Because most of the characters are relatively unemployed and come from impoverished backgrounds, much of the book is expressed in terms of money. When Murad asks Rahal when he will leave Morocco, Rahal implies that the amount of time depends on Murad’s ability to get him the money. In this example, money is conflated with both Murad’s future, chronology, and distance, as though everything in Murad’s life depends upon money. Murad also speaks about his future in terms of the price he has paid. In this way, the characters’ lives are entirely dependent upon the availability or often lack thereof of money. This attitude sharply contrasts with those few characters, namely Larbi, who do not have to worry about money.

Many of the characters struggle to scrape together money for even the barest necessities in life, often having to borrow from family members in order to survive. As such, there is a kind of desperation attached to money throughout the book. Similarly, when Halima attempts to buy her divorce from the corrupt judge, she reflects upon the difficulties she and her brothers faced in saving this money: “Suddenly she wished the exchange of money had taken a little longer. Tarik and Abdelkrim had worked so hard to save it and she had waited so long for it and now it was gone” (72).