The covenant of Damiana

Author: Osama Abdul Raouf Al-Shazly Publication date: 2023 Category: Short Stories and Novels Number of pages: 383 Publisher: Al-Rawaaq for Publishing and Distribution *** The palm trunk rose, to which his body was tied, towards the sky. A sinful man burdened with shame, not seeking salvation for himself or others. He gazes from above his cross at a land he wished to see the footprints of his feet on, but his feet are suspended in the air, and a sky without a place for him above him, after he became cursed by everyone's testimony, Muslims, Christians, Sunnis, Shia, Romans, and Copts. He lived his life wearing a garment of doubt, and today he dies with one certainty: that life is absurd and not worth living, and man in this life is like a shadow's illusion. Is there any trace of an illusion? This novel is not just a text narrating a critical period in Egypt's history, characterized by national, sectarian, and ethnic conflict at the end of the Fatimid state, but a comprehensive human experience in searching for identity among dozens of affiliations that divide. A new journey for the writer Osama Abdul Raouf Al-Shazly about concepts of identity, homeland, and belonging, and a new story from pages of the past casting its shadows on the present.