Hichem Karoui
'In Tunis, the winds carry more than air-they carry destiny.'In late 1970s Tunis-a city poised between ancient memory and modern transformation-Karim Mansour is given an unusual task: translate a collection of papers left behind by the missing Dr. Horn. What appears at first to be meteorological research reveals itself as something stranger-fragmented maps, swirling wind diagrams, and cryptic notes about an ancient Carthaginian and Sufi art known as Anemoi Mapping: the charting of winds that carry not only weather, but fate, memory, and possibility. Intrigued, Karim follows the places Horne marked-hidden courtyards heavy with jasmine, a fading blue jetty on a Sirocco wind, Sidi Bou Said at sunset. The more he walks the city’s labyrinth, the more coincidence bleeds into the uncanny. Streets shift. Forgotten verses find him in strangers’ mouths. He meets Selma bin Hazm, a cryptic antiques dealer, who warns him that some maps lead to places from which one never returns. Driven by obsession, Karim begins to create his own map-one that refuses to stay still, changing with intangible winds. Every step draws him closer to the moment of rare convergence Horne once sought: when lunar light, wind, and place align to open unseen corridors of the city. But should he follow-and risk being lost in the cartography of another reality-or destroy what he has learned before it swallows him? A haunting literary mystery infused with magical realism, The Cartographer of Lost Winds is a journey into the hidden geometries of place, time, and the human spirit.
