The Gate of Curses

About this book

Behind "the Gate of Curses'" curtain.. when the echo of sins returns. Some doors in this world open not with iron keys, but with words whispered in the night's darkness, and intentions slipping through lost souls' cracks. In his short-story collection "The Gate of Curses," writer Ghady Abdel-Fattah takes us on a journey fraught with danger and hideous beauty, where the logic we know has no place, and sovereignty belongs only to merciless beings and featureless shadows dwelling in the forgotten corners of our memory. This work is no mere chronicle of jinn tales or black-magic rituals; it is a mirror reflecting the evil latent in the human's depths when his heart grows heedless and his insight weakens. The journey begins with "Mahmoud" and his friends whom curiosity lured to "the Satan's Gospel," to realize too late that some worlds must not be visited, and that some names, when uttered, awaken what should never be awakened. The stories move between fetuses' screams, tattoos engraved with fire in skin, and frightening psychological disorders like "necrophilia," and sinister theories like "the human abductor" swallowing maidens' innocence. In a condensed literary style, the writer blends existential horror with deep exhortation, affirming that the true danger lies not in the mysterious being lurking for us, but in "the hand that invited it, and the heart that believed." "The Gate of Curses" is late confessions and documents surviving truth's fire, written for those who have the courage to look into the storm's eye, to learn in the end that light is seen only from darkness's heart, and that repentance may be the only door closing behind us all curses.