The hero of al-Dimeeni’s novel speaks of his eyes becoming accustomed to the shadows of a cavernous cell: “I was startled by the inscriptions on the walls, which belonged to people I know and thinkers whose books I had read.”

Al-Dimeeni, already jailed for more than a year in Saudi Arabia’s notorious Eilesha prison outside Riyadh, was sentenced May 15 to nine years in prison for sowing dissent, disobeying his rulers and sedition. His sentence and that of two Saudi scholars convicted with him drew international condemnation and astonished Arab literary and reform circles for its severity.

Abdullah al-Hamed, an academic, was sentenced to seven years in prison, and writer Matrouk al-Faleh got six years. The three men had written a letter to the kingdom’s de facto ruler, Crown Prince Abdullah, calling for political, economic and social reforms - including parliamentary elections in a kingdom that just this year allowed its first, limited elections for weak local councils.

Then, they refused to back down.

Ten other democracy advocates who had signed the letter were released after being compelled to sign an agreement to stop their public reform campaign. Al-Dimeeni, al-Faleh and al-Hamed refused to sign such a statement.

The case has drawn international attention, with the New York-based Human Rights Watch condemning the Saudi government for talking about reform but imposing long prison terms on peaceful advocates of political change.

Al-Dimeeni, 56, is inaccessible to journalists, but his wife, Fawzia al-Oweini, said in a letter published Tuesday in Egypt’s main cultural weekly newspaper Al-Kahera that muzzling liberal voices like her husband’s can only encourage terrorism.

In her open letter to the Saudi leadership that was published in Al-Kahera, al-Oweini accused ultraconservative clerics of being behind her husband’s stiff sentence. Such clerics are often blamed by liberal Saudis and foreigners of creating an environment that fosters terrorism.

“The trend of extremism has taken away a large part of freedom, it is killing freedom,” she said in the letter.

Al-Dimeeni was born to a tribe in the conservative Wahhabi southwestern provinces of Saudi Arabia before moving to the Shiite-dominated Dammam region in the east, an area where many Westerners work in the oil industry. He worked as an engineer for the Saudi oil giant Aramco before joining the editorial board of its magazine, “Caravan.”

He has been critical of the Saudi regime for decades, and has been jailed from time to time since 1986. Before his latest detention, he had published two collections of poetry - “Winds of Positions” and “Whiteness of Times.” He also wrote “A Time for Prison, A Time for Freedom.”

In April, the jailed author was honored at the 2005 PEN Montblanc Literary Gala in New York along with other writers recognized for their work pursuing freedom of expression.

The setting and the characters in “A Gray Cloud,” published in Beirut in 1998, resemble the kingdom and its ruling Al Saud family, which conquered most of the Arabian Peninsula, subduing its tribes and ultimately establishing in 1932 the monarchy that rules the kingdom today.

The hero of “A Gray Cloud” is Sahal al-Jibli, a bank clerk who writes a book about the tribe that controls an imaginary desert nation. In al-Jibli’s story, the tribe becomes angry with the clerk-turned-author, abducts him and jails him until he apologizes.

In prison, al-Jibli is given a number and ordered to forget his real name. “From now on, you are only number 139,” one guard tells him.

In Arab literary circles, al-Dimeeni’s harsh penalty has stirred much discussion.

Liberal Saudi writer Najeeb al-Khonaizi said the imprisonment of al-Dimeeni and his two colleagues had dealt “a severe blow to the reform efforts” in the kingdom. Al-Khonaizi, an old friend of al-Dimeeni who shares his ideas, said silencing liberals will only give conservative clerics leverage.

“His aim is reform, which is the aim of every Saudi - this not a crime,” he said in a telephone interview from Dammam.

Egyptian writer Fatima Naoot said that throughout his writing, al-Dimeeni has “tried to establish a trend of tolerance in a society suppressed by a one-sided religious school.”

“Ali’s dilemma proves that they can imprison the sparrow, but they cannot stop him from singing,” Naoot wrote last month in Cairo’s literary magazine Akbar Al-Adab.

During his past year in detention, al-Dimeeni wrote “Yes, In the Cell, There is a Tune,” a collection emphasizing his dedication to political and social reforms even if jail is the only reward.

“In Eilesha, I tamed my loneliness, and on its walls I wrote my verses,” he wrote.

“My fellows and I have only called for justice/

Not for violence/

We only want to set up a rule of constitution/

Where men and women are treated equally/

From the dimness of the prison’s cell/

My verses will spring like a garden.”