Abidu: The Lost One — A Gripping Novel of Identity, Loyalty, and the Price of Return

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Abidu: The Lost One - A Novel by Ali Aldimshawy

 “The hardest thing facing any Abidu is to remain constantly aware of where he ought to return.”

In 2004, inside a freezing solitary cell at Ain al-Asad Air Base in Iraq, Dr. Lassen Ismed Ano—an Assyrian-born, American-educated structural engineer and successful businessman—sits blindfolded and chained. Accused of high treason and selling weapons during wartime, he faces relentless CIA interrogators determined to extract a confession. Yet for Lassen, the interrogation room is only the latest battleground in a lifetime spent caught between two worlds, two homelands, and the weight of a family legacy he never asked to carry.

In my novel, Abidu: The Lost One (the newly released English edition of my original Arabic novel), I weave a sweeping multi-generational saga spanning Kirkuk, Baghdad, London, Cairo, Upper Egypt, San Diego, and Washington, D.C.—exploring what happens when a man belongs everywhere and nowhere at once.

A Story of Exile, Memory, and Unbroken Devotion

  • The Shadow of the Past: As ice water and electric shocks test his endurance in Iraq, Lassen’s mind drifts across decades of survival—from childhood sectarian battles in Kirkuk and a fateful, bloody act of loyalty in 1975 Karrada to a desperate escape through the Coptic monasteries of Upper Egypt.

  • A Love That Anchors the Wanderer: Thousands of miles away in San Diego, his Cherokee wife, Teresa, sets a place for him at the breakfast table every morning, humming ancestral songs and holding onto the emerald heart necklace that binds a fugitive son of Assyria to a daughter of the Cherokee nation.

  • The Impossible Bargain: When the pursuit reaches Washington and ensnares his formidable father, Dr. Ismed, Lassen is forced into an agonizing legal and moral trap—where saving his family and reclaiming his freedom requires swallowing his pride and signing his name to a lie.

Rich in Middle Eastern and Indigenous heritage, political intrigue, and deeply human emotion, Abidu: The Lost One asks a timeless question: When history and power strip away your name, how do you find your way home?

👉 Get your copy of Abidu: The Lost One on Amazon Kindle & Paperback: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0HP7VCW6Y

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