After six years of self-imposed exile as a teacher in Swaziland who is also a correspondence student studying Hebrew returns to South Africa shortly after the June 16th Soweto youth uprising in 1976. She has returned to complete the research for her MA degree which involves a philological analysis of the original Hebrew version of the Song of Songs. Her return is marred by experiences of racism. Inspired by the words 'Black bird flying in the dead of night' in Paul McCartney's song she finds a clue to understanding the meaning of blackness in the Song of Songs and so begins her adventure into the translation and understanding of the Song of Songs in the time when the black consciousness struggle against white oppression began, and also in the time during which the mass Soweto student uprising shook South Africa to the core, paving the way for eventual collapse of apartheid.