money in the sock *spoilers*

Reda was searching for the photo of his girlfriend, which his father had taken (and later gave back). As for the sock, either the father hid it deliberately because he didn't like Mustapha and knew that accusing him of theft was a good way to get rid of him, or he might've misplaced the sock (accidentally kicking it under the seat) and thought he'd been ripped off.

There's also the possibility that Mustapha took the money sock and then returned it, but that doesn't seem plausible. Anyone who'd stolen money would be long gone, not walking outside the hotel where the men were staying.

I concur with what the previous respondent said, plus I think that Reda had one of his first turning points upon finding the sock. My sense was that we watched him go from elation and impulse to tell his dad, to suspicion that his dad might have intentionally set up Moustafa to anger that they'd been starving, etc., because of thinking this money was stolen to realizing that his dad had said he could not make a false accusation of anyone while on a pilgrimage. (And Reda went through a skillfully acted set of transitions conveying those shifts.) But, from what I deduced, when Reda had the last realization, he knew that in facct he could not tell his father about finding the sock precisely to spare his dad the shame and 'failed mission' of having gone on his hajj but wrongly accused a man and thereby undone any good he could do through the pilgrimage. Hence, the made-up story about the French consulate coming through with the money.

I do think -- wittingly or not -- it's a moment by which the director shows the son protecting the father from the consequences of his religious beliefs and, as such, does seem to bear with it one judgmental note on the father's religion as compared to the son's seeming-agnosticism.

The father only thought the money had been stolen when in fact he had hidden it and forgot. The son discovers it but so as not to humiliate his father, who has already explained to the Turkish police officer that he would never soil his haj by making a false complaint, he pretends that the money came from a reimbursement by the French Council.