The film is an adaptation of the novel Samar Habib by Ismåeel Walieddin. author of Female Homosexuality in the Middle East: Histories and Representations. The main character, Ahmad, leaves rural eastern Egypt for the city hoping to become economically self-sufficient, gets an apartment for his parents, and obtains a law degree. He and his family are refugees from a town occupied by the Israeli army, Ismaåilia. Ali, the owner of the Malatily Bathhouse, offers to let him stay there for free. Ahmad encounters several characters there, including Naåeema, a prostitute who he becomes obsessed with, and Raouf, a homosexual man.
Set against the backdrop of the 1967 Six-Day War, the movie adaptation of Naguib Mahfouz's novel follows the escapist, drug-fuelled riverboat meetings of a group of frustrated Egyptians from various walks of life.
Atia is an overly kind man whose wife abandons him due to his weak personality. He meets a greedy producer who plans to exploit a wealthy woman to produce a movie for him, only for Atia to discover that the wealthy woman is his wife whom he hasn't seen in years.
Radwan is a widower who works in the railway quarry warehouse in Suez. The thief Selim comes to rob him one day but finds nothing to steal. Selim's mistress, Aziza, meets Radwan and decides to make him fall for her.
The family of Abu Taqiyya holds the hostility to the pasha who obtained their land from a public auction. This pasha has a daughter who falls in love with an agricultural engineer, and one of her relatives is trying to marry her in the greed of her father's money.
