to leave the village. Instead when he decides to return, she is pressured by her father to continue to wear the veil.
