 Two stories are interwoven.The shorter, which begins and ends the book, is specifically set in 1909–1910 and later 1912, and tells of the wanderings of North African desert tribes chased from their lands by French colonial invaders, mostly as observed by a small boy, Nour.The beginning is set in the 
Saguia el-Hamra region in the Western Sahara, around the town of Smara, and the story follows the tribe on their gruelling journey across the desert to Tiznit.