Kimiya

Author: Walid Alaa El-Din

"I have known Kimiya since she came to us as a child who had just left her father's sheep to graze, a soul exposed to what we cannot see. Some described her as mad, while others accused her of being possessed. I alone know that she is not like that; she is a being who shed her darkness and became transparent. A child prepared to enter the world of women, in need of a lover, to discover together the secrets of love and the body. And we were prepared when they snatched her from me and threw her into a furnace to extract her soul." This novel traces the destiny of "Kimiya", a girl who grew up in the house of the Sufi poet and lover "Jalaluddin Rumi", and whom he presented as a wife to his master "Shamsuddin Tabrizi" despite the apparent disparity between them; which was manifested in her being forty-eight years younger than her husband. The novel, through a flowing narrative and sweet language, raises several difficult and enigmatic questions: Why did "Tabrizi" agree to marry Kimiya despite being almost her grandfather's age? Why did Kimiya fall ill shortly after her marriage to him with an illness that only left with her soul? How did Kimiya disappear as if she had never existed? Why did Jalaluddin Rumi not mourn her death in his poems? Why did she live unknown and die with an unknown grave? And most importantly: Why did Rumi offer her to Shamsuddin despite knowing about the love that brought her together with his son Alaa al-Din? A novel, with all its audacity to penetrate the past and reconstruct it, opens the door for its reader to another world and different interpretations.

Through these stories, the author's delicacy in capturing moments when masks fall is evident. Here we do not look for superheroes, but live with people just like us; with "Mukhtar" who fears retirement, and with the mother who fights her fears in the dark for her children, and with the wonder of a child seeing the sea for the first time and forgetting the world.
In "The Clay Man," the marginalized becomes a hero, and fleeting pain turns into lasting wisdom. These are texts that do not merely tell stories but delve into the depths of human fragility to extract a true treasure from it; our astonishing ability to find beauty and companionship in the most unexpected places.