Circumambulation around the palm tree | Novel

A child imagined the river as a green carpet... and fell into it. From that moment, Tarfa begins his life's journey, chased by the passion of discovery. In an abandoned date press, a four-year-old boy finds a magical book, and his love for reading is ignited. He learns to decipher the letters himself, and amazes everyone with his intelligence, until his peers gather around him to listen to his stories. He sets off on his bicycle and travels around Basra to find a book, a magazine, or a stolen moment in the cinema. But when illness threatens his father's sight, Tarfa trains to be his father's eyes, and rushes to work early to secure his income. As his feelings of rejection and anger grow, he finds himself immersed in political action and leading sit-ins in the streets. One poem he wrote was enough to push him straight into the heart of the storm. “Remarkable ingenuity and literary ability” - Abbas Baydoun “Master of his narrative tools” - Al-Quds Al-Arabi Newspaper