An Endless Friendship

In November 2024, I lost my soul mate, my dearest friend Magdi Fahmi, or Dr. Magdi as he usually introduced himself to strangers, despite having spent little or no time practicing medicine. It is impossible to distill the essence of our relationship into a few words. It began in childhood, during our years in primary school, and continued to deepen through middle and high school, into college, medical school, and through the early days of internship and residency. Then I left for America-but we never lost touch. Over the years, our bond only grew.

When I began to write, some 25 years ago, he was the first to support me. He helped me publish my first collection of poems, then my first book of short stories, and later, my first novel. It is for this reason that I've chosen to gather here a collection of stories I wrote with him in mind-some with him as the central figure, others in which he appears among the cast of characters. Naturally, this is a work of fiction, and none of the stories occurred as described within these pages.

- Sherif Meleka