To spend twenty-four hours in Dalia's life is to bathe for twenty-four hours in the culture of appearances.

Around her we discover characters, men and women, young and not so young, emprisoned in spite of themselves in this culture not visible to the naked eye. By looking for money to help her mother pay the subscription to the Friends of the Algerians of France (a group that covered the costs of repatriating the body of her dead father to his homeland), she realizes that she is the powerless witness and victim of a system she cannot exit from without putting herself in danger.