🌊 The One Who Deserves No One

Age: 18+82 pagesA dramatic novel for adults in chapters — idea & editing by Dheiab Alawfi, written with AI assistance

Nazaré, on the coast of Portugal, February 1969. Elias Varela is buried alone under a stone he wrote himself: "Here lies one who deserves no one". Mariana, a notary's clerk, comes to read his strange will: five heirs who hate him, none of whom takes anything until they say before the others the worst thing he did to them, and then an envelope bearing their name is opened. And Mariana herself has come with a secret: her father drowned on Varela's boat. Eight chapters of secrets, confessions and truths that turn everything over. (For adults: death, drowning and prison)

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How it begins: The Stone

The first thing I saw in Nazaré was not the sea. It was the stone. I arrived on a February morning in 1969, on the old yellow bus that comes down from Lisbon along the coast road, stops in every village, and breathes like an old woman climbing stairs. The bus was two hours late, because the driver stopped in Caldas to drink his coffee and quarrel with his brother, so I arrived late for the funeral. Or so I thought. I got off in the little square in front of the market, my leather bag in my hand, and in it a file sealed with red wax, three dresses, a toothbrush, and a photograph of my mother. The wind off the sea was cold and salty; it got under my coat and under my skin, and threw spray in my face that I could not tell was rain or wave. I asked a woman selling dried fish the way to the cemetery. She looked me up and down. At my grey coat bought on Rua Augusta, my heeled shoes that were…

The lesson: We may be carried by people we hate, who stand at our doors and never come in, and we learn it only when we find the envelopes

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