FISHING IN THE DEAD SEA: A Novel

How do you build a life in the only home you have ever known when it keeps reminding you that you do not belong?Raised in Jordan in a Syrian family, a boy grows into adulthood between identities. His father's bookshop becomes his first school, his mother teaches him faith, and his family gives him a sense of home no document can guarantee. Beyond their walls, however, one word "Syrian" begins to shape how teachers, employers, officials, and even those he loves are willing to see him.From childhood confrontations and first love to closed gates and unanswered applications, he struggles to protect his ambition from a world that repeatedly narrows his future. Each rejection leaves him facing the same question: how long can a person remain hopeful when effort, education, and character never seem to be enough?Yet this is not only a story of displacement. It is a story of fathers and sons, a mother's faith, friendship, heartbreak, dignity, and the life-altering power of being given one genuine chance.Intimate, lyrical, and rooted in lived experience, Fishing in the Dead Sea looks beyond the label refugee to the singular human life beneath it, and asks what the world loses when it decides where someone belongs before hearing his story.