The new teacher in a school in Néant, a tiny African town, has a problem: the students, little by little, stop coming to classes and soon the school is empty. He eventually finds his students in the outskirts of the town, in a great white building; it is a factory where they make shoes and leather balls to sell to rich countries. They work twelve hours a day to earn one dollar. The children do not want to return to school because, as the mayor of the town says: "knowledge can wait, but hunger cannot". In spite of everything, the teacher does not give up. With the sensitivity that characterizes his work, Tahar Ben Jelloun submerges us in the reality of the working and exploited children in the poorest parts of the planet.