In Egitto: La caccia della jena

A solitary officer, fresh from his twenty‑five‑year military career, finds himself perched on the edge of the Egyptian desert, where the sands meet the Nile’s whisper. He settles in a dim, smoky café beside the village’s modest mosque, observing the locals in their flowing caftans and turbaned heads while the evening sun paints the horizon in flames of orange. The air is thick with the scent of shisha and the low murmur of conversation, offering a vivid portrait of daily life on the caravan routes that thread toward Mecca.

When a dromedary and a swift‑moving donkey arrive, they carry two very different travelers—a native guide and a nervous European, armed and uneasy. Their abrupt questioning of the officer hints at a hidden pursuit, a hunt that will pull him deeper into the desert’s secrets. As tensions rise, the narrator’s knowledge of language and customs becomes his only compass in a landscape where every shadow may conceal a new danger.