العظماء ليس شرطاً أن يكونوا ممن رست سفن التاريخ على موانئ حياتهم ذات يوم .. بل إنني أعتقد جازمة بأن كل إنسان حارب اليأس والفشل وسجل أسطورة نجاحه بكل إرادة وتصميم
Salman visits the dead cities to make a documentary film about them, those cities that were symbols of ancient civilizations, before they became cities of broken columns and stone remains. But he finds there, in the house of one of the city's elders, a painting of a wounded deer, signed by his mother, "Fatima." Soon, the owner of the house presents him with possible scenarios for his film, all of which revolve around “Fatima,” and he finds himself entering a magical world and a confusing maze as he spies on the hidden faces of his mother, realizing that he only knew one face of her.
In this novel, Khairy Al-Dhahabi manipulates times and multiple voices to write about dead cities and Fatima with its many mirrors. Who is she? What is its truth? What is the secret of wishing? “If her name wasn’t Fatima”?
It includes four research studies that were completed in the third and fourth cycles of the Research Programme: To Deepen the Culture of Knowledge:
- Studying the Syrian cultural product in exile between democratic integration and acculturation. Germany is a model between the two stages of voluntary and forced migration, by researcher Heba Mehrez, under the supervision of Dr. Jamal Shehid.
- The development of Syrian television drama production mechanisms by researcher Wael Salem under the supervision of Dr. Mary Elias
- Children in the darkness of ISIS: between jihadist education and recruitment, by researcher Wassim Raif Salti and supervised by Dr. Jamal Shahid.
- The image of the homeland in the independent Syrian song (From All of Us Together to Bread of a State), by researcher Wassim Al-Sharafi and supervised by Dr. Mary Elias.
