The White City: The Second Story from Adam in the Parallel World by Saber Elganzory

Tawasul News continues its weekly Thursday literary series from Adam in the Parallel World, the short story collection by Egyptian writer Saber Elganzory, whose work brings together symbolic imagination, philosophical unease, and a deeply human sense of wonder.

In this second installment, The White City unfolds as a visionary tale set after ruin, where the idea of salvation descends not as comfort, but as a vast and unsettling question about humanity and what remains of the world after the flood.

The White City

No one knew when the descent began, or when the clocks of time shattered on the threshold of nothingness.

The sky was white, with neither sun nor cloud, as though it were erasing what little remained of human memory.

In the distance between the last flood and the first speck, nothing was left of the world except an idea suspended between sky and earth.

The White House was descending slowly, as if remembering the road from a previous life.

It resembled the Kaaba in Mecca, except that its covering was white and embroidered with gold. Every satellite on earth was carrying the image.

The world was waiting for the one coming from the sky.

No one knew where the earth was that would receive his landing.

The nuclear dust that had filled the sky had finally cleared, and after it came torrential rain that poured down for a full week.

People emerged from the tunnels. There was no longer any trace of the dead or the bodies that had once filled the streets, like some new breed of dinosaurs.

The earth no longer revolved around the sun. Night had vanished. The moon had fallen onto Saturn, and the volcanoes of the red planet had erupted.

The world watched for "the White House" descending from the sky. Fifty years earlier, satellites had captured it as a tiny cap, while the great telescope had revealed the figure of the man who lived inside it, the house itself floating above the water.

When the images were published, people said they were like a mirage seen by a thirsty man in the desert.

After the war ended, the house kept drawing nearer and becoming visible from the earth. But where would the home of the one coming from the sky finally stand?

That was the question of the scientists.

The house moved away from the skies of Washington, London, Paris, and Moscow.

They tracked its motion and saw it turning eastward.

It passed beyond Jerusalem, Mecca, Najaf, and Iraq.

Al-Khidr was the only scholar left on earth who knew who was coming, when he would arrive, and where he would descend to establish a dwelling on earth.

It was Al-Khidr who analyzed the image and determined its position and direction after applying to it the new theory he had studied in the Temple of Osiris ten thousand years ago.

A line of communication had already been established between him and the visitor through a phone equipped with vibrations and frequencies beyond the reach of ordinary human perception.

He spoke in sorrow to the program presenter, who had been cloned in the likeness of the Virgin Mary:

Every people waits for its savior.

She asked:

Is he truly the son of heaven?

Al-Khidr replied:

Do not be fools. He is not the savior. From what, exactly, would he save you after you destroyed your own world?
You imagined yourselves capable of everything. The one you see coming from the sky is neither Jesus, nor the Mahdi, nor Confucius, nor Buddha, nor Zarathustra, nor al-Hakim bi-Amr Allah.

He is neither messenger nor prophet. Your forefathers killed the prophets, denied the messengers, burned their books, concealed their pages, and fed you new books so that you would forget the books of heaven.

You sanctified priests, elders, saints, monks, rabbis, and charlatans.

The one coming from the sky is the one who will plant truth in your minds and erase the illusion lodged in your souls.

How will he do that?

There is a particle in the human mind whose code he knows.
Inside his control chamber are devices beyond anything your minds or hearts could imagine. He will reorder matter itself, ions and protons and electrons, into a new design.
You will become a new creation.

Is he the God who will do this?

Al-Khidr said:

No. He is sent by Him. He carries the keys of knowledge and the secret of the soul, and he is charged with remaking the genetic code and the architecture of a new mind.

How?

Do you remember what happened in the first flood?

The house halted vertically above the barzakh, the narrow threshold separating fresh water from salt, that imagined line between river and sea. There, a new island formed, one whose existence lasts only an hour by our reckoning of time, and the screens in people's palms carried the image everywhere.

Then the commentator cried out in a voice so powerful that even the deaf, the blind, and the beasts could hear:

Look... There it is... the White City, with its white streets, red trees, silver palaces, and a vast green garden waiting for the White House and its

The laws of relativity and gravity had dissolved, and the orbits of stars and planets had changed places.

Motion had slowed. Even the speed of light had grown heavy.

The new dinosaurs guarded the walls of the new city, while lions stood at its gates.

The law of speed, distance, and time had changed. Al-Khidr and Mary appeared on the island. A notice was written:

Only a single press remains before the descent of "the King" through the button of the Soul Program.

Then the world will fall asleep. With another press, it will awaken and find itself stripped of the past it once knew.

About the author

Saber Elganzory is an Egyptian writer and a member of both the Egyptian Writers Union and the Egyptian Story Club. Trained in geology and geophysical engineering, he has built a literary voice that blends symbolic imagination with intellectual depth. His published works include Another Face of Love, My Atheist Friend, and Coming from the Sky.