The Call of the Curlew

About this book

Litanies of vengeance: when the curlew sings of pain. Among the thirsty hills of Beni Worcan and the crushing silence of the desert, souls are stripped away in the darkness of night under the pretense of purity stained with blood. Here nothing is heard but the echo of the curlew's call, the bird that witnessed the tragedy and never left the scene of the crime, its voice turning into an eternal cry that keeps sinners from sleep. The tale begins with Amina, the Bedouin girl who shed her innocence to become a soul thirsty for revenge. She saw her sister Hanadi fall dead beneath the blade of a dagger, guilty of nothing but that she loved, so Amina resolved not to content herself with bitter weeping. She left for the city, not to seek a new life but to enter the lion's den: the house of the young engineer who was the cause of her sister's loss. Between the corridors of the luxurious palace and the heart of the wounded girl, a silent and bitter battle rages. Can love sprout from the ashes of vengeance? And how can a victim who wanted to be a striking viper find herself drowning in a sea of feelings she never accounted for? It is a human epic swaying between obscurity and inspiration, drawing the contours of the conflict between heart and mind, between the cruelty of custom and the mercy of fate. In his masterpiece The Call of the Curlew, Taha Hussein does not narrate a story; he opens us a window onto the human soul at its utmost states of breaking and rising, leaving us with the eternal question: is revenge enough to heal the scars injustice has left behind?