Barzakh: The Land In-Between

“These dunes of immaculate white sand, bathed in light, would be infinitely true and beautiful if it weren’t for the pollution of human beings… How did this universe, which has witnessed the birth of so many creatures, lose everything to preserve only these few men and their animals?” Barzakh: The Land In-Between is a speculative literary novel set across centuries in the Sahara, following Gara, a young man sold into a salt caravan, and Vala, the enslaved woman he loves. He is trafficked along trans-Saharan routes, sold into servitude in Awdaghost, drawn into a planned slave rebellion, and later caught in waves of colonial and postcolonial violence. In the far future, fragments of his consciousness are decoded by scientists excavating Barzakh, who use his visions to search for the vanished city and confront the long afterlife of slavery, empire, and environmental ruin. Through slavery, rebellion, colonial violence, ecological collapse, and a future archaeological expedition, the book asks what remains of a human life—and of a civilization—after death, memory, and time have done their work. Blending historical realism with metaphysical fiction and told through first-person testimony “decoded” from myelin crystals, shifting into different eras and vantage points, Barzakh: The Land In-Between examines suffering, freedom, faith, and the fate of the desert itself, questioning what is owed to the non-human world that humans have outlived. Readers will be able to inhabit, in granular detail, the worlds of the Saharan caravans and their descendants; to see how slavery, belief, and empire shape both individual lives and landscapes; and to consider time, consciousness, and responsibility in a narrative that is at once historical, philosophical, and speculative.