Death in Installments

Port Said, a Friday morning at the end of October 2025. Mansour El-Gharib, a retired ship pilot of 74, is shaving in front of the bathroom mirror the way he has shaved for 50 years. The razor glides over the hard spot under his chin as if over paper. Then the comb stops. At the roots of his white hair there is a thin black line, not dye and not a shadow. He touches it with a fingertip, then stands in front of the photo of his late wife, Ihsan, bows his head toward her and says: look. After 8 injections, his hair is growing back black from the roots.

For 30 years Mansour climbed aboard other people's ships, steered them through the canal, then handed them over and went ashore. 6140 ships, and not one of them was his. Now he wants a small wooden boat to take out of the fishermen's harbor alone. At Friday lunch he tells his children he will sell the old house in the Arab quarter. But the drug he takes in an open trial at the Suez Canal University Hospital does not make the whole body young at once. His skin goes back to 50, while his heart stays at 74. And recent days slip out of his memory. His son Magid and his daughter Sahar are afraid for him, and of him. Only his grandson Anas understands him, and Captain Attia sees and says nothing. Will he live the life he put off, or pay for it with himself?

Behind the story is real science. Every cell carries a clock that reads its true age, which can differ from the age on your birth certificate. In 2006 the Japanese scientist Shinya Yamanaka turned skin cells from an adult mouse back into something like embryo cells using only four genes. And the organs of the body do not renew at the same speed: skin renews in about a month, while the heart barely renews at all, like a new ship with an old engine. No equations and no hard terms. A final section, "what is real and what is imagined", tells you clearly where science ends and fiction begins.

The book is written in Arabic.