Summary
Following two hospital maids, Okwe lies to one of them and tells them it is his first day working there, and that he needs his uniform. She brings him along, giving him a uniform, and he sneaks into a room where the drugs are kept. He takes two different drugs from the shelves, then brings them to the man with the wound.
He prescribes the drugs to the man, with a young girl translating his English into Somali. "He says to thank you, God is great," the young girl says, before translating the instructions about the medication. Okwe tells them that it is very important for them to take the right amount of medication at the right time and the girl nods.
The next day Okwe asks which hospital they went to to get the kidney removed. Okwe guesses that he got his kidney removed in the hotel and asks how much money he got for risking his life like that. The Somali man tells him that he is now an English citizen. "He swapped his insides for a passport?" Okwe asks, and the girl translates the Somali man saying, "The man at the hotel said it would be like taking out a tooth."
We see Senay working at the factory, then leaving work to go to the cafe. She waits for Okwe for an hour and a half, when he shows up with the check. He gets some of the stimulant herb, the khat, and Senay asks him why he doesn't sit down with her, noting that he seems down. "You should keep away from me, you lost your job. Because of me you are in a sweatshop," Okwe says, and he leaves.
Okwe goes to visit Guo Yi, who tells him that he can sleep at the hospital.
We see Sneaky carrying a box into a kitchen at a fine hotel and handing it over to a head waiter, saying that it contains truffles from Provence. The waiter offers him 1000 pounds for them, and Sneaky reluctantly agrees. In exchange for the truffles, Sneaky tells the waiter that there is an African night porter—Okwe—who came through the water, which means he came from Amsterdam. He tells the waiter that he needs to know what kind of doctor Okwe is, and leaves.
The two immigration officers visit the factory where Senay works and the workers flee the room before they get there. They tell the manager that they are looking for Senay and tell him to call them if he sees her.
As the workers come back into the factory, the manager confronts Senay about the fact that she is causing him trouble. He tells her that if she gets thrown in prison, the men and woman are mixed and she will be raped every night, before saying, "If you want to be like a Western girl, that's what happens to Western girls." In a rack of clothes, he begins to touch her sensuously and she resists. He eventually forces her to perform oral sex on him.
At Okwe's hotel, Sneaky calls Okwe over and tells him that an old couple need his help. He lists Okwe's credentials as a doctor, much to Okwe's surprise. Taking Okwe downstairs, Sneaky shows him the counterfeit passports he makes, and tells Okwe that he will pay him 3000 pounds for each operation he performs, as well as procure a passport for him and Senay. Okwe says he doesn't want to get involved, but Sneaky tells him to think about it.
Okwe goes to Guo Yi, who is working on the body of a Chinese man with no family. "I cut off his buttons so his spirit could escape. I'm sewing up his pockets so he can't take his bad luck with him to the spirit world," Guo Yi says, adding, "If he's an atheist, I'm ruining a suit no one will ever see. If he's a Buddhist, I'm giving him eternal happiness for the price of a piece of thread."
Abruptly, Okwe tells his friend that he figured out why there was a heart in the hotel room. Guo Yi is unfazed by the information, which upsets Okwe. "There's nothing so dangerous as a virtuous man," Guo Yi says, confused that Okwe did not know people sell organs. "If I had the courage, I'd sell my kidney," Guo Yi says.
At the hotel, Okwe struggles to stay awake at the front desk. In a backroom, he finds an envelope with his full name on it. Inside is a polaroid of a young girl. The telephone rings and when Okwe picks up, it's Sneaky, asking Okwe what he thinks of the girl. "She's my next customer. Eight years old. She's called Rima. Her family brought her over from Saudi, hoping for a miracle," Sneaky says. He tells Okwe that if Rima doesn't get a new kidney in the next few weeks she will die, and that they need Okwe to perform the operation.
At the front desk, Ivan tells Okwe that London is colder than Moscow that night. When the front desk phone rings, it's Senay telling Okwe that she wants to go to New York, Boston or Los Angeles with him. She is crying as she hangs up the phone and runs home.
At her apartment the next day, Senay dances with abandon to Middle Eastern music. Okwe comes in and is confused by her state. She tells him, "The factory did not suit me," as Okwe realizes that Senay has talked to Sneaky about donating an organ. Okwe becomes angry, warning Senay not to donate an organ, holding her and saying, "Because you are poor you will be gutted like an animal." Senay tells him that someone at the factory had the operation and she is free, but Okwe insists that others are dead. He tells her to save money and work hard instead, and she collapses onto a couch.
Analysis
In the midst of his sleuthing, Okwe remains an especially benevolent and generous person. When he meets the Somali man at Sneaky's office who has a horrible infected wound, he goes out of his way to procure medication for the man. The combination of his expertise as a doctor and his desire to help other undocumented people in his orbit makes Okwe a selfless protagonist, a heroic man who does what he can to help those in need.
It turns out that Okwe's benevolence also leads him to learn more about the mystery of the human heart. In helping the Somali man, Okwe learns about an entire underground operation in which undocumented immigrants sell their organs for passports, an operation that is orchestrated by his manager, Sneaky. In the moment when Okwe is not even looking to solve the mystery of the heart in the hotel toilet, he stumbles upon the disturbing answers to his questions.
Senay faces her own obstacles as an undocumented immigrant. After she becomes close to Okwe, the immigration authorities begin trying to hunt her down, and she finds herself in a world of predatory men. After the immigration officers question the factory manager about Senay's whereabouts, the manager tries to blackmail her into having sex with him, threatening that if she doesn't "give [him] a good reason" not to call immigration, he will have to turn her in. The film explores the ways that Senay's status as a low-income undocumented worker make her more vulnerable to the coercive and violent advances of men.
Tensions rise yet gain when Sneaky offers Okwe not only money to perform the illegal organ operations, but also a passport for him and Senay. While perhaps easy to refuse without such an offer, Okwe becomes conflicted when discovering it also means that he and Senay could perhaps find freedom. "I do not want to get involved," Okwe insists, but we can see that Sneaky's offer gets under his skin, and causes him some internal conflict.
Okwe finds himself all the more isolated, even after learning the truth about the organ selling. He goes to Guo Yi thinking that the revelation of the underground organ market will outrage his friend, but Guo Yi scoffs at Okwe's naivety, and suggests that he himself would sell his own kidney if he were braver. Okwe is disappointed to realize that the world around him has grown hardened to the realities of immigration, and that he is alone in his higher ethical standards. Guo Yi even warns Okwe, "There's nothing so dangerous as a virtuous man."
