Wanees and Maysa are proud parents who want what's best for their four children. They teach them what's right and wrong, and discover that they are also learning new things.

The film is an adaptation of a novel by Ismåeel Walieddin. 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.

After a crash, a group of passengers are stranded in the desert. They attempt to cope with their new conditions as the most privileged of them all, an overpaid lawyer, declares himself a dictator of the nearby oasis and names it after him.