“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.
As soon as Pavel, at the head of a geological expedition, arrives at “Devil’s Hill,” the old shepherd living there warns him that he must leave the hill within a month, before he ends up committing suicide on the branch of an oak tree, and the fate of his mission becomes the same as the fate of the previous eight missions. However, the enthusiastic young man insists on making the mission a success, even though the members of his mission are fleeing down the hill one after the other.
Little by little, the two get closer: the young man who studied in the Polish capital, Warsaw, and the old man who knows the hill’s hidden secrets, and their evenings become endless darkness, during which “Pavel” tells the shepherd about his love affairs, while the latter listens in amazement, and his heart burns with love for the nun Maria, the last of the young man’s lovers. .
In “The Women of Warsaw,” Georgi Markov writes about two different worlds that border on contradiction, leaving the oak tree to chart the path to the end...
