In "Aisha Descends to the Underworld," Buthaina Al-Issa presents a philosophical work through which she aims to highlight the inseparable relationship between life and death, the worldly and the otherworldly. It is the story of a mother who lost her son and wanted to keep his memory alive after his tragic death. There is nothing more painful than losing a loved one, and nothing more dreadful than the gradual fading of their memory, especially when the death is by drowning, right before one's eyes.

After the tragic death of her child, the mother refuses to accept the idea of life without him and decides to descend into the underworld through writing. On her way, she must pass through seven gates. As she crosses the seventh gate at the final threshold of departure, she sees the void shimmer, radiate, and absorb her soul. However, there is a condition to enter this world: she must cast off her open wound – her son and his memory. Can the mother exist outside of this wound?

"O Aisha (The laws of the underworld have been carefully and completely formulated, so do not argue, O Aisha, with the rituals of the underworld), your son is your pain, and your pain is you. The wound has taken on your face, your name, and the panting of your breath. An onlooker cannot tell where your wound begins and where your scream ends. You cling to the ropes of your tears as if they were your salvation. You are cloaked in your eternal sorrow and inflict your pain upon the world. The universe cannot be your victim, O Aisha. Cast off your wound, kiss it between its eyes, and release it. Liberate it. Kiss its phantom and allow it to depart. All the attachments you left at the previous six gates were to prepare you for this one; none compare to this in weight and density. Salvation will not be written for you until you transcend yourself. Fill yourself with love, O Aisha, and set his soul free. What are you now? A pure spirit."

And now Aisha confesses that for the first time in her life, "...for the first time, I was able to be myself without being the wife, or the mother, or the daughter, without being anything other than what I am: a pure spirit. My sense of my spiritual reality is very strong, and I do not need to die to feel it... So I will stop writing, then, and go to experience the world."