Sleep Phase by Mohamed Kheir

After seven years in prison, Warif is released to a changed Cairo. Freedom so far has been endless, inscrutable meetings with official-looking strangers, trying to get his job as a translator back. This new Cairo, busy with expats and bureaucrats, is proving disorienting: What is he supposed to make of these self-assured newcomers who are so certain of his obsolescence, his subjugation, his solitude? They seem happy to provide him with a salary, if he's willing to give up the work that gave his life meaning. As his encounters more-and-more resemble interrogations and the futility of trying to escape the system set against him threatens to suffocate him, Warif escapes into the vivid colors of the city, looking deeper and deeper into the food, the people, the buildings, and the flowers, until what's real blurs into fantasy.

Mohamed Kheir is a novelist, poet, short story writer, journalist, and lyricist. His short story collections Remsh Al Ein (2016) and Afarit Al Radio (2011) both received The Sawiris Cultural Award, and Leil Khargi (2001) was awarded the Egyptian Ministry of Culture Award for poetry. Slipping ( Eflat Al Asabea, Kotob Khan Publishing House, 2018; Two Lines Press, 2021) is his second novel and his first to be translated into English. He lives in Egypt.

Robin Moger is a translator of Arabic to English currently based in Barcelona. His translations of prose and poetry have appeared in Blackbox Manifold, The White Review, Tentacular, Asymptote, Words Without Borders, Seedings, The Johannesburg Review of Books, The Washington Square Review, and others. He has translated several novels and prose works into English including Iman Mersal's How To Mend (Kayfa ta), Nael Eltoukhy's The Women of Karantina (AUC Press), and Youssef Rakha's The Crocodiles (7 Stories Press).

2025

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