A Syrian novelist, residing in France since 2004, Has published two novels, the first (The Endless - The Life of the Other) in 1995 in Syria.  Her novel (The Umbilical Cord), published by Dar Riyad Al-Rayyis in Lebanon, has reached the long list of the Booker Prize for Arabic Fiction.  To the sounds of the lute, I sat in the place of the storyteller, and I told a story that seemed strange to others. I am telling about the girl Anees, whom her father throws every day in the far forest, and every night she passes through different dangers.  And every night she would come to the house, broken and exhausted, to return, in a blind Sisyphian way, to return from the forest, every night.