The girl from the Kasbah

Hadda has mint green eyes and a wasp waist and is much too thin to please the mothers in the hammam. The young teacher lives in the Kasba (the Arab quarter) of Algiers. She is pointed at because she is a rebel - at almost thirty years old she runs the risk of becoming an old maid * But she rejects the marriage that the family wanted to arrange for her. Hadda decides to bend fate to her will and sets her sights on the wealthy Nassib. With him she can escape the oppressive prospects. On her own she undertakes a painful adventure: she goes to the beauty salon, buys silk lingerie and high-heeled shoes and offers herself to Nassib in his opulent villa in a higher district of Algiers. The girl from the Kosba tells the story of an attempt at emancipation, but in a society like this it is doomed to failure