We strike the earth with our mattocks like one avenging an old enemy. We were four, and our fifth was our Sheikh: me, Ahmed, Mustafa, and Eid; as for the Sheikh, he was Mossaad. They say that seeking the help of a pious Sheikh, one with knowledge and true spiritual insight, will aid us in reaching the treasure. He would recite his prayers to us, and we would repeat them after him in hushed voices, like slaves digging a canal or building a pyramid. The prayers, which transformed into chants, set the rhythm of our blows to the wretched earth.

... Soon, the tomb's door will appear, like a threshold from one world to another. For the mummy inside, it will be a passage from the world of the living to the world of the dead. For us, it will be the exact opposite.

Mohamed Alaaeldin's new novel takes us on a panoramic journey into the details of the lives of four friends, driven by need to excavate in the house of one of them, searching for Pharaonic treasures possibly hidden there since ancient times. They rely on a mixture of magic and faith, despair and stubborn certainty, as well as plenty of tea, hashish cigarettes, chatting, and jokes.

In parallel with the digging beneath the house, the novel delves into the worlds of the four friends, the bonds that unite them, and also their individual stories. We get a close, intense look at what goes on inside them, and another look from afar at the city around them as it transforms every day, growing further away from them and leaving them alone without support. We then return to the root of the crisis that drove them to what they did.

"The Promise and the Threat" is a novel about defeat and what it does to a person, about the back streets of the city and its unique world and morals, about ordinary people when their ordinariness pushes them to the edge, forcing them to ask themselves: Who are we now, and what is it that we have done?!

Mohamed Alaaeldin

An Egyptian novelist, born in Cairo on October 7, 1979. He has published six novels and four short story collections. He won the Central Prize of the General Organization for Cultural Palaces for the novel branch in 2004, and the Sawiris Cultural Award for the short story collection branch in 2017. Some of his works have been translated into English, French, Italian, Spanish, Russian, and Dutch.

His distinct writing has attracted attention since his first novel, "The Gospel of Adam" (2006), for his unique style of free association that blends the beauty of eloquent classical Arabic with the lightness and humor of colloquial Arabic, and his continuous experimentation with narrative techniques.