He slipped between groups of men, through dust and shouts, then walked along a small esplanade where fat, smug, pot-bellied men — unquestionably tradesmen — sat stuffing their faces with sandwiches and swilling them down with arak and Coca-Cola just to show how well they were doing.
After a time, the mother dies, and Maiouf becomes the hated responsibility of his grandmother, who wants him to go and be a shepherd so that she doesn't have to take care of him.
It begins with his childhood as a poor Badawi longing for a sense of being loved, accepted and educated.