The world is minus one | Novel

This novel belongs to war literature, as it tells the story of an Iraqi pilot whose helicopter crashes in 1991 near Sulaymaniyah during the Second Gulf War. One of the pilots dies and the other is taken prisoner, while peasants undertake to bury the martyr and place his military jacket with his identity card on the grave. After the ceasefire, one of them travels to Baghdad to inform his family. The writer adopted transparent language and narration in the third person and with a knowledgeable narrator, which allowed her to move between the characters and monitor their feelings, especially the pain of loss among the parents. The absent character, “Ali,” remains present through memory and traditional symbols associated with death, as the spirit circles the house for forty days before disappearing with sunrise. With this combination of reality and symbolism, Maysloun Hadi presents a picture of the modern man torn by wars and loss, and for whom there is no solace except dreaming and imagination.