The Prayer of Anxiety

In 1977, in the isolated and forgotten village of Nag’ Al-Manassi in the heart of Upper Egypt, the inhabitants believe that a minefield surrounds the village, which would be dangerous to attempt to cross. Little is known about the wider world, except that a war between Egypt and Israel has been raging since 1967 and the Israeli enemy is trying to penetrate Egypt through the village, meaning that Nag’ Al-Manassi is the first line of defence on the Egyptian border. Khalil Al-Khoja, the representative of the authorities, acts as the villagers’ only link with the outside world. He owns the shop that prints a local paper, The Voice of War, controls all the buying and selling of vital goods, and starts to conscript people into the war. After an unknown object – possibly a meteorite or a satellite – falls upon the village, an epidemic disfigures the population, including the newborn children. An unknown hand begins to inscribe people’s hidden sins on the village walls, and in an attempt to cure the village, the local Sheikh invents a new prayer, the ‘Prayer of Anxiety’. Through the perspectives of eight different characters, readers learn the history of the village from the 1967 Naksa, better known in English as the Six-Day War, through to the epidemic. At the core of this elaborate mosaic is an interrogation of the commonly held narrative of the Naksa, and subsequent Arab illusions of victory.