The house of the engineer

In "House of the Mandaasa," Huda Al-Tamimi writes personal and intimate travel literature, but it begins from the closest point possible: the house. Before airports, before distant cities, there is "the Mandaasa" in Unaizah – the large family house, the smell of fresh local eggs, the sound of roosters at dawn, summer sleep on the roof under the stars. The house that is not called "Grandpa Ibrahim's house" but "the Mandaasa"; because the house itself was nestled among greenery, the garden, the fruits, the corridors, and the birds. This place is not just a childhood backdrop, but the root of the whole idea: that place becomes meaning, and that family becomes the root of the relationship with the world. From the first page, the book tells you: we will travel, yes, but we will travel with the eyes of someone who believes that the most beautiful journeys start from within. The book is written as successive portraits of places and people: an old house in Lebanon, an ancient café in Cairo, a alley in Lisbon, a small inn in downtown, and even a girl you don’t know in a café in Unaizah who shares the table with you, and you meet again after a year as if you were old friends. These are not tourist scenes; they are not "travel tips" nor "top 10 places to visit." Tamimi does not write travel guides but relationships. Every station is a feeling captured, the warmth of a cup of tea in a cold moment, a lemon tree in a rural house yard, an elderly hand explaining the history of her village in a dialect that is not your own, but you understand it because warmth is understood in all languages. The clear bet is: the world, in reality, is not maps and borders, but people who open their seats and their memories to you.