Preface

It was thought that the Garden of Eden is somewhere in Iraq, known in the bible as Mesopotamia. But recently, there was a discovery in the Red Sea, North West of Saudi Arabia, South of Iraq.

A friend of my father's named Mannesh (who has passed) was originally from India, but his work took him all over the world, and he spent considerable time in the middle east.

Shortly after he had returned to the United States, he visited my father and told him that his company (during an excavation), had accidentally uncovered a burial ground, near a waterway, in Aqaba, where several ancient scrolls were well preserved.

To be clear, these were not the same scrolls found in the Dead Sea further North in 1947. Mannesh did not say how many of these "Red Sea" scrolls were found, nor did he have the originals, but he had taken pictures and had that language (one he did not recognize) translated while he was there.

Now I knew Mannesh and his wife had even babysat me and my siblings while I was growing up, and he was not the type of person to exaggerate or perpetrate some elaborate joke (hoax) at my father's expense.

And he was certainly no storyteller. He spoke from what he called the "Scrolls of Creation."

I just happened to overhear their conversation when I walked in on them one day after school. And after listening to Mannesh for a short while, I asked him if I could take some notes. He just nodded politely and continued speaking.

These Scrolls were written by Adam and Eve after they were exiled from the Garden of Eden. And until recently, I had not seen these notes, which (at the time of this book) were taken almost 35 years ago.

Fantastic Coincidence

Hardly. These notes meant nothing to a 15-year-old child other than a good story that could not be easily dismissed. And after a few hours, we had dinner; Mannesh said his goodbyes, and I never saw him again.

My parents eventually divorced, and my father also passed. After he did, my mom started cleaning out her closet because she had things that belonged to both of them during the marriage, and now she was sorting through it.

Then she called me because she discovered a bunch of small wire-bound notebooks -that I don't think they even make anymore.

And she said she didn't know if they belonged to me or my brother because the covers faded. Regardless, she didn't want to throw them out until after I looked at them. My mom is very old, frequently confused, and sensitive, so I humored her.

And that was when I found the notes inside one of the pages I had scribbled on over three decades prior. Suddenly something meaningless to me as a child had become priceless as an adult, as I chose writing as a second career. And I have been working on this book on and off for many years.

Based on my notes, I decided to call this novel "War Scrolls" because they dealt with the Garden of Eden and the Fall of Lucifer.

-Jason Gabriel Kondrath