Fleeing to My Destiny

About this book

Between estrangement's jaws and the homeland's fangs: the journey of searching for a "self" that never gets lost. Have you ever felt you run with all your strength, not to reach a place, but to escape a destiny pursuing you with its shadow? In "Fleeing to My Destiny," Mohamed Gouda takes us on an emotional journey beginning from a cold train platform in Hagen, Germany, ending at Gaza's walls heavy with pain and waiting. This book is no mere autobiography or expatriate diaries, but a precise dissection of "the anxious identity" dwelling the gray zone between survival and death. The tale begins with a passing encounter with Sam, the young man born in Germany yet seeing a stranger in the mirror, and his father Haroun carrying his distant homeland's wars in his face's furrows. Through these human intersections, the writer weaves the threads of "Rafah Crossing Syndrome"; that isthmus turning man into a mere number on a bus, where the utmost dream becomes crossing to the other bank, only to find oneself stuck again in estrangement.