Farhaan Melaazem Adam leaves Upper Egypt to Cairo hoping to find a better life. But his dreams are shattered when forced to live in a poor neighborhood. He falls in love with Fotna, the daughter of a street food vendor, and he begins to forget his cruel life and undergoes another transformation.

Ja'far rebels against his controlling grandfather and marries the shepherdess Marwanah. When his grandfather kicks him out, Ja'far is unable to support himself and Marwanah so he leaves her and marries the wealthy lady Huda, but he begins to struggle to prove himself.

The story of Mayor Abdul Razek al-Sharshabi (Omar al-Sharif) when his younger son, Tawfiq (Khalid al-Nabawi) is called for army recruitment, his wife (Safiya al-Omari), rejects it, suggesting to send someone else to go instead. So the Mayor persuaded a poor father named Abdul-Muqeem (Izzat al-Alayli) to send his only son Masrey instead.

The story of the friendship that develops between two men with quite different world views. One, a water carrier whose wife has died twenty years before, spends his days thinking about her. The other, who works in the funeral business, spends his life in the pursuit of pleasure because he recognizes that death will bring an end to all enjoyment. They meet and become friends. Through this friendship the water carrier is encouraged to change his morbid way of thinking and to enjoy life.

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.

Amid the poverty, death, and suffering caused by World War II, 18-year-old Yehia retreats into a private world of fantasy and longing. Obsessed with Hollywood, he dreams of studying filmmaking in America but struggles to pursue his dream, given the constraints of his life in the middle class and the horrors of war.

Hassanein Abu Sunna is released from prison after committing a murder. He persuades Ghobasha to rent his furnished apartment to the rich Radwan as the journalist Ahmed documents the changes taking place in the neighborhood in his articles.

When a simple employee retires and lives with his wife who is different from him in character, and after his children get married, his wife is a controlling person who loves appearances, and he is a simple person who loves joking and modesty. His wife inherits a palace from one of her relatives, and events follow.

An aging man's intention to publish his biography has a lot of rich and powerful people worried what he might reveal.