The play alternates between two settings, London and Kabul. Homebody, the title character, is a middle-class, middle-aged British woman. In many respects, she is a kind of “Everywoman” character with whom the audience is encouraged to identify, but she also will potentially alienate the viewer, as she embodies many negative features of colonizers. The play opens with a lengthy monologue in which Homebody explains her orientalist fascination with Afghanistan, including a sudden ability (real or imagined) to speak Pashtun.

Much of the rest of the play is set in Kabul, Afghanistan’s capital, where Homebody’s husband, Milton, and their daughter, Priscilla, are visiting. Rather than being an armchair enthusiast back in England, it is revealed, Homebody has actually traveled to Afghanistan and now is missing; her family tries desperately to locate her. Conflicting versions are presented to them by various characters: that she was killed by the Taliban (but her body has not been found), or that she has voluntarily disappeared and married a Muslim doctor. Through a local guide, Khwaja, they meet the doctor’s wife, Mahala, a former librarian who cannot work under Taliban rule but also blames her country’s problems on foreign intervention.

Milton, a rather unwilling participant in the search (as he and his wife had been virtually estranged), befriends Quango, a man in the hotel, and gets involved with him in using opium and heroin. As Khwaja helps Priscilla look for Homebody, they travel to the alleged grave of Cain, which her mother had expressed interest in. The futility of the search overtaking her, Priscilla decides to return to England, leaving her mother’s situation unresolved. Further complications ensue, however, before she can leave, as she is accused of smuggling, and it turns out Khwaja is implicated. It is later reported that he was killed.

Mahala, however, has somehow gotten documents authorizing her to leave the country, and she moves to England to live with Milton. Priscilla, back in London as well, not only remains unsatisfied about her mother’s fate but also must accept that Mahala has taken Homebody's place in her parents’ home.