A Jewish child deported to Kazakhstan is saved and adopted by Kasym, an old Kazakh railway-man. Kasym gives him a Kazakh name, Sabyr, that in Kazakh language means humble. The child grows up in the small Kazakh village along with other deportees Vera, a traitor’s wife, and Ezhik a Polish doctor. The Soviet militia harasses the poor peasants and Vera suffered the harassment of a bully cop: Bulgabi. Finally Vera accepts the marriage proposal of Ezhik but the jealous Bulgabi tries to prevent the marriage. The result is a fight in which Ezhik shoots himself accidentally. The old Kasym decides that Sabyr is now old enough to go to seek his real parents. At the end Sabyr, now an adult, decides to return to the village, but the village no longer exists because it was destroyed by a Soviet nuclear test.

It is nighttime. In Croatia, a young woman cannot sleep because her baby keeps crying. Her mother-in-law is also being kept awake by the baby’s crying and she is not shy about offering unwanted child-rearing advice to her daughter-in-law. In Spain, a young husband and wife are also wide awake in the dead of night: they are in the middle of a turbulent argument. She is Spanish, he is Croatian and their marriage is in crisis because they simply do not understand one another. Back in Croatia, the young man’s elderly mother is also awake, plagued with indigestion pains. The old woman is also worried about her lodger, a young Spanish girl who happens to be the sister of the old woman’s daughter-in-law in Spain. The young girl comes home with her new lover. He is a taxi driver who drifts aimlessly through the night while his own wife endures a sleepless night with a crying baby and a nagging mother-in-law.