Sleep Phase: Egyptian author Mohamed Kheir’s Kafkaesque tale of a freed man navigating post-revolutionary Egypt after imprisonment

Egyptian author Mohamed Kheir's latest novel, Sleep Phase, is an extraordinarily crafted and rewarding Kafkaesque tale.

Mohamed’s background as a poet and lyricist resounds throughout the eccentric world and mind of Warif, a translator by trade, recently released from a seven-year prison sentence.

Teetering between a frustrating reality and pursuing deliberate madness, Warif must navigate the city of his childhood, Cairo, and all the strange transformations it has undergone during his incarceration.

The trauma of a long prison term, alongside living under a regime that watches and punishes at any suggestion of dissent, wreaks havoc upon Warif’s subconscious.

To further his disquiet, the city he left is not the same as the one he returns to. To him, the country is overtaken by expats and foreigners, further obscuring his shattered identity.

As his disconnect with reality continues, he plunges into psychological isolation. Mohamed's use of surrealism, blending it with realism, shows his sharp skill and understanding.

Like Warif, the reader becomes hypnotised and disoriented by the striking colours of his dreams, using all their mental effort to determine where and what the truth is.

Diving into Cairo's sensory experiences 

The novel opens with Warif re-entering civilian life. As he walks down the streets of the city, he is bewildered. He remembers that the noisy traffic that once marked Talaat Harb Street was now covered in greenery, buildings, and cafes filled with students and expats.

Taking a left here and a right there, he remarks that it wasn’t that the names of the streets and squares had changed; they hadn’t. It was that the streets and squares themselves were different and now seemed strange from those names.

This begins his deep dive into Cairo's sensory experiences, noting all the changes that happened during his absence.

After this long and introspective walk, Sally, his girlfriend, and his childhood friend Wagdi are introduced. Gradually, through fragmented memories, dreams, and panic attacks, the circumstances surrounding his mysterious arrest are revealed. He was a passionate translator who criticised the government on Facebook, which led to his unfortunate downfall.

In an attempt to reconnect and bring meaning back into his life, he wants his old job back despite being offered a monthly stipend instead of his old position. He is put through a series of strange meetings with bureaucrats who keep dangling the possibility of his being reinstated, yet these appointments soon resemble invasive interrogations.

Struggling to make sense of himself and the state of the world around him, he becomes prone to panic attacks and periods of deep sleep with graphic dreams. He feverishly ruminates on the torture of being imprisoned and isolated, and the small details of memories before his arrest.

Immersed in madness 

Warif’s narrative is non-linear, void of a conventional plot or fully developed characters. Instead, his cynical and ungenerous girlfriend Sally, or his quiet friend Wagdi, are plot devices and gateways into Warif’s subconscious.

Although initially, it seems he is in a panopticon and the readers are silent spectators, the truth is that, in the end, we become immersed in his madness as the story progresses.

When Warif experiences one of his sleep phases, the raw terror and strange sensations that pulse through his body as he recalls his life in montages are written with such deep fluidity.

The reader is not just witnessing these experiences, but is also drawn into the story, feeling the same disorientation and confusion as Warif.

Mohamed explores the idea of psychological escape in the face of unresolved trauma. The book is set in post-revolutionary Egypt, and Warif comments that for thirty years of life before his conviction, he lived in fear, and his imprisonment proved it to be justified.

The breaking down of his mind is a commentary on living under the surveillance of state power and the mental conflict that follows.

The psychological and emotional effects of political repression are shown when Warif says his thoughts seem tangled and crash into each other like billiard balls after his sentence.

The government and society that Warif lives in not only monitor and censor its citizens but also exile them and feed them propaganda.

After seven years in prison, Wagdi tells Warif that he essentially creates the news as a journalist, making headlines for the year ahead. This is a comical yet brilliant depiction of how state-controlled news cannot be trusted.

But this constant deception, being told one thing by the system while the truth is something different, is exhausting.

For Warif, his “sleep phases” are like a society numbed into passivity through fear and tiredness. Unable to cope with reality, people find ways to escape and fall into isolation.

As Warif's inner world grows increasingly strange and surreal, he finds a paradoxical sense of freedom within these hallucinations, even as he remains trapped by the limits of his mind.

Reflection on memory, trauma, and political repression

The psychological strain of imprisonment also pulls at the fragile line that separates reality from fantasy and eventually breaks it. Warif starts to lose his understanding of time, and months, years, and minutes all blend together. Time in prison is unreal and illusory, a form of torture and mental anguish.

That torment continues when the sentence ends; a newly freed prisoner is in the world like someone coming out of a coma, frozen in time. It feels like an awakening and entering another dreamscape all at once. The world he is released to is full of newcomers who are so confident that it feels impossible to know himself and his place in the world.

It leaves him to wander the world alone with broken memories, truths, and anxieties; not one piece of himself is whole. He can do nothing but try to remember and survive.

Sleep Phase is a story that will emotionally test you as a reader. Mohamed will transport you to Warif's extraordinary mind and completely captivate you even after the story ends. This is not just the tale of a man gone mad, but a powerful and poetic reflection on memory, trauma, and political repression.

Mohamed's smooth prose and the dreamlike structure of the novel are expertly done. It is a detailed and sensory journey for the one who gives it the time it deserves, and its emotional depth will leave readers deep in thought, lost in their own dreamscape.

Noshin Bokth has over six years of experience as a freelance writer. She has covered a wide range of topics and issues, including the implications of the Trump administration on Muslims, the Black Lives Matter movement, travel reviews, book reviews, and op-eds. She is the former Editor in Chief of Ramadan Legacy and the former North American Regional Editor of the Muslim Vibe