“Adham” was born multiple times, which is difficult to count. And in each of his births, he carries a different personality and another life, to the point where he can be described as multiple versions of a single human being, or to borrow what he says about himself: “I am all formulations. Open endings and closed beginnings. I am the ultimate formula. I am everyone, women and men, a part.” A masculine part in a feminine personality, and a feminine part in a masculine personality. I am the one who desires immortality.
In this novel, Maha Hassan reaches the height of experimentation in writing, ignoring the rules, surrendering herself to the pleasure of storytelling, to the philosophy and philosophies of her hero, trying to write his biography in his endless births.
Qaddour’s text takes inspiration from the idea of confession from the text “Death and the Virgin” by the Chilean writer Ariel Dorfman. Without that, the text begins to build its purely Syrian story, which revolves around an old relationship that comes back to life between an officer who was expelled by the ruling regime in peacetime and brought back in war, and “Jalal,” who was tortured in one of the days of peace. Syrian security detention centers, and among a former detainee who was tortured under the hands of the former. The two meet when their destinies intertwine through Jalal's nephew, the theater director concerned with directing the play "Death and the Virgin" in which Akram plays the role of the tortured, while the character of the tortured girl is played by "Haya, Soha Nader", Omar's lover. In the orbit of these relationships, Radwan, Hamza Hamada, the officer’s bodyguard, gets lost without knowing the horrors he will face after leaving the officer’s service to participate in the massacre of the twenty-first century.
