Memories of war, of political internment, of the protagonist s marriage, of sexual encounters, flights through Cairo, faces, make up the texture of the narrative. And in the midst of this El Wardani periodically, if subtly, directs attention to the novel s political ad historical theme, which is one of the disappointment, disillusion and consequent persecution that followed President Sadat s peace treaty with Israel in 1979. Obviously, there is a strong contrast here to the smell of decaying corpses. I smelled the air and looked around, but it had already gone. In the course of a journey that begins in an unidentified flat at sunset, and ends on an unidentified street at sunrise, El Wardani manages to draw the contours not only of a unique literary structure, but also, if more obliquely, of a specific political and historical experience.
Dreams dissolve into reality, just as the past dissolves into the present.
El Wardani s precise, unemotional depiction of these overwhelmingly concrete realities is a moving reflection on very emotional, very abstract registers of existence.