Teenager Daya lives with her mother who earns a meagre existence as a traditional healer in a small village on the Java coast. One day, however, both are forced to flee ethnic violence. They manage to escape from their burning village, they cross the desert and settle in another God-forsaken place, scourged by the heat and sandstorms. The girl, who doesn’t understand her mother’s antipathy towards her absent husband, thinks constantly of her father who abandoned her when she was little. She hopes that he will return and that they will leave together for a distant city. The mother won’t hear of any of this, but Daya, who is learning to read and write from a village elder, still dreams of a happy future. And then one day, her father does come back. He starts telling his pretty daughter the same tales he used to tell her when she was young, he lets the women look after him and will do anything to find the money for yet another flight from responsibility. Daya now sees her father’s true character, she understands her mother’s painful disillusionment and her inner strength; she shares with her a cheerless fate and the profound love that her mother shows for her only child.