Fourteen-year-old Hayat, no longer a child but not yet a woman, lives with her father and grandfather, who suffers from asthma, in Istanbul. Her father works as a fisherman but makes most of his money through shady dealings. He supplies the big ships that are waiting to pass through the strait with alcohol, women and other goods. Even more corrosive than this family’s poverty is the callousness and stifling indifference the main characters display toward themselves and above all toward Hayat.
