The events revolve around a young man named Sherif Alawi, who works as a library employee. He goes to meet one of the library's clients in one of the extremist areas in Cairo. He is stabbed by two criminals who rob him and throw him in the desert, but his body resists death for two days.
During two days of struggle with death, the young man's memories crumble before his eyes as the tape of his life passes before his eyes, which is what the novel presents in the second section called the collapsing memories, as the facts of his life flow through his mind according to an order starting from oldest to newest, repeating the same tape.
A group of Bedouins rescue Sherif Alawi and throw him in front of a hospital, and he is saved. This is what the events of the third section of the novel show. After surviving death, Sharif Alawi's life changes completely. The experience of his encounter with death changes everything inside him. His habits, paths of thought, and desires change.
Sherif Alawi decides to abandon his marriage project, and begins a new journey within himself that reveals to him another path in life that he knew nothing about throughout his previous life.