Good morning

And the neighborhood of Qirmiz with its high stone walls, its doors closed on secrets, only revealing a secret to those who look inside. There, one sees a quarter bustling with the poor and beggars, gathered in the courtyard to work and fulfill needs, or sees a paradise rich with gardens, peace, and sanctuaries. From a small high window near the vault, sometimes a white face like the moon appears. I see it from my position at the window of our small house overlooking the neighborhood, and I am enchanted despite my childhood by its beauty. Three short stories carry within them many tales and characters. In these, Naguib Mahfouz returns to his memories of the Egyptian neighborhood, then in the Abbasia area, which he moved to at the age of twelve. He presents vivid, detailed snapshots that carry the spirit of the place, its old features erased by time but still firmly rooted in Mahfouz’s memory. The short story collection was a single, interconnected fabric, moving between the areas of Al-Hussein and Abbasia. It came filled with the scent of the past, nostalgia for memories, and their enchanting fragrance, expressing Mahfouz’s literary world, and the characters of this world that he narrated in many of his novels, the places that were the stage for many of his events, and the political events he was preoccupied with, starting from the 1919 revolution, the Free Officers movement, the setback, Sadat, and economic openness.