Habiba as told by Nadim

The first novel by the distinguished journalist and critic Mahmoud Abdel Shakour.

This novel opens up to two stories and two experiences, asking difficult and outstanding questions, about love and friendship, passion and reason, art and reality, fate and choice, and tracing the line from Ibn Hazm and Werther's pain, to WhatsApp and Facebook, and announced. Confused by the fluctuation of emotions and whims, and suspicious of a mysterious scenario, written elsewhere, while we are delusional that we are writing our lives.

Did Nadim write the novel, or did she write it?

Was reality made art, or did art recreate a parallel reality that renews sorrows?

“My heart broke twice in ten years, it is a terrible, unforgettable, indescribable, and unrecoverable break.

Yet I find amazed at the strange energy of life that makes me still able to read and write, watch movies, babysit friends, smile at a child, quarrel with a pet cat, laugh at a downtown café, bless two lovers, scream after a beautiful goal Grilled, making a cup of mint tea at the hour of the succulent, traveling to space on the suite of Abdel Wahab’s voice, remembering a smile and a pure laugh, receiving sleep and waking dreams, celebrating the sun, the sound of rain, the smell of bread, the chaos of stars and birds, and the enthusiasm for beauty wherever it is and wherever it is.

A life energy that has no effect on the will, and I have no preference in making it, this is how I was created, and this is how I live.

Lord, do not deprive me of this energy that you have given me.

Heartbreak is compensated by the steadfastness of the soul.

I am not afraid of death, let it come as it pleases, and as it pleases.

But I don't want to die while I'm alive.

Make me die the moment I lose the taste of the world, and the colors of things.”