In 1972, disenchanted about the dreary conventions of English life, 25-year-old Julia (Winslet) heads for
Morocco with her daughters, six-year-old Lucy and eight-year-old Bea. Living in a low-rent
Marrakesh hotel, the trio survive on the sale of hand-sewn dolls and money from the girls' father, a London poet who also has a child from another woman. After the girls match their mother with gentle Moroccan acrobat and
conman Bilal, sexual gears are set in motion. He eventually moves in with them and serves as a surrogate father. Julia's friend Eva urges Julia to study in Algiers with a revered
Sufi master at a school of "the annihilation of the ego". In another sequence, European dandy Santoni invites Julia and the girls to his villa. As finances dwindle, Bilal's philosophy is "God will provide", although usually it is Bilal himself who provides. Sometimes he also disappears. At one point Bea contracts a
streptococcus infection while he is gone and nearly dies. Bilal returns only to disappear again, but he has a plan. They discover that three return tickets that suddenly appear have been bought by him with money he got from the sale of his uniform. In the end, Julia and the girls board a train back to London. == Production ==