Translated from Arabic by Leri Price.
Published by Faber, 2023, 404 pages. Original version published in 2019.

January 1907. A flood wipes out the village of Hosh Hanna, near Aleppo, leaving only two survivors. At the time, Hanna Gregoros—who had built this village—is away with his friend Zakariya Bayazidi. They return home to total devastation: Hanna’s wife and young son are dead, as is Zakariya’s son. His wife Shaha is one of the two survivors, the other being a woman called Mariana.

Hanna and Zakariya have been friends all their lives. Zakariya’s father Ahmed Bayazidi had taken in young Hanna after his family was massacred when his father was wrongfully accused of killing an Ottoman officer. There were people unhappy with Ahmed taking in a Christian boy, but Hanna’s father was a close friend of his, and he felt responsible for the child. The boys grow up with Zakariya’s sister Souad, and their friend, Azar, who is Jewish.

As adolescents, Hanna and Zakariya are young tearaways, constantly getting into trouble. They grow into pleasure-loving young men, but the flood changes them.

Zakariya devotes himself to his beloved horses. Hanna retreats into himself, searching for something more meaningful. He simplifies his life and eventually leaves on a journey to a monastery, followed by Mariana, who is determined to turn him into a saint. People start to follow Hanna, depriving him of the peace he needs. “He came to this place to escape the throngs that would prostrate themselves in worship. People needed miracles, hidden tricks, delusions, dreams—things they couldn’t understand. But he needed peace within, to die quietly away from the noise.”

Hanna’s father has left him well-off, so he is financially independent. Before the flood, Hanna and Zakariya had put some of this money into building a citadel, designed by Azar. This is a house of pleasure—with women and gambling—and even includes a place where gamblers who have lost everything can commit suicide. But when religious fanatics close down the brothels in Aleppo, the citadel becomes a shelter for the prostitutes, a place where they can feel safe.

This saga takes place from the late 19th century to the early 1950s. It is not only a story about the two friends and the people around them, but also about Syria, from the last days of the Ottomans to after the country’s independence. It takes in the rise and fall of fundamentalism and a hardening of attitudes among both Muslims and Christians.

The story is also about the relations among people of different faiths, boundaries that Hanna, Zakariya and Azar ignore, remaining friends all their lives. However, these artificial barriers have unavoidable implications in other situations. Hanna and Souad are in love but hesitate to act on it, and a young couple, William and Aisha, fall deeply in love but face several obstacles because of their different religions.

The flood marks the midway point of the story—although the book begins with it—and the narrative moves fluidly between the time before the flood and after it.

This is a sprawling book with numerous characters, some of whom make an appearance and then reappear several chapters later, which makes it hard to remember them. (A list of characters at the start of the book would have helped.) But the ones at the centre—Hanna, Zakariya, Souad, Mariana, to name a few—are memorable, well-rounded and interesting. There is Maryam, a survivor of the massacre of Armenians, who, while she feels lucky to be alive, also lives with traumatic memories and the guilt of the survivor.

For a book with such a wide canvas, there is very little dialogue, relying instead on narration. There is a first-person narrative later on, when Hanna reflects on his life. There is also a book within this book recounting the love affair between Aisha and William, written by Junaid Khalifa, who is also a character in the novel.

I enjoyed the writing, something that Leri Price does justice to in her translation. Hanna is in love with Souad but unable to tell her: “he knew what he would say to Souad, but when he saw her, his thoughts dried up, and he felt like an abandoned well clogged with dried-out grass.” There is Zakariya’s son, “a man lost in silence. He was a man who didn’t want to live. He wanted to turn this weight into colorful balloons, light and transparent, that would go flying through the air, to be gleefully pecked by birds until the balloons exploded and their pieces scattered over the ground.”

This is a book about life and death, about grief, love and friendship. About doing what you need to do, regardless of what society dictates.

And about the dead—once loved and not forgotten—with no one to pray over their graves.