Medhat Ghabrial is a retired structural engineer who earned a PhD in Engineering from Windsor University after emigrating from Egypt in 1974. He was also an adjunct professor at Wayne State University, Detroit, Michigan, and published design manuals for structural engineers and graduate students in Canada. Ghabrial is a natural storyteller who enjoys travelling, writing short stories, and watching English football. He has two adult daughters and lives in Windsor, Ontario. Sherif Asfoury is a noted Egyptian novelist born in Port Said, Egypt. He received his education in Naval Architecture in Suez, Egypt, and Newcastle upon Tyne, UK. He has published short stories collections and 3 novels: “Thessaloniki,” “A probe of immortality,” and “The return of Ulysses.” He lives in Cairo, Egypt.
It's 1971. Egypt is still reeling from the sudden death of its “benevolent” tyrant Nasser and teeters on the precipice of Sadat’s era. The narrator is an engineering graduate student and a TA, moonlighting in an office that operates more as a Marxist political and cultural salon, conveniently located between a famous cabaret and the Cairo Opera House. A frustrated dreamer of bygone eras when poetry and freedoms were sacred, he sees the alarming changes happening in front of his eyes altering his reality for good.