17 Minutes on the Automotrice is a collection of stories that explores allegiance to a homeland that is falling apart by looking into a contrasting situation: a lack of allegiance. What would happen if there were a multitude of homelands and there was no allegiance to any? The ten stories are linked with the concepts of exile and homeland, alternating between the Upper Mesopotamia in Syria  and the North Rhine-Westphalia State in Germany, from the specifics of rural society — marginalized and the dreamlike — to exile where there is a parallel Syrian society.