“Thank God we are not like Syria”, a phrase that many Egyptian social media users have posted or at least came across over the past few years, but what if we had a similar war situation like the Syrian one? An imaginary civil war in Egypt was exactly what the Egyptian author, Khaled Abdelsalam had in mind before writing his novel “Cairo Oslo” that would see light for the first time on the book stands of the 52nd edition of Cairo International Book Fair, which will start on the 30th of June.
“There is always another side we thankfully haven’t been through but we never knew what it would be like if it happened” Abdelsalam said in a description of the imaginary scenario that represents the whole storyline of his new novel.
A biological war could represent what an undefeatable army would be deceived with, according to Abdelsalam. “The novel takes the reader into an imaginary journey of a systematic biological war against the Egyptian army that ends up in the formation of Islamic statelets in Egypt”.
The main novel characters are a lawyer and an agricultural engineer who creates a poisonous compound that would be passed on the food of the army, Abdelsalam said. The destruction of the regime would come as a response to defending the country’s safety against the armed protests after which the Islamic groups and funded organizations would take charge and divide the country and lead to a whole mess everywhere.
Oslo would be the place where the leaders of the country’s division and the plan to defeat the army would take an intensive workshop on how to do it, said Abdelsalam to “Trendify”. “The choice of Oslo was because most of the suspicious agreements with unknown intentions take place over there”.
The idea Abdelsalam studied for months before he started writing it, came as a result of his interest in the Syrian issue in the course of his journalistic work and his negotiations with his leaders back when he served in the army about bloodless wars.
“Cairo Oslo” would be Abdelsalam's second published novel that he had found great support from “Al Nokhba” publishing house despite the fear of his surroundings because of the political nature.
“So excited about the idea and how it revealed that the country is on the right track with a lot of potential disasters that could have happened but thanks to the Egyptian army the country was saved”, Abdelsalam said as he described his feelings toward the publication of the novel.