sleeping in a cherry field

The novel tells the story of "Saeed," an Iraqi immigrant working as a postman in Oslo. He falls in love with a girl who teaches Norwegian to foreign immigrants. This teacher, "Tona Jensen," helps him master the language and achieve his dream of writing stories. Saeed makes significant progress in writing and secures a regular column in a famous local newspaper. However, death takes his beloved "Tona," causing him severe psychological trauma. He spends his days writing in isolation, only meeting his neighbor, "Jakob Gundal," an old man who dreams of sleeping in a cherry orchard. In his last days, Jakob bought a cherry orchard and requested to be buried there, firmly believing that he would transform into a cherry tree. He believed in an ancient myth that a person transforms after death into something that suits the environment in which they are buried; if buried in the mountains, they turn into a rock; if buried in the desert, they turn into sand, etc. Saeed's isolation intensifies after the death of his kind neighbor, and he cuts himself off from the outside world. However, he receives an urgent message from Baghdad, calling him to return there immediately. The sender informs him that his father's remains have been found in a mass grave near the city of Babylon, so he decides to return to Iraq.

• Category: Arabic Novels

• Number of Pages: 223 pages