Echo 1: The Story That Wouldn’t Wait Anymore
Length: 575 words • 3 min read
Themes: Personal Journey, Complexity, Purpose, Literary Reflections
Heartbeat: A reflection on the relentless energy behind The Gales of Alexandria.
We carry stories we don’t choose—drawn from what we’ve lived, what we’ve seen, and what never seems to change.
Some stories refuse to stay silent. They haunt us, demand to be told, and won’t let go until they are.
For me, The Gales of Alexandria is one of those stories.
It came from questions I couldn’t escape—from characters who started pulling me from sleep. It wasn’t just an idea; it was a weight, shaped by the places I’ve lived, the history I’ve witnessed, and the personal reckoning that came with both.
In the final months of preparing the book for publication, I often woke thinking about Omar—his library, his silence, his legacy. I found myself returning to his presence, his contradictions, his losses. In many ways, I began seeing my own life through his shadow—his choices, and the weight he carried but rarely showed.
You can meet Omar in the first chapter of the novel, now available online. He’s one of the novel’s central characters—a history professor, a grieving father, and a man trying to make sense of his son’s final words.
Over the last ten years, I’ve worked across startups, consulting, ventures, and life’s unpredictability. Some seasons were urgent, some were heavy—and things often didn’t work out the way I’d hoped. But through it all, this story kept pulling me back.
It’s a story that accepts complexity, quietly resisting the pull of easy answers. It’s born from a generation shaped by 9/11, the war on terror, the rise of extremism, and the fading hopes of the Arab Spring. It’s also shaped by a kind of double vision: growing up in Alexandria, Egypt, and living in North America—carrying both lenses, both weights.
Why a novel and not nonfiction? Because stories allow us to see the human thread within global events. I’ve spent a lifetime reading nonfiction, but came to believe a good story can go deeper—make people feel, reflect, and see differently. With all that’s unfolded in recent years, I knew this story had to come out now.
I don’t say this by way of comparison, but in gratitude: writers like Naguib Mahfouz and Gabriel García Márquez showed me what fiction could hold. More recently, authors like Alaa Al Aswany and Khaled Hosseini have deeply inspired me. I’d love to reflect more later on these voices who gave me permission to imagine this kind of story.
When my brilliant literary agent stepped away from the industry last year, I realized waiting any longer would cost me this story. So I stopped waiting.
Now, finally, it belongs to readers.
In the coming weeks, as the novel approaches release, I’ll share more reflections here in Echoes of the Gales—a limited blog series exploring the novel’s themes, early reviews, and the questions I carried while writing it. I'll also reflect on what it means to bring a story like this into the world as an independent author.
Now begins a new chapter—putting the novel into readers’ hands, while also returning to the next stage of my professional life. This project demanded every skill I’ve built over the years: focus, resilience, storytelling, and deep engagement with complexity. I'm confident this experience is relevant to the work I’m ready to do next, and that others will see that, too.
Here’s to what comes next—and to this limited series, as I carry both the novel and myself into new spaces.
A layered novel, told through voices rarely heard. Stories like this travel because of readers like you.
I'm quietly aiming for 10,000 readers—2,000 from Canada, 5,000 from the U.S.—to help launch The Gales of Alexandria. You make this possible. Sign up here for a quiet, respectful nudge during release week.
If you could also encourage two friends to join, I’d be truly grateful—it really makes a difference.