One Night is Enough

The events of the novel take place in a café in the Jordanian capital, Amman, on the night of the start of the “Naksa” (Six-Day War), in June 1967. Wijdan, a nurse who works at Amman Hospital, takes refuge in the café at the moment the war breaks out and the sky is filled with smoke. She is forced to remain there to avoid the danger of her journey home, and strikes up a conversation with café employee Dheeb. Although its main events take place within a narrow timeframe and setting in the present day, the novel traces the past lives of the two protagonists across various locations. Dheeb is a young man who was forced into exile before returning to Amman; Wijdan’s family were exiled from Palestine in the 1948 Nakba, and she suffered the painful and tragic loss of her fiancée. The novel delves into the psychology of the two characters, revealing how their connection develops over the course of one night as chaos erupts around them.