The Secret Son

If I played darts on a world map, this time we landed in Morocco, in the glamorous and historic city of Casablanca - known to me by the name of the classic Hollywood film. And the story so far is not even remotely close to the film, but closer to our own 80s bollywood showing the struggles of a man, a mother in a slum life. 

Secret son is the underlying story behind the news of terrorism, fundamentalism and politics, where the misguided youth are used as pawns to meet the interests of sinister parties. The unemployment, poverty and orphan life throws a young man into an abyss not knowing how to come out. The saddest part was how the father picked and dropped him as easily as a toy, leaving him broken. All he wanted was home and love and he was ready to prove himself but all he got was betrayal. 

The way of even the most justifiable revolutions is prepared by personal impulses discussed into creeds. - Joseph Conrad, The Secret Agent 

While Yousef’s story is the center stage, Amal the sister plays a small yet significant role on the other side. 

Home and away. She had known both; found good in both : loved and hated both. She did not want to have to choose one or the other, because in every choice something is gained but something is also lost. And in any case, why was jones thought of as a place? What if it were something else? 

The rich and powerful loosing their child to a shiny new world with promise of love and freedom.. How your birth and place shapes your destiny, how same parent can treat you differently, how system destroys the hope and ambitions one has. 

You know what they say: if you’re not an idealist at Twenty, you have no heart, and of you’re an idealist at thirty, you have no brains. 

And amongst all this, a mother suffers as she sees her innocent heart bleed, the one she suffered all her life for, the one she wanted to protect, but losing everything to predators who use people as weapons. 

He did not know what it was like to be a mother, only what it was like to have one. 

And amongst the sad plot some joyful glimpses of authors’s love for reading and cinema - Imaginary Homelands, The great gatsby, and the collection of Hollywood and Egyptian classics. These mentionables itself give us a lot of material to review the author and his writing and thought process. Isn’t it exciting how a book opens so many doors in your head and you see people and the world differently finding that the world and it’s stories are all the same!