The Doorway Gate

About this book

Between the bustle of "Nahdha" garage and the calm of distant "Souk Al-Sheyoukh," Khellawi takes his first step toward Baghdad in 1978, carrying in his small bag the remnants of early orphanhood and dreams not yet ripened. He did not know that the capital he had imagined as a woman combing her hair by the river would bare at him teeth of steel and din. Here in the "Darwaza" neighborhood of Kadhimiya, where incense scents intersect with the cries of rebellious ice-sellers, the boy begins his journey of self-discovery amid a world boiling politically and socially. "The Doorway Gate" is no mere biography of a place, but a sharp crossing from innocence to the shock of knowledge. In "the Khan" teeming with tales, Khellawi watches humans turn into anxious shadows, and hears the beats of war drums approaching to devour his generation. Between the lessons of Said, his uncle's husband pouring his anger on "the new gods," and the seduction of Fathia searching for an exit from her feminine prison, the hero finds himself before the great existential questions: do we choose our destinies, or are we mere leaves.