MAD Stateless
Where does a human being belong when even his own time has disappeared?
Mad opens his eyes five thousand years later, in Iraq in 1990. The gods, ziggurats and the world he once knew have vanished. In their place stand war, borders, weapons and identities he cannot understand.
From the ruins of Eridu to Kirkuk and Chamchamal, the final volume of the trilogy follows a man without papers, without a homeland and without the languages of the age into a modern world that seems stranger to him than the realm of the ancient gods.
Mesopotamia
Years
1990
Five thousand
years later
on the same land
MAD III · Stateless moves the trilogy abruptly into Iraq in 1990. Mad emerges near the ruins of the ziggurat of Eridu and discovers that the gods of Sumer are gone. The civilization he knew has disappeared, yet the human questions of power, fear and belonging remain.
Mad has no identity papers and cannot speak the languages of this age. His first encounters force him to learn the modern world through gestures, danger, hospitality and suspicion. Language becomes more than communication: it becomes a key to survival and trust.
Through the eyes of a man from another age, modern war, national identity, religion and state power become unfamiliar again. Mad must discover not only where he is, but what it now means to belong somewhere at all.
The ancient world is gone. Mad is still here.
Mad awakens in a landscape that is both familiar and completely alien. The soil is still Mesopotamian, but the world built upon it has changed beyond recognition. Vehicles, firearms, uniforms, borders and modern languages replace the temples and divine orders he once knew.
His encounter with Bekir, a Turkmen man, becomes one of his first fragile bridges into this age. Later, in Chamchamal, Mad meets Mahmud, a Kurdish peshmerga. They do not initially share a language, but necessity, gesture and trust begin to create one.
Mad's journey through Iraq becomes a journey through competing identities and memories. He has returned to the same land, yet he has no state, no documents and no accepted place within the categories of the modern world.
A new world, read through people
Mad
A man displaced not only from a homeland, but from his own historical time. Everything familiar has become archaeology.
Bekir
A Turkmen encounter in a world Mad cannot yet read. Through him, modern Iraq begins to take human form.
Mahmud
A Kurdish peshmerga in Chamchamal. Between him and Mad, trust begins before language does.
What remains when belonging is taken away?
Identity
Mad possesses a name, but none of the documents or categories by which the modern world identifies a person.
Language
Speech becomes a border of its own. Before words are shared, human connection must begin elsewhere.
War
Ancient divine violence has been replaced by modern weapons, armies and political conflicts.
Belonging
The novel asks whether homeland is defined by soil, language, history or the people with whom one is able to build trust.
Prof. Dr. Deniz Aslan
“This too is a very difficult subject, and one on which there is little consensus. Yet I decided that it would be worthwhile to read this difficult subject in your book, arising from your own thought and perhaps also from your personal experience.”
Prof. Dr. Deniz Aslan · Ankara · 15.02.2025 Translated from Turkish
The novel exists.
The English text is still ahead.
MAD III · Stateless is presented here for English-speaking readers as part of the MAD Trilogy. A complete English literary translation has not yet been published. For that reason, this page intentionally contains no translated sample chapters, no English PDF and no audio reading.