The Journey of Ibn Fattouma (Arabic:رحلة ابن فطومة) is an intermittently provocative fable written and published by Nobel Prize-winning author Naguib Mahfouz in 1983. It was translated from Arabic into English in 1992 by Denys Johnson-Davies and published by Doubleday. Plot summary Ibn Fattouma, more commonly known by his birth name Qindil Muhammad al-Innabi, is a Muslim man disillusioned by the corruption in his home city. When he asks his teacher why a land whose people obey the tenets of Islam suffers so, Qindil is told that the answer he seeks lies far away from the city, in the land of Gebel; the land of perfection. The teacher encourages Ibn Fattouma to seek the land of Gebel, where such problems have been solved. The teacher attempted to journey there himself, but civil war in neighboring lands and the demands of family ultimately prevented him from completing the journey. Further complicating Qindil's impending expedition, no documents exist about the land and no one is known to have returned from Gebel. Qindil is determined to embark on the journey, for he feels betrayed by his mother, who remarried, and his lover, who was stolen by the sultan. He gives his farewells to his family and proceeds on a caravan out of his home city to the land of Mashriq. In this sexually libertine society, the women and men do not marry; rather, they share each other's partners. The religion of Mashriq is primitive and pagan; the moon is worshiped as a god. Qindil questions the land's customs, but he soon acculturates to their ways. He settles in Mashriq with a woman named Arousa and they have five children. Because of Qindil's insistence upon teaching his eldest son Islam, he is exiled from Mashriq and prohibited from seeing Arousa or their children again. Qindil then travels to the land of Haïra. The invasion of Mashriq by militaristic Haïra further separates Qindil from his family, and when the annexation of Mashriq is finished, Arousa is brought to Haïra as a slave, who is then bought by Qindil. The chamberlain of the god-king of Haïra desires Arousa as a wife and arranges Qindil to be jailed. Twenty years pass in Haïra in jail before the god-king is overthrown, and the chamberlain, who is also later jailed, tells Qindil to look in the neighboring land of Halba for Arousa and children. In Halba, the freedom of