In this novel, “Sabwat Yassin,” we will see the fictional character of the intellectual divided into two characters, the character that the state created, fabricated, and presented as its true self. The original character who escaped from this dark fate went to the home of the religious people from whom he had tried to escape, and then to the community of the Non-Qabalan, a tribe seeking peace who had no dream except to escape from the Qabalan, the sons of Cain, the eternal killer.
Yassin escapes and flees, but the state is bigger, and we will read in the novel: “He looked again in the mirror... The face is a real Yassin, there is no doubt, no doubt, no worry about it. But what about this large number of Yassins in the mirrors, Yasin the face, Yasin the back, Yasin the right? Yassin on the left, Yassin al-Qadhali in front, and Yassin al-Yami on the left.”
Sabwat Yassin is an image of an intellectual torn between the dream of a universal culture and an oppressed society
Salman visits the dead cities to make a documentary film about them, those cities that were symbols of ancient civilizations, before they became cities of broken columns and stone remains. But he finds there, in the house of one of the city's elders, a painting of a wounded deer, signed by his mother, "Fatima." Soon, the owner of the house presents him with possible scenarios for his film, all of which revolve around “Fatima,” and he finds himself entering a magical world and a confusing maze as he spies on the hidden faces of his mother, realizing that he only knew one face of her.
In this novel, Khairy Al-Dhahabi manipulates times and multiple voices to write about dead cities and Fatima with its many mirrors. Who is she? What is its truth? What is the secret of wishing? “If her name wasn’t Fatima”?
Misfortunes befall the Levant Sharif, the birth of strange children increases, drought and poverty prevail, and the attempt of Ibrahim Pasha and the apostles of the French Revolution who joined him to overthrow the state of the Ottoman Sultan is nothing but a sign of the imminent arrival of Satan, as the religious extremists see, trying to preserve the Levant Sharif, fighting the creation Newspapers and comics that encourage obscenity.
All of this is happening outside, while Arwa sneaks into Bernardo’s house and messes with a strange drawing of a complete being, carrying both masculinity and femininity.
In an interesting plot that combines imagination with history, myth, and folktales, Khairy Al-Dhahabi tries to read the effects of the French campaign in Syria, and monitors the return of theater to the Levant, discussing many problematic issues: myth, masculinity and femininity, and the Damascene people killing those who are gay among them.
