The epic of the decline of a desert village in Tunisia.The film traces the various causes of the creeping sickness wich brings death to a culture, just as it has done in other places around the world.The young men go first. The move northwards in search of work or are inducted into the army. In the end only the patriarch and his daughter-in-law remain in the tents on the hedge of the desert:their herd of sheep has been attacked by a deadly sickness, their grain stocks are exhausted. Finally the young woman also leaves for the capital in order to take possesion of the coffin containing the body of her husband who has died working abroad.