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