Arkadia

The Ten Thousand were a band of aristocratic mercenary warriors who fought for the losing side in a war far from their own country. To escape their enemies in a now hostile foreign land, they set off to return home, but the journey is treacherous. One of their formations is separated from the main body and now must makes its way alone. The lost wanderers, near starvation, stumble out of a mountain pass into a miraculously fair land on the bank of a river. They refresh themselves with the abundant game and fish found there and call the land Arkadia. However, they are not alone. One night, a host of wild barbarians called the Bem appears on the banks of the nearby river and attacks without mercy. After the battle, the lost ranks of the Ten Thousand are almost annihilated, yet they resolve to stay in their new paradise, as opposed to traversing the dangerous mountains to find their way home. They are the First Founders of Arkadia, and no matter the cost, they will survive in this strange new land, already seasoned with the blood of their comrades.

Kaus wants nothing more than to be loved while its human counterpart, Raj Patel, believes fervently in freedom. Arkadia, one of four space stations circling Jupiter, was to be a refuge for all who fought the corrupt systems of old Earth, a haven where both humans and Artificial Intelligences could be happy and free. But the old prejudices and desires are still at play and, no matter how well-meaning its citizens, the children of Arkadia have tough compromises to make. When the future of humanity is at stake, which will prove more powerful: freedom or happiness? What sacrifices will Kaus, Raj, and the rest of Arkadia’s residents have to make to survive?

This short story about the every-day life of working class people in Cairo is the title story from the short collection "Season of Migration to Arkadia" by the Egyptian writer Muhammad Aladdin. It is regarded as one of the five best literary works about the Egyptian revolution, translated by Humphrey Davies. Hamzah, a car mechanic in Cairo, sets his eyes on a beautiful leather jacket. In the turmoil of the demonstrations around Tahrir Square, he goes onto a quest into the big shopping mall Arkadia. Muhammad Aladdin is a noted Egyptian novelist and was born in Cairo in 1979. He was chosen as one of the most important Egyptian writers in the new millennium by the Egyptian weekly Akhbar Al-Adab (News of Literature) in 2011, and as one of the “Six Egyptian writers you don’t know but you should“ by the writer Pauls Toutonghi in The Millions. He has written several novels and collections of fiction. He lives in between Cairo and Berlin dedicating his full time for writing. In 2017 he was awarded the Egyptian literary award The Sawiris Prize. He was kidnapped by Sissi’s regime in 2019 for political reasons and has been released after 8 days without facing any charges. Humphrey Davies is an award-winning translator of more than twenty works of modern Arabic literature, among them five of the novels of Elias Khoury. He has also edited and translated older works, including Ahmad Faris al-Shidyaq’s seminal mid-nineteenth-century Leg Over Leg (Library of Arabic Literature, NYU Press, 2013-2014). He lives in Cairo.