Ahmed Mourad, inmate of the “Locanda Bir Al-Wataitet”

“Locanda Bir Al-Watait” is the title of Egyptian writer Ahmed Mourad’s new novel about “Dar Al-Shorouk” in Cairo. The 253-page work is the seventh novel to the author’s credit, which won the State Award for Excellence in Literature. The events begin in 2019 during the restoration of the “Locanda Bir Al-Wattait”, adjacent to the Ahmed Ibn Tulun Mosque in the Sayyida Zeinab neighborhood, where newspapers dating from 1865 were found buried behind the wall of Room Number Seven on the third floor of the hostel and are well preserved.

The author goes back to the 19th century to begin to narrate events from the reality of the notes, choosing only notes from 34 to 53. If they seem few, then the social, political and historical events are tremendously exciting. Note that in the mid-19th century, there were a series of heinous crimes against members of the ruling class in Egypt, but one person was able to keep the end of the thread that led to the detection of the perpetrator. The owner of the newspaper is Suleiman Jaber Al-Sioufi, who worked as a photographer of the dead for years, before the creation of an organized police apparatus, and has extensive experience in crime analysis, although at the same time eccentric and with great imagination.
Since Al-Sioufi was summoned to participate in solving the mystery of the first crime, the reader has been drawn to participate in the search for the culprit due to the strange way in which he is fascinated to torture his victims before ending their lives. , and even leave him a distinctive memorial at the crime scene to show off his action, according to Reuters.
Events continue and the novel branches into three inseparable tracks. The first is the murders, in which the hero’s persistence in revealing the perpetrator and his intelligence in the investigation and analysis leads to him being personally placed at the bottom of the list as promised by the perpetrator, despite its lack of connection to the prominent personalities it targets.
As for the second road, it is Cairo in ancient times at the time of the construction of the Suez Canal and during the rule of Khedive Ismail and the Ottoman Sultan Abdul Aziz the First.
The third clue is the personal life of Suleiman al-Sioufi, that stranger who lives in Locanda Bir al-Watait, likes women and thinks he has special queens.