The Promise

Mikael is an apothecary who lives in the small Armenian village of Sirun in the southeast part of the Ottoman Empire. In order to help pay the expenses for medical school, he promises himself to the daughter of an affluent neighbor, receiving 400 gold coins as a dowry. This allows him to travel to Constantinople and attend the Imperial Medical Academy. There, he befriends Emre, the son of a high-level Turkish official. Through his wealthy uncle, Mikael also meets Ana, an Armenian woman raised in Paris, who is involved with an American reporter for the Associated Press, Chris Myers. In due course, Mikael falls in love with Ana just as international tensions begin to rise with the outbreak of World War I. Mikael temporarily manages to avoid conscription in the Ottoman army through a medical student exemption with the help of Emre. But when he tries to save his uncle from imprisonment during the roundups of April 24, 1915, he is detained and sent to a prison labor camp himself..