Abdou lives with his adoptive mother and traditional healer, Mbarka, in a small mining town. There he meets a cynical pickpocket, who suffers from a skin disease. Abdou convinces him to seek treatment from his mother, and their three lives become irreversibly interwoven.
16-year old teenager Abdou lives on the outskirts of Khouribga, a mining town exploiting phosphates. He is helpful and caring, simple and down to earth, incapable of harm, and is anxious to regain the gift of human dignity through learning how to read and write. His adoptive mother Mbarka, a midwife and the neighbourhood’s healer, protects her privileged status with ways that the laws of obscurantism allow her. Ch'Aayba, a thirty-year-old man, uncontrollable and ferociously cynical, is an eccentric pickpocket. Suffering from a skin disease, Abdou convinces him to come see Mbarka in order to get treatment: that’s how the fate of these three will entangle, twirling on the carousel of illusion.
