Three Palestinian men of different generations seeking work arrange with a clerk in Basra to be smuggled to Kuwait by a driver. The men are treated gruffly and are humiliated by the process. They decide instead to arrange for travel with a lorry driver, a Palestinian man whom the reader later learns was surgically castrated in the 1948 war. The men are forced to ride in the back of the truck across the desert on their way to Kuwait. At several checkpoints the men hide in a large empty water tank in the stifling mid-day heat as the driver arranges paperwork to get through. At the last check point, within easy driving distance of the travelers' ultimate goal of Kuwait, the driver is held up by check point bureaucrats who tease him over a rumor of his sexual hijinks. Once the driver is able to drive past the check point, he opens the tank to let the men out, only to find they have died.