Sinja

Author's name: Ahmed Khaled Tawfik

Perhaps in the following pages we will attempt to unravel the mystery of the disappearance of Essam El-Sharkawy two months ago. The police were unable to uncover anything, and it became clear after a series of routine investigations that they would find nothing, and that the disappearance would simply be filed away in a dusty archive, overgrown with cobwebs, with the phrase "Investigation underway," written by a detective's assistant as he yawned. The missing man was a novelist. That is, he wrote stories, and it was said that he was somewhat famous, but the truth is that no one knew him at all, and no one had ever read a word of his work. In the Dahdira El-Shenawy area, located on the outskirts of Cairo, where its inhabitants live according to their own law, and where the environment seems fertile ground for poverty and crime, Afaf commits a horrific act; she stands in front of a speeding train that tears her apart beneath its wheels. And when the details of what happened after the accident become clear… It turns out that before taking her own life, Afaf wrote an unclear word with an ambiguous meaning on the wall opposite the crime scene using black spray paint. Some interpreted it as "the knife!" While some seek new hope in the January Revolution and others seize the opportunity to evade the law, Afaf's suicide sparks the interest of an amateur novelist. He embarks on an investigative journey, attempting to understand exactly what happened, but a new mystery surrounding his fate complicates matters even further.