Omrane, about forty, a former house servant, feels freed when he becomes a purveyor of house-maids, “general helps”, whom he transports on his delivery tricycle from his home village to place them with families of upstarts recently settled in the so-called posh districts of the Greater Tunis. He guarantees to their mothers that he will be the guardian of the girls’ virtue.
Rebeh, a wild beauty, the most exuberant among his recruits, overwhelmed by hard domestic chores, feeling gradually snatched by the breeze of the pleasures of life and by the wind of freedom, takes the French leave.
Omrane goes to look for her through the city. Riding his delivery tricycle, he is accompanied by Fedhah, a nine-year-old new recru it, awaiting a job. Moulding the clod of clay she keeps in her bundle of clothes, modelling dolls of clay which she crushes once she had finished them, the small girl discovers the city. When Omrane finds Rebeh, he discovers that she is pregnant. Her life is turned upside down. Rebeh, Fedhah and Omrane will build strong, strange and enigmatic relations…
