The Orchards of Basra

A historical novel that shifts between contemporary Cairo and Ancient Iraq.

In this captivating and remarkably translated novel, Mansoura Ez-Eldin invites us to a round trip in time and space, between Cairo and Basra in Iraq, to meet timeless characters in a masterfully-told story which subtly mixes fiction and historical reality.

Hisham lives at home with his impoverished mother in Minya, on the western bank of the Nile. Like so many other young people in Egypt, who have managed to attend college, he lacks the connections to find well-paying work. So he makes ends meet finding and reselling old and rare books, driven by a selfless passion for the history of Islam, its great thinkers and currents of ideas.

His interests lead him to a mentor, for whom he finds books and manuscripts. Although an apprentice, Hisham shares with his teacher valuable insights into the old texts. While he is given no credit and his work is taken for granted, he is led to discover his own double. Hisham dreams a recurring dream of falling jasmine flowers. Then one night, a man appears in his dream. He knows this man’s name, he knows who he is. More than that, Hisham knows that he himself is in fact this very man.

Some thirteen centuries ago, in the eighth century in Basra (Iraq), Yazid ibn Abih, a poor basket maker with an appetite for knowledge, attends the gatherings of the most luminous and respected learned ones of the times. But he belongs to a completely different world, with no hope of riches or power. Yazid dreams a dream of falling jasmine flowers.

And it is written that when the jasmine fall, and minds become closed to science and knowledge, the freedom to dream ends.