And then the insurance salesman summons up all his confidence, takes a sip from his glass, and is about to kiss the femme fatale Elham—with her dead sheep eyes—saying, ‘I’ll personally make sure you lose your job as a weaver.’ But the idyll will taste like nothing to her, so debased will her torrid melodrama become, with her excessive hypocrisy and the necessary sentimentality of the plot for the events that will follow.

The film begins in extremis, with Shokri confessing to Murad how he screwed up when he arrived to renew the insurance policies for two cars belonging to the rich husband of the woman who will become his lover. But the beautiful lady’s insinuation to charm the foolish insurance executive, first pretending to have forgotten the appointment to hook him up more and reschedule another day, will be nothing sophisticated compared to the feminine wiles – and the alcoholic steam of a lovely evening – that she will display: “I wanted to know a little about insurance, because I’m very ignorant and my husband spends most of his time away, and you know what life in the country is like, it’s very dangerous, especially because he always carries money with him…” In short, if her husband pays £50 a month for the policy, according to Omar Shariff’s character, it would be no less than £50,000.

This is when not only her wickedness but also his double standards become evident. When she no longer hints, she proposes. She proposes to pay her husband’s instalments without him knowing, since ‘he won’t accept the insurance, he’s very suspicious and jealous’. Double standards? Yes. Because although that night, Shariff’s character explodes in anger at his lover’s suggestion, he receives a visit from Elham, pretending to be desperate to have him, and from there, taking advantage of her husband’s trip to Mansoura, they spend the night together and Shokri confesses, ‘I started to think about what it would be like if she were my only inspiration.’ But things get complicated for them, mainly because just when they were about to carry out the murder disguised as a car accident, with everything ready, the husband injures his leg on a staircase and cancels the trip he was going to take.

Paradoxically, when everything goes wrong, on 15 February, as the dying Shokri remembers everything, his boss Murad arrives and announces a pay rise. In fact, the husband decides to leave for four days but by train and changes his plans, and this is the slightly exciting part of the film because Shokri has to sneak into the car while she, the mistress, is taking her husband to the station, and that’s when Shariff literally strangles the husband. In the end, when Shokri surprises his great love kissing Zacaria, Nadia’s partner, he understands that what Nadia told him is true: Elham has got Zacaria to get rid of Nadia and Shokri. She confesses why she did everything. She almost sweet-talks him again, saying she did it out of love for him, for Shokri, but he doesn’t listen and shoots her at point-blank range. Before escaping, he is wounded by her and dies while recounting the story to Murad.