chronic longing

A brief summary of the novel Chronic Longing
The novel revolves around Salah, a character with a captivating and distinctive scent. He has a strong connection to his mother, reaching a sacred level of respect, love, and attachment. This is evident in his conversation with her as he sits near her grave, where he returns to celebrate her birthday. There, he distributes sweets to the graves in a surreal, symbolic manner.
The first chapters tell the story of Salah, the adventurous, in love child who travels long kilometers to see a girl who lives on top of a mountain. He has never heard her speak or met her, but he loves her. He also talks about his adventure with his friend Mustafa when they went to join the revolution to fight their enemy. It tells the story of Salah, who works at a newspaper and then leaves it due to reaching retirement age. Nagat, the newspaper's human resources manager, speaks about him, as does the security guard who asks him to cooperate with him. The novel then tells the story of Salah through the character of Fawzy, the cemetery guard, and also through a woman named Salma, both of whom overhear him talking to his dead mother. Then, Amira, his childhood sweetheart, speaks about him, as she grows up, gets married, gets divorced, and meets him again.
There's also the character of Colonel Zahra, who summons Salah because of his attempts to transport his deceased mother and all the dead people in the neighborhood back to their homes due to the threats they face. Salah organizes a reverse funeral that transports the dead from their graves to their homes, a funeral more symbolic than real, in order to preserve their memory as displaced people. It later turns out that Colonel Zahra is the same girl Salah fell in love with in high school.
There's Saber, the other face of Salah, who sometimes puts him on trial and at other times reveals certain truths. The novel reconsiders man's relationship with his natural mother, his mother the earth, and his mother the cause, and it sounds the alarm about the disappearance of the memory of the displaced due to the practices of extremists who want to burn and plow the cemetery.
Technically, the novel follows the short story approach, where each chapter is a short story that the reader enjoys, but which encourages them to continue reading.