"Happened in the North" is the first novel by the Syrian Kurdish poet Zakaria Sheikh Ahmed, published by Al-Muthaqaf Publishing and Distribution House in Cairo on January 20, 2022.

The novel draws its chapters and events from the biography of a Kurdish child from his earliest memories to the age of maturity, mostly set in the 1980s of the twentieth century.

From Afrin to Aleppo, the author takes us through amusing and sometimes painful events, somehow summarizing for us the biography of the Kurdish people.

"Happened in the North" even if it appears to be just an individual biography, it is at the same time a model for the biography of an entire people!

The novel consists of 320 pages and is composed of three chapters and an ending.

The main title of the first chapter is “Departure, the Beginning of Memory.”

The main title of the second chapter is “Early Mischief.”

Under it, 12 titles are included, narrating many events and stories about the early childhood of the novel's protagonist, such as the titles Sleep, The First Escape, The Second Fight, Attempt...

The third chapter's main title is “Transformations.”

Under it, 19 titles are included, such as The First Transformation, Nowruz Festival, An Incident, Literary Tendencies, Children of Officials, Theater, And We Also Love the Homeland.

He began narrating various events, including comedic and amusing ones, some painful events, and recorded transformations and changes that affected the character of the novel's protagonist.

He dedicated a wide space to political, social, and historical events.

Do not read the novel *Happened in the North* if you do not believe in the right of others to differ from you; "Happened in the North" is a social novel with a political tint by the Syrian poet Zakaria Sheikh Ahmed.

Happened in the North reveals many unknown details

That were meant to remain in darkness and not to appear

A novel narrated in a smooth, unpretentious style, without linguistic showmanship.

An excerpt from the novel *Happened in the North*

He was lying on one of the dirt sidewalks, leaning his back and head

Against a stone wall, overwhelmed by great despair due to his inability

To see the sheikh and his sleeping in the dark streets and his feeling

That he had become a burden on Horo and his remaining homeless in the streets.

At that moment, while he was observing the passersby, he remembered the moments that

He kept struggling in the water basin opposite Al-Mansour School.

When he was on the verge of drowning, he remembered how no one paid attention to him or heard his screams and cries for help; everyone was looking at him, but no one knew he was drowning. Could the earth be a vast basin full of water in which we drown without anyone seeing our drowning?

I was drowning in the water, what were they drowning in?