Saleem Albeik

The novel tells the story of a young man from the Mar Elias refugee camp in Beirut who meets a young woman from Haifa, Palestine, in Paris. Through their relationship and conversations, the novel transmits the significance of Haifa to each of the characters. The aim of the novel is to convey the contradictory ideas and feelings of Palestinians who come from the same city through the medium of a literary aesthetic informed by human sentiments, frailties and strengths, but that refuses to indulge in sentimentality or melodrama. The story unfolds in the context of the relationship between the protagonist from Mar Elias and Reema and her two friends Charlotte and Melanie.