Today, we bid farewell to Sonallah Ibrahim (1937-2025), closing the final chapter of a literary journey that began in the Wahat prison camp, where he spent nearly five years after the rise to power of President Gamal Abdel Nasser and the pursuit and capture of members of the Democratic Movement for National Liberation (HADITU). Over the years, he built a remarkable literary legacy, rich in novels weighted with public concerns and animated by a mischievous narrative voice. Among these, perhaps the most beautiful is Warda, his chronicle of the forgotten Dhofar Revolution. Ibrahim wrote only a handful of short stories, all collected in his debut The Smell of It, its cover jostled by the subtitle, & Other Stories. It remains his only banned work. Beyond his literary work, Sonallah left a mark through his principled stances — most notably, his refusal of the 2003 Arab Novel Award, declaring the government unfit to grant prizes. His reasons ranged from Egypt’s continued hosting of the Israeli ambassador despite violations against Palestinians, to other matters that revealed the depth of his engagement with public affairs, outweighing any desire for official honors. His support for what he called the “temporary” state of affairs that followed the violent dispersal of the Rabea al-Adaweya sit-in and the start of President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi’s government surprised some. He explained this shift toward nationalism “against the multinationals” and how he saw the role of writers in it in an interview conducted by Ursula Lindsey in 2013. Two years later, he would publish his singular memoir, The Wahat Diaries. Leafing through its fragments carry us back to another era: the assassination of Shuhdi Atteya — Ibrahim’s godfather — in the Abu Zaabal prison “reception;” the isolation of prisoners within the fortress surrounded by the Wahat desert; the theater they founded; the literary competitions they held; and the re-examination of their thinking. Here, we do not meet him as the communist fighter, but as a man truthfully speaking of what he read during those two years in prison, confiding in us his bashful attempts at writing and his ideas — some he followed through with, others he abandoned. Sonallah never edited these diaries, smuggled out of prison. For more on them, see what Mahmoud al-Wardani published with Mada Masr, as well as another review by Ali al-Talbani. Links to Mada Masr's articles on the works of Sonallah Ibrahim: bit.ly/m/mada-masr