After the girls match their mother with gentle Moroccan acrobat and nanmed Bilal and he eventually moves in with them and serves as a surrogate father. Julia's friend Eva urges Julia to study in Algiers with a revered Sufi master at a school of "the annihilation of the ego". In another sequence, European dandy Santoni invites Julia, Bea and Lucy to his villa. As finances begin dwindle, Bilal's philosophy is "God will provide" although usually it is Bilal himself who provides. Sometimes he also disappears. At one point, Bea contracts a strep infection while he is gone and nearly dies.