Thanks and Acknowledgments

If these pages contain anything worth reading, the credit is not due to me alone, but also to the many people who agreed to meet me and tell me their stories and other people who provided useful documents relevant to the Queen Boat case. Of course I would also like to thank my dear colleagues who read the first draft and offered valuable advice, and I would especially like to mention Yasser Abdel Latif, Sherif Bakr, and Hassan Yaghi, without denying the contributions of others who encouraged me over the years to continue with the work. I must emphasize my gratitude to two friends: Hussam Mustafa Ibrahim and Ahmad Ayed.

One last observation: Although the events of this novel are based on real events, in their final form they are based on those events only in the sense that dreams are based on the elements of waking life. I gave my imagination free rein to play and roam, without any direct reference to real people, because imitating reality is an objective that is neither possible nor desirable.