Written prologue in V.O. on black screen:
FADE IN:
NADIM
FADE IN:
A petrol station somewhere on a highway. A YOUNG WOMAN (26) is hitchhiking. She observes a MAN (40) who is filling up his rental truck.
It is already getting dark. The rental truck is parked in front of the restaurant.
The young woman enters through the back door. She spots the man. He is eating dinner. She approaches the table, asking for his direction and for a ride. After a short conversation the man is willing to take her but only under one condition. He has to drive through the night and he is already tired. He needs somebody who will keep him awake with a good story. Not the usual small talk or bla bla but a story that will fascinate him. If she can deliver such a story he will take her. But he will drop her if it is getting boring. First the woman considers the offer as ridiculous but then she accepts.
Both enter the car. He ignites the motor, lights a cigarette and looks at her. “Well?” “Well, I can tell you something about destiny”, she starts. He narrows his eyes sceptically. “I was working once in an old people’s home where I met this black guy. His name was NADIM, he was probably 90 years old, nearly blind. And I was wondering what the hell a black guy from Africa was doing in a small town in Bavaria. Over the next weeks I learned his story. Nadim grew up in the desert, somewhere in Africa at the border between Sudan and Ethiopia...
There are men upon whom such an endless succession of calamities shower down from the bright heavens above, that at least they stand motionless and unresisting while the dark hailing thunderstorm passes over them, while, on the contrary, there are others whom fortune so perversely singles out as her favourites, that it would appear, in some cases, as though the laws of nature were inverted, simply that all things might turn to their advantage.