Cardiac Arrest

Lake Burullus, dawn on Monday 20 January 2025. A fisherman of 56 stands at the water in front of his house in Borg El Burullus, his net on his arm. The birds are flying low towards the south, and the old fisherman Arafa tells him: the storm is coming, Fathi. But in the ledger of Zaghloul, the fish trader, there is a page with his name on it and a debt that never sleeps: 85,000 pounds. So he goes out alone to the inlet. Before noon the wind falls silent, then a wave flips the boat. Fathi ties himself to the upturned hull with his famous knot, using one hand, and stays for hours in the cold water. He shivers, then he stops shivering. He says "Nawal" in a voice no one hears. Then the water turns warm, and he opens his eyes in a kitchen he has never entered, and Nawal tells him: you're late, Fathi, the food has gone cold.

This is a suspense and science fiction novel. Nader, Fathi's nephew, presses on his chest for 38 minutes until his heart comes back. In those minutes Fathi has lived 31 years inside his head: a blue house at the edge of the reeds, and a whole life with Nawal, the girl he loved in 1990 and never married. He wakes up in Baltim Central Hospital and tells Dr. Reham words that were spoken around him in the boat while he had no pulse. Reham keeps a notebook with the stories of 23 people who came back after their hearts stopped. Fathi reaches for a light switch that does not exist, and for the other side of an empty bed. Then he sets out between Borg El Burullus, Baltim and Damietta to learn why that life never happened, and where Nawal is now. In his way stand Zaghloul's debt, his sister Zeinat who changes the subject every time she hears the name, and a heart that needs a device in his chest that he keeps putting off.

Under the story lies real science, explained with pictures from daily life. Deep cold can protect the brain, like an oil lamp with a smaller flame that makes a little oil last longer. That is why emergency doctors say: nobody is dead until they are warm and dead. You meet the true story of a Norwegian doctor who stayed about 80 minutes in freezing water and went back to work. You learn what people say after their hearts stopped and they came back, and why scientists think the brain does not switch off at once. No equations and no difficult terms. At the end of the novel, a section called "What is real and what is imagined" tells you clearly where science ends and fiction begins.

The book is written in Arabic.