The Seventh Day Melody

Author's name: Jalal Barjas

One spring morning in 2012, as I waited for a bus to take me to work, I saw a young Gypsy sweeping the street to the tunes of music playing from a mobile phone strapped to his waist. He jumped gracefully, the broom in his hands as docile as a woman he was dancing with. In a moment of skillful impersonation, it transformed into a rifle, aimed at presumed enemies. I grew accustomed to seeing the Gypsy, and a silent friendship developed between us, interrupted only by fleeting greetings. One cold winter morning, I couldn't find the young man, but I heard his groans as he disappeared behind a wall. Before leaving, I took off my coat and covered him with it, unaware that he now had my belongings. In the evening, I found him waiting for me, placing my coat in his hand to return it to me: I'm not crazy, and a Gypsy isn't necessarily a thief, as rumors say. At that moment, as I was contemplating the gypsies' tents on the edge of the city, the idea for this novel was born. It tells the story of human destiny, and how a human being can be a monster, and at the same time a docile lamb in a city made up of seven neighborhoods: to the south is a large camp for gypsies expelled from it, and to the west is a mountain on top of which is the grave of its first grandfather. It is a city whose inhabitants are afflicted with a strange epidemic, so it is on the edge of the abyss, and then salvation comes from an unexpected source.