Night of the second of August

Author: Falah Rahim Category: Short Stories and Novels Publisher: Dar Al-Rafidain Publication Date: 2025 Cover Design: Regular paper Number of Pages: 384 Synopsis of the novel: Before the earthquake of the Kuwait invasion at dawn, the threads of the night of August 2, 1990, gathered randomly and spontaneously, not hinting at the great event. In Baghdad, that night, the Strindberg play "Miss Julie" was being performed at the Rabat Hall. In a room of an old house in Al-Bayya, white ants emerge between the bookshelves, and the smell of white oil emanates as a futile cure for it. That Christmas night coincides with the tenth of Muharram in the Hijri calendar. The busy person’s mind, preoccupied with its harvest season, does not see what these signs mean. There is a job tailored to satisfy the soul, a marriage long awaited for decades of bargaining back and forth, and an opportunity to normalize the exception after a long tragic war. All of this is tested at dawn; instead of the job, newborns are summoned for service, and the scene turns upside down. The small intimate successes discover the surrounding crowded horizon. There is a new destructive war, a siege with precise procedures that do not miss a single heartbeat, and two families in Al-Bayya and in Princeess Street during the time of hardship.