Itinerant Kurdish teachers Said (Said Mohamadi) and Reeboir (Bahman Ghobadi) find many uses for the blackboards they tote, some of which actually pertain to education. Others include doubling as a gurney to carry a sick man, as shields from the warfare along the Iran-Iraq border and as a dowry so Said can wed the widow Halaleh (Behnaz Jafari). When Halaleh's son and a group of his peers tag along with Said and Reeboir, they try to impart their knowledge to the boys amid the surrounding chaos.