The Gatekeeper

Waseem Alsharqi  |  The AFAC Novel Writing Program  |  2014  |  Syria
Attayyeb is an Algerian soldier in the French army during the occupation of Algeria. He is taken to Syria to complete his military service. After the independence of Syria in 1946, he decides to stay in Damascus to start a family. His grandson, Farid, lived his early childhood in Saudi Arabia before moving back to Damascus with his family at the beginning of the nineties and discovering a different world at home and in school than the world he knew in Saudi Arabia. The story of the “father” as the connecting link between two generations is lost between the stories of the “grandfather” who left his family in Algeria and that of the “grandson” who is discovering his homeland anew. This novel seeks to underline this approach relying on two parallel narrative levels between the chapters.