Twelve-year-old Noura dangles uncertainly in that difficult netherworld between childhood and adulthood. His growing libido has gotten him banned from the women's baths, where his mother took him when he was younger, but he's not yet old enough to participate in grown-up discussions with the men of his Tunisian village. Noura's only real friend is a troublemaker named Salih -- the village political outcast.

Ounayes, a masseur, works in the neighborhood's bain-maure. Without being able to count on the funeral washer, the neighbors are obliged to call on him to wash a "dead person". He reluctantly agrees but does the work in his own way.