Abstract
This paper sheds light on a selection of
literary works representing two different stages of development in the history
of Saudi literature: the 30s and the 70s, to show that while the literary
production of the early generation of writers pioneered by Siba’i, Bogary Awwad
and others reflect a strong attachment to the local environment, such men of
letters were tremendously concerned with change that can only come at the
expense of disappearance of certain conventions and traditions. The call for
radical changes in the literary scene became stronger as the second generation
of writers of the 70s witnessed remarkable social, economic and cultural
transformations in the Kingdom which necessitated that the literary production
should adapt itself to new circumstances in response to a set of fast external
changes. This explains why the short story of Ibrahim An-Naser of the 60s and
Alwan of the 70s was primarily concerned with the impact of social change on
the lives of people in rural and urban regions. As the country experienced a
kind of tension between two opposed ways of life: the traditional and the
modern (the rural and the urban) which accompanied the years of sudden
affluence, the literary scene witnessed a similar tension between the
traditionalists and the modernists. The paper argues that Saudi literature in
its early stages remained
confined within local limits because it maintained its
traditional aspects, it preserved heritage, defended certain ethics and values
and was instructional in tone and tenor. But in spite of its locality and
traditionality, there were staunch advocates of change as Siba’i and Awwad who
laid the cornerstone for the second generation’s penetration of the walls of
the provincial. The paper shows that the early generation of
writers were aware of their limitations. Hence their shaky attempts in short story
writing have not qualified them to
transcend regional limits to gain an outside recognition. But the generation of
the 70s, pioneered by Muhammad Alwan and others, were successful in their
attempts to go beyond the boundaries of the provincial. They demonstrated that
Saudi literature is qualified for exportation as they managed to keep pace with
the contemporary, move toward innovation in the form and content of the short
story and show creativity in their new approaches to commonplace themes. The
paper also sees the strong connection between transcending the limits of the
regional and the inevitability of a shift away from the traditional and toward
the modern and contemporary in the nature of the literary production. It is
only when contemporary Saudi literature relates to a wider and more
comprehensive human experience that its transcendence of the regional can be
possible.
المحلي
وما وراءه في أعمال أدبية سعودية مختارة
الماخص
يسلط البحث الضوء على أعمال
أدبية مختارة لأدباء سعوديين يمثلون فترتين مختلفتين من مراحل تطور الأدب السعودي
في الثلاثينات والسبعينات حيث نلحظ التصاق الأدب في مراحله الأولى بالبيئة المحلية
في كتابات السباعي والبوقري والعواد وغيرهم إلا أن ذلك الارتباط بالمحلي لم يحل
دون المناداة بالتغيير
الذي أدرك البعض من رواد الجيل الأول أنه لا يتم إلا على حساب
اختفاء بعض التقاليد والأعراف. وقد ازدادت قوة تلك الدعوة لأحداث التغيير في الوسط
الأدبي على يد أبناء الجيل الثاني في السبعينات عندما لوحظ بأن المملكة تشهد تغيرات اجتماعية
واقتصادية وثقافية جذرية والتي استوجبت أن يكيف الإنتاج الأدبي نفسه مع الظروف
الجديدة استجابة لتلك التحولات الخارجية السريعة. وعليه فان القصة القصيرة عند إبراهيم
الناصر في الستينات ومحمد علوان في السبعينات ركزت اهتمامها على مدى التأثير الاجتماعي على حياة
الناس في القرية والمدينة وما تبع ذلك من توتر بين نمطين من أنماط الحياة. وفي الوقت الذي مرت فيه البلاد بتوتر أو صراع بين الحياة
التقليدية والجديدة الذي صاحب سنوات الطفرة، فان هناك صراعا" أو توترا"
مشابها" قد حدث في الساحة الأدبية بين التقليد والتجديد. ويسعى البحث ليبرهن
أن الأدب السعودي في مراحله الأولى بقي منغلقا" أو محصورا" في حدود المحلي
لاحتفاظه بهيئته التقليدية محافظا" على التراث ومدافعا" عن القيم
والأخلاق في إطار تعليمي في فحواه ومغزاه ونبرته. إلا أنه بالرغم من تقليدية الأدب
ومحليته، فقد وجد المدافعون الأقوياء عن التغيير أمثال
السباعي والعواد الذين وضعوا حجر الأساس الذي مكن لجيل الأدباء في السبعينات من
اختراق جدران المحلي. وبالرغم من إدراك الجيل الأول لإمكانياتهم المحدودة حيث أن
بدايات كتابة القصة القصيرة كانت مجرد
محاولات في مهدها لم تكن لتمكن أو تؤهل الأدب السعودي من كسر حاجز المحلي بعد
ليحظى باعتراف خارجي، إلا أن الجيل الثاني في السبعينات قد تمكن على أيدي أدباء
رواد أمثال محمد علوان وغيره من أن يحيل إلى واقع ما طرحه الجيل الأول من نقاش
وجدل حول أهلية الأدب السعودي للتصدير. ويخرج البحث بنتائج أهمها أن الجيل الثاني
قد نجح في محاولته لتجاوز حدود المحلي وذلك بعد مجاراته للمعاصر وتحركه نحو
التحديث والتجديد في شكل ومضمون القصة القصيرة وإظهاره للإبداع عن طريق النظرة
المتجددة لكل ما هو مألوف واعتيادي. كما يرى الباحث بأن هناك علاقة وطيدة بين
تجاوز حدود المحلي وحتمية التحول من النظرة التقليدية إلى التجديدية والمعاصرة
المفروضة بطبيعة الحال على نوعية الإنتاج الأدبي، وعليه فان تجاوز حدود المحلي
مرهون بمدى ارتباط الأدب السعودي المعاصر بمعطيات التجربة الانسانية بكل شموليتها
واتساعها.
This paper attempts to look at a selection of
Saudi literary works, primarily some short stories, written at two different
historical periods to see how such works, particularly the ones written at a
later epoch, have managed to break the deadlock of the provincial and somehow
at a new stage in their development they moved toward innovation and change and
consequently transcended the limits of the provincial or the regional. The
paper argues that while the call for change can be traced to the works of major
literary figures such as Siba’i, Bogary, Awwad and others who were
conscious of the fact that certain traditions had to disappear with the passage
of time as they hindered movement and slowed down progress, such a call became
stronger as the country witnessed remarkable transformations in all sectors in
the early 70s or so. While some literary men of the early generation were aware
of their limitations and were concerned with the suitability of Saudi literature
for exportation, the early and somewhat shaky attempts to penetrate the walls
of the regional materialized at the hands of the generation of the 70s. What
started with a mere discussion of whether Saudi literature suited the
aspirations of the outside market or not by the early generation was in fact
turned into a reality later on as if the second generation put into deeds and
actions what began with mere words. Hence the early generation is still given
credit for laying the foundation for the second generation’s penetration of the
limits of the regional.
The paper also argues that transcending the
boundaries of the regional can only be accomplished if the Saudi literary
production adapted itself to new circumstances in response to a remarkably new
set of changes observed at the social and economic levels, and if Saudi writers
were capable of keeping pace with the contemporary which requires radical
changes in both the content and form of any literary genre. It is only when
literature moves toward innovation and creativity and shows ability to look at
things in a totally new way using different appraoches and techniques that it
receives an outside recognition. Its suppressed voice can then be heard and
appreciated. In the light of all this, the change in the contemporary
literary scene was therefore seen as a necessity for the generation of the 70s.
It went hand in hand with the great social, economic and cultural changes that
The Literary Scene in the Early 30s
Perhaps it is appropriate at this point to
offer a commentary on the Saudi literary scene at its early years of
development before any comparison between the short stories of the 30s and the
70s is made. Such a commentary should also precede the discussion of the
literary works under study. In his assessment of the literary production of the
early generation of Saudi writers, Muhammad Surur As-Sabban (1316/1898
-1392/1971), a patron of Saudi literary youth, writes in the introduction of a
book on Hijaz Literature (1926) that he
feels that the literary value { of what is included in the
book} may be worth
nothing
in the literary market, it may be the object of scorn by some; while
it
may be received with sympathy and encouragement by others (1).
It
should be noted that As-Sabban was one of the most eminent men of Makkah
particularly during the latter years of the Hashemite ruler, Al-Husayn Bin
Ali’s reign in the Hijaz. He was influential enough to represent the people of
the Hijaz and inform the Hashemite ruler that he had to abdicate. When the late
King Abdulaziz took over, As-Sabban held a number of very prominent positions
in the government. But his administrative positions did not divert his
attention away from literature. On the contrary, he was a driving force behind
the revitalization of the literary movement in the Kingdom and he gave men of
letters full-hearted support. He was the first man to establish a printing
press in the Kingdom and the first literary figure to publish a book on Hijazi
literature (2). In his evaluation of the literature of his time, he
is modest to realize the narrow circle around which it revolved and the small
world around which it centred its focus particularly if we consider that Sabban
hopes that by publishing the book “a true renaissance would bring to the Hijaz
and its people their buried glory and the dignity that they deserve”(3). Sabban’s opinion reflected the
mentality of his age, if not the line of thinking of the traditionalists in
whose eyes, revival can only be achieved through the retrieval of the past.
While one wonders how a renaissance that looks into the future can occur by a
recourse to the past, Sabban’s attitude showed that the early generation’s
conception of literature was very parochial indeed as it linked itself to the
preservation of heritage, the reformation of society, the defense of certain
ethics and values and the maintenance and continuity of traditions.
However, even among the early generation
of Saudi men of letters, there was an oppositional call on the other side
pioneered by Muhammad Hasan Al-Awwad (1902-1980) in particular, a staunch
advocate of change, who rejected a blind imitation of predecessors and called
for
contemporaneity in our tongues, our thoughts, our defense of
our pens and
our habits provided that we are not westernized, we do not
go to an xtreme
and look with contempt at whatever is ancient. In brief, we
become
moderate, and not westernized in our contemporaneity.
Moderation is the
soul of balance in everything (4).
Tension Between
the Traditionalists and Early Modernists
While one senses the tension between two
antithetical ways of life and two opposed approaches to literature in Awwad’s
statement though the scale weighs heavier in favour of innovation and desire
for change, Awwad prepares us for what may turn at times to be a fierce
struggle, if not confrontation, between the traditionalists’ and the
modernists’ views toward Saudi literature; taking us to the past heritage with
the first group or moving on to a new era with the second. However, one should
look at the attitudes of both Sabban and Awwad as representing both the
traditionalists and the early modernists. As this paper shows, the tension
between these two groups is an on-going one and may never be resolved. The
differences in perspectives in the literary scene over the definitions and the
connotations of a variety of terms such as change, heritage, traditions and
contemporaneity have their parallel in differences in viewpoints over two modes
of life that seem to be at war with each other in liberal and open urban
communities on the one hand and a more conservative and closed rural
communities on the other. This major issue will be discussed in more detail in
our analysis of some of the literary works of Ibrahim An-Naser and Muhammad
Alwan where the tension between two different ways of life is at its peak. As
has been illustrated, such a tension has always existed between the
traditionalists and the modernists who also differ in their assessment of the
literary production of any given period. One may compare Sabban’s early remarks
related to his evaluation of the literary scene of the 30s, as an example, to
Yahya Haqqi’s assessment of the writing of Muhammad Alwan in the preface to
Bread and Silence (1977). Such a comparison reveals how Saudi literature in its
early stages was confined within regional limits while the Saudi literary scene
of the 70s, as will be elaborated later, witnessed huge transformations which
qualified it for a leap beyond the provincial since it won an outside
recognition and acclaim.
Though As-Sabban admitted that the literary
production of the generation of the 30s was still in its infancy, his modest
evaluation of it paved the path for a more constructive criticism of the
contemporary literary scene. In his study of the critical evaluation of the
writings of the early Saudi pioneers, As-Sasi feels uneasy regarding what he terms
an emotional and general assessment of literary works rather than an objective
and more specific one in those early years of experimentation (5).
But irrespective of the degree of precision and focus required for a literary
critic who lacked the polished talent at such an early stage of
development of Saudi literature when literary men were merely experimenting and
trying their best to get their works published, the evaluation of the literary
production had a bearing on raising its subsequent standard. Furthermore, it
engaged some literary men in hot and bitter debates, if not skirmishes at
times, which were relatively fruitful and valuable in the literary sense in the
long run. But such bitter debates were not without their side-effects as they
engendered ill-feelings and tension between some figures like Muhammad Hasan
Awwad and Abdul-Qaddus Al-Ansari, as an example, over the latter’s publication
of a novella entitled The Ointment of Feigned Forgetfulness (1933)(6).
However, the skirmish
between Awwad and Ansari revitalized the literary scene as both men drew
advocates to their side and opponents against them.
The above discussion shows that tension has existed
between the advocates of change in Saudi literature and the traditionalists who
are primarily concerned with the preservation of heritage and the continuity of
a set of traditions bequesthed to the younger generation by their venerable
forefathers. Such a tension between the
old and the new is dramatized in Abdullah Oraif’s article (1917-1975) entitled
“My Friend Between Two Eras”(7).
Oraif is aware of the inevitability of change in coming years. Hence it is
preposterous to expect a friend who has become educated and who has been
exposed to a highly cultured milieu to be the same old man with the same
unchanged ideas, outlooks and vision because he is on the threshold of a new
era, and his lifestyle is naturally different from his predecessors’. Though
Oraif is amazed that his friend has changed so drastically to the extent that he
thinks that he is a different person, he is sending the message that an
intellectual may suffer estrangement from his own people because he deviates
from the norm and introduces ideas which do not show social conformity. He
becomes the outcast of Alwan and the troublemaker who disrupts the social
fabric and shakes beliefs in well-rooted traditions. Oraif’s article directs a
gentle satire at the traditionalists who are opposed to change and who accuse
those who have changed their perspectives and become enlightened of fickleness
and disloyalty to inherited values and long-standing conventions. Like Alwan
later, Oraif dramatizes the impending conflict between the intellectual and his
common folk though he does not display the high degree of artistry and
sophistication in his dramatization of the tension as Alwan does. One reason
for such a difference is that Oraif was writing at the 50s while Alwan was
writing in the 70s. Hence more maturity and depth is shown in the latter’s
treatment of the conflict. One senses the big gap between early years of
experimentation and later years of growth once a comparison between the two
literary figures’ treatment of the same topic is compared. This comparison also
shows that there is a noticeable difference between the local and what attempts
to transcend the limits of the local.
But the two men of letters shared the vision that a rise in the level of
education was bound to cast aside worn-out traditions and old lifestyles.
An
Early Call for Change: Melibari and Siba’i
The above discussion shows that literary
men from different periods may share common goals. There were moments in the history of Saudi
literature when men of letters who belonged to the generation of the 30s and
the 70s joined hands and directed gentle or severe criticism at old customs and
traditions and unanimously called for a gradual break from imprisoning manacles
of the past. However, several factors determined what each generation saw as a
necessity in terms of its liberation from the legacy of the past. For the early
generation of the 30s, such a liberation is achieved once “the bundle, the
wicked, stupid bundle of custom and tradition” is discarded(8).
Such a view is expressed by Muhammad Al-Melibari (b.1930) in “Poor, Oh!
Chastity” where Mona’s brother,
Hisham, can “in the name of custom and tradition” mistreat his sister, deprive her of her right to choose an eligibile suitor and
keep her as a maid in his house. Once she is married, the brother loses control
over “Mona’s share of the inheritance from their father. He [is] afraid that if
Mona married,
her husband might inherit her share of the income from the Tawafah. Hisham
[wants] to keep it all for himself”(9).
Melibari is therefore highly critical of traditions which keep the woman as a
mere object to barter with and a valuable assest that adds more to the family’s
wealth. In that case, customs become the means to tighten control over women
and in Mona’s case, “her rights [are] exploited”(10)
under the mask of social conventions which confirm the avarice and moral
corruption of an authoritative and domineering masculine society. While one can
easily supply sufficient evidence that the early generation of Saudi men of
letters were exposing social frailties and shortcomings particularly in their
treatment of female issues and the problems of arranged, if not forced,
marriages in the Saudi society, it may be appropriate to refer to Ahmad
al-Siba’i’s (1905-1983) short story entitled “Auntie Kadarjan” as it bears a
striking resemblance to Melibari’s story. While Siba’i’s story captures in a
very fascinating manner the lifestyle, customs and traditions of Makkan people
at a very significant stage of historical development before the discovery of
oil and before a lot of the ancient traditions of the people of the Hijaz had
to fade away, the story probes into the Arab mentality which has taken certain
conventions for granted, and consequently the call for change has to come at
the expense of the obliteration of such deeply-rooted traditions.
It looks as if Arabs ever since antiquity and
until modern times can never wipe out the disturbing thought that once the
daughter is married, her share of the inheritance is automatically going into
foreign hands. In fact, one reason why women are not given the rightful share
of the inheritance allotted to them according to the Islamic law is that tribal
societies prefer to keep their properties intact. While the share of men in the
estate division is expected to remain within the boundaries of the tribe, the
share of women, once married to outsiders, is bound to go to other tribes. This
dispersion of wealth leads to disputes and creates problems among neighbouring
tribes. According to Al-Jabiri, some tribes “deny women their share of the
inheritance to keep away from disputes”(11).
In the light of this explanation, one can understand the line of thinking
of Kadarjan’s father who assumes that he has every right to rob his daughter of
her right to marry. Whether he likes to keep her because she is still a child
in his eyes, or he anticipates that he needs her “to look after him in his old
age”, the ugly and repulsive side of such a materialistic mentality is revealed
when he justifies his excuses of rejecting possible suitors on grounds of his
dread that “a stranger [will] get hold of his property”(12).
After the father’s death while Kadarjan is “still in the bloom of youth”,
she was entrusted to the guardianship of a cousin who is no different from
Melibari’s Hisham. In fact, he is even more tyrannical as he punishes her for
having refused him as a suitor. Once he plays the role of the guardian and attains
a position of
power over her, he “repaid her with the same obstinacy, refusing, ..., anyone
who sought to become engaged to her”. But her salvation comes when “Shaikhat
al-Hujjaj” proposes her secret elopement to the judge who will “tie the knot”
and join her in marriage to one of the Indonesian pilgrims who paid her a
visit and stole “longing glances at
her”`(13). Kadarjan welcomed the suggestion as it was her way out of
the new locks on the chain imposed by a greedy and whimsical cousin. Though the
story ends in disappointment as the expected suitor never returns to take her
away with him, it is striking that in both Melibari’s and Siba’i stories, the
picture drawn of the people of the Hijaz is that they live in a cosmopolitan
society where a strong religious and cultural bridge is extended between them
and the people of Indonesia, India and Malaysia. Interestingly enough, this
strong bond that ties the people of the Hijaz to the Far East is emphasized in
Amal Muhammad Shata’s Tomorrow I Will Forget (1980), considered as the first
Saudi novel by a female author. The novel revolves around the story of an
Indonesian woman named Taima who got married to a Hijazi youth during one of
his business trips. It documents an important feature of Hijazi social lifestyle
when the Hijaz and the
The Hijaz becomes the melting pot of diverse
cultures where man’s outer role is expanded beyond the world of trade and
commercial activities. Tawafah or Haj Establishments have been a constant
source of income for the people of the Hijaz. But with commercial ties, social
relations were consolidated and inter-marriages with Indonesian women were
acceptable. The men of the Hijaz, like Shata’s wealthy businessman, travelled
to
suitable
future bridegroom because such rights ran into direct opposition with certain
interests that could only be protected with the survival of ancient
conventions. But Siba’i, like Melibari, was in favour of change since both
writers realized that certain conventions acted as a hindrance that exploited females in
the name of an adherence to strict and valuable traditions which kept the
family united. One therefore observes that as early as the time of Siba’i,
there was an awareness that social change could not be
achieved without a gradual disappearance of certain traditions and customs
which impeded movement and hindered progress.
The early generation of writers was
therefore aware that certain social conventions victimized females and robbed
them of their legitimate rights. Their call for change meant that those
obsolete traditions should be done away with. A new page should be turned where
the respective roles of males and females in the Saudi society had to undergo certain changes. Such roles
were defined in other Saudi literary works which are also referred to later in more
depth such as Hamed Damanhouri’s The Value of Sacrifice And Hamza Bogary’s
Saqifat Al-Safa. It was therefore inevitable that the roles of males and
females had to change due to the faster pace of economic and social change that
the country had been through. Generally speaking, the Saudi society has been
through such significant and fast changes in outlooks, lifestyles, customs and
traditions in the last few decades that it becomes a challenge for men of
letters to catch up with them first and
try and tackle them in their writings second. In fact, very few
countries have experienced such a rapid pace of change in recent years as
rapid
modernization set in train by the discovery of oil in the 1930s and accelerated
at dizzying pace following the 1973 quadrupling of the price of oil”(15). The
early 70s are also known as the years of sudden affluence and rising fortunes
in
Two Different
Generations of Short Story Writers
But in spite of the fact that the early
short stories already mentioned in addition to many others such as Muhammad
Hasan Awwad’s “A Forced Marriage” (1926), Abdul-Wahhab A’ashi’s “On The Playground
of Events” (1926) and Muhammad Sa’eed Al-Amoudi’s (b. 1905) “The Inheritance”
(“Al-Mirath”) expressed the Saudi authors’ concern with the concept of change
and the adaptability to new circumstances, such stories remain mere experiments
and shaky attempts with this new literary genre. Muhammad Ash-Shamekh in his
study of the Saudi literary prose including some short stories written between
the Two World Wars, holds the view that at the hands of the early generation,
content received more attention than the
narrative style and artistic structure as
the
stories were written in the form of a sermon that the writers attempt to
elucidate,
or ideas they intend to prove or defend. If the stories differedi
any
way, such a difference was related to the artistic method or approach
employed
in the treatment of the issue around which the stories
revolved.
Those who lacked the art of the narrative style did not succeed
in
their mission, while some other writers such as Al-Afaghani and
Huhu, were partially successful
in their attempts.(16)
Furthermore,
many of the early short stories were closer to social essays rather
than proper short stories as their primary objective was social reform through
satire of certain conventions and traditions which were bound to fade away with
the passage of time.
Having discussed some of the short stories
and other literary works written at the 30s, we may compare them now to what
has been written at a later stage. As
has been stated, the second generation of short story writers of the early 70s
had to deal with problems and issues of a different nature. Most of these
problems came to the surface during the period of remarkable social
transformation with the expansion of cities and constructions, the rise of the
middle class and an awareness that the country was on the threshold of a new
industrial and technological era. Such an era was not without its own problems
in advanced urban societies where corruption, spiritual and moral emptiness, the
sterility and the drabness of life become common ailments. As modern cities
turned into centres of misery, social injustice and exploitation, the
individual experienced feelings of alienation and estrangement. This is quite
obvious in the stories of Al-Ashghar, Abdallah As-Salmi and Husayn Ali Husayn
(b. 1950).
Furthermore, the second generation of Saudi
authors had to record their attitudes and the impressions of people who had to
cope with such unprecedented changes in the country. As poeple experienced
anxiety, bewilderment and frustration during those years of radical change, men
of letters felt the same since their reactions reflected popular sentiments and
feelings. Every phase of external change is almost recorded in Siba’i Othman’s
stories (b. 1938) and there is a strong connection between external changes and
similar psychological and internal ones as if the outer scene reflects an
internal dilemma and turmoil. In Othman’s “Waiting for the Summer”,
as an example, we get a sense that we are observing two antithetical worlds:
one about to depart and fade out and the other about to impose itself on us.
Other writers were aware of a
negative, rather than a positive, impact of this new intruding
world of technological changes which were accomplished at the expense of a loss
of certain values. Such values could never be retrieved as in Abdullah
Baghazi’s Collection of stories entitled Fear and the River (1991) where focus
shifts to moments of defeat and disappointment after an exposure to a highly sophisticated
modern civilization. Others drew attention to the devastating and degrading
effects of certain aspects of the glittering modern civilization on the life of
the individual and by comparison, bygone days were far better and happier.
While some men of letters like Abdulaziz As-Sagha’bi in “Neither is Your Night
Mine Nor Are You Myself”, continued to address in a new way marriage problems
which seem to be the concern of Saudi literary figures across ages, they
discovered that there was so much more to cover and deal with. Hence men like
Sagha’bi and Baghazi showed more maturity in later years, a maturity reflected
in Baghazi’s resort to a symbolic representation in his stories as in The Black
Flame, and in Sagha’bi’s use of more complex narrative techniques and his focus
on moments of an intense psychological disturbance experienced by some of his
protagonists such as Hasan in a short story entitled “The Question”(17).
A
Different Literary Scene in the Early 70s
The literary scene of the early 70s
witnessed a gradual break
from the legacy of the past. As a young generation of poets and
short story writers observed the radical changes which occurred in the social
and economic scene, their vision of life was altered and consequently their
conception of their roles as men of letters in a rapidly changing society had
to undergo equal changes. With the publication of an anthology of poems
entitled Drawings on a Wall (Rusum Ala Al-Ha’et) by Sa’ad Al-Humaidin in 1977,
it looks as if the rising generation expressed dissatisfaction with what was
written in imitation of predecessors. The young poets such as Jarallah
Al-Humaid, Ali Al-Damini, Muhammad Jabr Al-Harbi and Muhammad Al-Thubaiti, to
mention only a few, were longing for innovation and creativity in their poems;
a task that could only be attained once they liberate themselves from the
restrictions of the traditionalists. Such poets had to assess the real
situation on the literary scene and rather than expecting a confrontation or
calling for a revolution, they had to express their frank attitudes toward the traditions of the
past. In a poem entitled “Shakings on the Face of Stagnant Time”, Al-Humaidin
sheds light on the crisis of poetic innovation where the contemporary poet
feels that he is bogged down by a heavy legacy that mesmerizes his movement and
holds him back from that forward march that has even been called for by the early generation of
Saudi men of letters such as Ahmad Al-Siba’i in his Let Us Walk On. Al-Humaidin
wonders why the contemporary poet had “to seek a return to the lexicon of
remembrance .. to search for meanings [which] have been shaped and
embellished by man with alphabets uttered in ancient times”(18). But
that lexicon has been exhausted and time has come for a revival and experimentation.
Al-Humaidin’s poem reminds us of Wallace
Stevens’ “Of Modern Poetry” (1879-1955) where the American poet expects a
change to take place in the new poem because “the theatre was changed / To something else. .../ It has to be living, to learn the
speech of the place. It has to face the men of the time and to meet / The women
of the time”(19). The new poem
has therefore to be different because the circumstances and the age have
changed and it has to attune itself to such different situations. The call for
change and innovation on the contemporary Saudi scene cannot be divorced from
similar calls propagated by sincere advocates of new ideas and thoughts. Such
calls swept across the Arab world too. They naturally affected the contemporary
literary scene that reflected an awareness of the political and social
predicaments which strangled the Arab world. Al-Humaidin’s call for a revival
in the Saudi literary scene should not be severed from other similar calls
which took place in a number of Arab countries. In fact, it should be seen as
an extension and continuation of them though the calls for the break from the
themes and perspectives of the ancients in other Arab countries such as
Humaidin’s call for change in both form and
content of the new poem has spread to include other literary genres; and the
short story was no exception. Hence it was inevitable that the short story went
through radical
changes which were in equal ratio to the social and geo-political
transformations that the country had
gone through. The change in taste and outlooks on the literary scene went hand
in hand with the country’s successful economic development which has certainly
altered its demographic and social fabric. Consequently, “the growing
importance of the middle class, the shift from the rural existence of farmers
and Bedouins to the modern concept of industry and technical businesses, and
the impact of enormous material wealth”(22)
become the centre of focus of the second generation of short story
writers who had to adapt themselves to new circumstances and who had to mold
the new short story to fit into the modern scene which required certain
adjustments and alterations.
Such adjustments should be tailored to
clothe the Saudi short story into a new apparel
well-suited for the outside market. Without such adjustments, it may remain
confined within regional boundaries. But allowing it the chance to receive an
outside recognition necessitates that it matches the external production. This
leads us to a very significant question related to the suitability of Saudi
literature for the outside literary market. Such a major question was the
centre of a debate that the Saudi literary scene witnessed in the 50s. It
certainly revived the literary scene then and stirred the spirit of competition
among Saudi literary men to contribute toward the re-awakening of the literary
movement at that time. In fact, Al-Manhal
magazine raised the issue of the suitability of the exportation of Saudi
literature to neighbouring countries in its first edition of 1945 after its
publication was discontinued during the four years of the Second World War. It
offered an assessment of the Saudi literary scene 20 years after its inception only to
confirm that it is an imitation of a mixture of Egyptian and Mahjar literary
men. The Saudi literary voice is half-suppressed, its
echo is not heard and hence not recognized by other Arab figures. In response
to Al-Manhal’s article, Abdullah Abdul-Jabbar wonders if literature should be
looked at as a commodity fit or unfit for sale and purchase, export and import.
But he adds that alive literature derives its power from its ability to impose itself
on the readers’ market and its success to have an impact on raising a level of
awareness among the public(23).
Abdul-Jabbar’s call for the reader’s
personal judgement on a published literary work and his realization that the
public has every right to give an evaluation of what was written then indicate
that, while the majority of the early generation of Saudi literary figures did
not take into account the role of the reader in discovering the meaning of the
text, he, at least, was moving in the direction toward innovation and revival.
He was laying the cornerstone for
someone like Amin Salem Ruwaihi who in the 50s, and in the introduction to his
first collection of short stories entitled And The Ear Loves (Wal’uthn
Ta’ashaq), addresses the reader and says: “What matters to me is your
judgement, and not the judgement of someone else, so I thank you”(24). But
a careful look at the works of a much later generation than Ruwaihi,
particularly, the writings of figures such as Muhammad Alwan, Abdulaziz Al-Meshri, Saleh Al-Ashgar, Abdulaziz
As-Saga’bi, Husayn Ali Husayn and Khaled Ibrahim Al-Fuzay’, to mention only a
few, reveal that the reader’s relationship to the author and his role in
bringing out the meaning of the text are much deeper than either Abdul-Jabbar
or Ruwaihi thought, particularly if one realizes that ironically Ruwaihi did
not involve the reader in the process of discovering the meaning of the text
since he handed him down a finished off product. But apart from that, at least at
Abdul-Jabbar’s time, there was consciousness, however slight it was, that only when
a constructive criticism of the contemporary scene, as Al-Humaidin had
done later, is accepted, that the chances for reform are given room. Hence
Abdul-Jabbar goes on to
admit that most of what was being written was a literature of tradition whose quality can be
improved once literary men receive a better and deeper education. The major
issue for Abdul-Jabbar is therefore how the literary figure received proper
Thaqafa, i.e., a culture that can only
be attained once his horizons are broader and his reading is more profound. It is only when he becomes
an intellectual with a high degree of knowledge that he can impose himself on
his surrounding
because his writing has value and depth (25). But even
if he imposes
himself on the local scene, what guarantees that his work will transcend the
provincial limits and how can the quality of Saudi literature be raised so as
to receive an outside recognition!
Probably the answer is suggested by
Abdul-Rahman Munif whose views on the modern novel which is also applicable to the modern short story are
worth quoting. He is more concerned with literary works which manage to
transcend regional limits once they meet certain conditions. Munif says that
the
closer { the modern novel} comes to sincerity in portraying the local
atmosphere
and the deeper it goes into the lives of the local people, even if
they are
a small group, the more it approaches being world class... Being
local does
not mean being provincial, but rather
attempting to portray a
limited
reality more deeply and more sincerely(26).
In
the light of the above statement, it maybe argued that one of the greatest
challenges which face the contemporary Saudi literary scene relates to its
ability to maintain its provinciality that gives it its distinctive literary
features, but simulateneously that provinciality does not act as a hindrance
whereby the Saudi literary production transcends the regional limits to achieve
somewhat a degree of universality. It requires a great deal of effort before
Saudi production receives recognition or is able to penetrate the walls of the
local on its way to the universal particularly if we keep in mind that Saudi
literature, particularly the Saudi novel, play and short story, have always
looked for an outside model to imitate, and whether that model is Egyption or
Lebanese represented by the Diwan /Apollo School or the Mahjar poets
respectively, one has to admit that even these could not have developed without
an imitation of a Western model with its out-standing longer history and more
complex patterns and techniques. Hence we are eventually talking about the
literature of a consumer society whose reliance on foreign power for road and bridge
construction is recorded in Abdullah al-Salmi’s (b. 1950) “The Bridge”, as an
example, and whose strides not only in the social and technological areas are
still unsteady or independent, but also a conservative society which is still
experimenting with totally new genres, namely the novel and the short story as
they only appeared onto the scene less than 70 years ago, which is a relatively
short period of time in the history of
developing nations before literary
genres are full-fledged.
If we take the African novel as an example,
the confession that African novelists are still in their years of
experimentation compared with a much more advanced Western tradition comes from
a renowned literary figure who is no other than Chinua Achebe who states that “Writing of the
kind I do is relatively new in my part of the world”(27). If that
statement applies to African writers, we have a stronger case where it should
be applied to Saudi literary figures who, particularly
the early generation, were aware of their limitations and their reliance on
outside models which they imitated. In addition, the early literary figures
were mainly concerned with the suitability of local literature for the outside
market on a pan-Arab scale, and not at an international scale yet of course.
The question of the suitability of regional literature for the outside market
remains a crucial and vital one particularly for the later generation of the
70s. It was of a major concern to a number of literary figures at that period
that their literary works transcended provincial limits. So how can the quality
of Saudi literature be improved to the extent that it
deserves external acclaim!
Aijaz
Ahmad and ‘Third-Worldism’
Before addressing the issue in more depth, it
may be appropriate to refer to the debate between the Indian Marxist critic,
Aijaz Ahmad and the American critic Fredric Jameson concerning the latter’s
categorization of Third World Literature as a ‘National Allegory’. Ahmad points
out In Theory: Classes, Nation, Literatures that Jameson’s proclamations on
‘all’ Third World Literature has been made because Jameson needed such a tight
or constrained category to “produce a theory of Third World Literature”(28). However Ahmad’s incisive
analysis of the category of ‘Third World Literature’ displayed the
impossibility of creating such confining categories. Ahmad reveals his wide
knowledge and remarkable familiarity with a wide variety of literatures and he
attempts to locate literary theory as it was developed in the Anglo-American
Academy over the last 25 years or so, within the framework of what he considers
as “the fundamental dialectic between imperialism, decolonization, and the
struggle for socialism” which according to him “constitutes the contradictory
nature of the world in our epoch”(29).
His goal is to rejuvenate a Marxist tradition which, he thinks, has
become subordinate to other theoritical positions. In Chapter 2 of In Theory, Ahmad sees
the connection between the emergence of the category of Third World Literature
and the radical changes which occurred in the patterns of immigration and the
noticeable rise of Asian immigrants who
are classified among the bourgeois and are occupying prominent administrative positions in
society. Ahmad accompanies his criticism with a detailed presentation and
significant elaboration which reflect his grasp of the significant historical
events of the time. Furthermore, Ahmad’s book raises basic questions related to
the production and distribution of third world texts to show that while such
texts have to be understood within a certain cultural context, yet “‘Third
World Literature’ had no boundaries - neither of space nor of time, of culture
nor of class; a Senegalese novel, a Chinese short story, a song from medieval
India, could all be read into the same archive: it was all ‘Third World’”(30). We may as well add to the above
samples of ‘
In fact, the call for a distinctive and
independent Arab voice increased in the years which followed national
liberation in numerous Arab countries. As Arab writers were aware of a Western
hegemony that imposed itself on numerous aspects of Arabic lifestyle, they
retaliated by their call to preserve their cultural identity through a return
to Arab-Islamic heritage from which they drew inspiration. Some Arab men of
letters, like the Moroccan writer, Abd al-Kabir al-Khatibi, in the words of
Issa Boullata, argues
that:
Arabs and (other
thought,
but should also reclaim their own voice and speak in accordance with
their own
culture. Their double-criticism should aim, on the one hand, at de
-centering the West from the central place it has arrogated to itself and
imposed
on the
modern world, and, on the other hand, at deconstructing their own
perception
of what they think is their monolithic, traditional, cultural heritage. ...
This should be done in the arts and letters as well as in all aspects of life,
al
-Khatibi asserts, so that no one culture in the world should dominate the
others,
and each should rise to the highest potentials of its own parameters and
environment
(31).
While
one agrees with certain points raised by al-Khatibi related to the need for an
expression of cultural identity, through a distinctive Arabic voice, which can
be attained once this Arabic voice disengages itself from a blind imitation
from Western themes and once the same voice shows a close attachment to local
and national color taken out of a distinctive Arab environment, one finds it
quite difficult to claim that modern
Arabic literature can develop without
its reliance on Western models or borrowing from Western techniques. In my
view, maintenance of local or national color can still be accomplished while
Western techniques are borrowed. It does not diminish the value of any
literature, particularly third-world literature, if it still relies on an
outside pattern or model as long as it maintains its distinctive national
features drawn out of its own environment. Third-World literature can receive
world acclaim if it maintains its local color and still depends on outside
models. There is no contradiction, whatsoever, between adhering to the environment and being
local, thus speaking in accordance with one’s own culture on the one hand and
dependence on or recourse to more advanced techniques borrowed from the West
with the intention of benefiting from them and apply them to enhance the
quality of local literature on the other hand.
Saudi
Literature Between the Regional and Beyond
One solution to the problem is offered by
the Saudi critic, Sa’ad Al-Bazi’e, who points out in Desert Culture that the
contemporary Saudi literature should move within two frameworks: the regional
one on the one hand and the Arabic, Islamic and international on the other with
no contradition whatsoever between the two movements. Within the first circle, a Saudi man of
letters preserves his identity as he maintains
distinctive regional qualities or attributes drawn from desert life
where as an example, Abdullah Al-Saikan’s Fiddah in his poem entitled “Fiddah
Learns to Draw” becomes a beautiful symbol of the regional land and where a
literary figure is inspired by popular culture, folktales and myths in his
works. And within the second larger circle, the Saudi man of letters confirms
his link with or connection to a wider and more general human experience. The
two movements complement each other. While a poet or a short story writer
searches for his distinctive location on the regional framework or local map
with one eye, he keeps the second eye constantly on his whereabouts on the
outer circle. Al-Bazi’e calls for a
revival of an ancient tradition and heritage but at the same time, he is a
staunch advocate of change and modernization in both form and content which he sees them
as prerequisites to the establisment of
a strong connection to the external and wider circle of world culture (32).
If the Saudi literary production were to be
evaluated in the light of Al-Bazi’e’s observations, it would be discovered that
Saudi literature maintained its local or regional features fulfilling one of
the above conditions. But it remains a challenge for the early generation in
particular to move within the second outer circle. However, one should not give
up hope as a much later generation pioneered by Alwan, Al-Meshri and Al-Ashgar
and others, as the analysis of a selection of some of the second generation’s
works reveals later, were able to move
within the second framework. While the early generation tried to depict the typical lifestyle of
the people of Hijaz in their writings and while they adhered faithfully to
realistic details taken out of the social environment as in Ahmed Siba’i’s
case, yet Siba’i’s realism, as an example, and in the words of Mansour
Al-Hazimi, is
still pulled back to
the past, and to a specific historical period, which had a
tremendous impact on
his childhood. Siba’i is referring to the last years of
Ottoman rule and the beginning of the
Hashemite rule in the Hijaz. He tries in
most of his books
and short stories to capture the past and retrieve that ancient
historical epoch
snatching it of the claws of neglect and forgetfulness, not for its
own sake, but to
save childhood reminiscenes, no matter how bitter their
recollection may
be...(33).
Siba’i’s
realism is therefore closer to historical documentation than it is to the
realism which attempts
“to portray all the varieties of human experience and not merely those suited
to one particular literary perspective”(34). His realism also probes
into the study of the social, political and environmental factors which have an
impact on character formation and development, and which through its scrutiny
of all the above attempts to address current issues faced by the rising
generation. In that regard, Siba’i works share one common objective with the
annually held Janadriyah Festival for Culture and Heritage as the latter aims
at highlighting the nation’s legacy and preserving an almost forgotton past.
Siba’i’s works, like the Janadriyah Festival, are a constant reminder for
younger generations of what the country had been like in those old days. During
the Festival, craftsmen make their own products and the country revives its past heritage
through the display of antiquities, varieties of handicrafts, hand-made
textiles, kitchenware and household itmes such as kettles and coffee pots
(dallah [singular], dilal [plural]) which represent Arab heritage. They
therefore familiarize young Saudis with their culture and connect them to
ancient traditions which might have faded away in real life, but are preserved
through the revival of the country’s heritage at such occasions.
Bogary and the Local
Perhaps
one could turn to Hamza Bogary’s (1932-1984) Saqifat As-Safa to get a sense
of the kind of past that Siba’i and Bogary have captured in their writings and
attempted to keep alive as part of the traditions and the way of life in the
Hijaz years before the discovery of oil. The vivid details of the journey of Muhaisin al-Baliyy, i.e the main character in Bogary’s
autobiogrphical novel, his mother and Auntie Asma to Madina; a journey which
used to take ‘twelve days’, the possible exposure to hazards as some Bedouins
misled passing caravans and the rumbling noises heard along the way, and which
were believed to be “the drums of the fighters at Badr, the drums of the
martyrs who fell in that battle”(35) describe bygone days when life
was arduous and yet exciting and adventurous. Such details arouse the curiosity
of those who would like to peep into the past and feel delighted as they read
such a humorous account by Muhaisin related to the way disputes among water
carriers were settled. Thus he says:
I discovered that the bench had
principles of conduct and laws for punishing
those who
violated them. Most of these offences were related to events which
took
place around the well from which they brought the water, as when one of
them
would take another’s place unfairly, or swear obscenely. The trial always
took
place after
wiser
men. The accused would squat on the ground. The accusation would be
made and
the witnesses would give their testimony. Then the accused would be
asked to
confess.... He would be sentenced to be flogged and would be stretched
on the
ground to receive his punishment (36).
The
above description of the way justice was administered is an indication that by
its adherence to a strict judicial code, Hijaz was a highly cultured society
well governed by a set of rules which maintained peace and order in the entire
community.
Bogary and the Call for Change
But Bogary’s
account is not merely preserving the past, it is also pointing to the
direction of evolution and change within that conservative society. Thus the
grandmother of Jamila, Ustadh Umar’s daughter, who could never be expected to
accept Jamila’s presence in the same room with a total stranger who is no other
than the new tutor, Muhaisin, is eventually “convinced after a few lessons that
what we were doing, although completely unprecedented, did not - as she
expressed it - represent an overstepping of boundaries. This conviction was
reflected in the greetings which she began to give [Muhaisin] whenever she came
to the lesson”(37). The
grandmother who “was undergoing this mild psychological transformation” was in
fact ready to absorb it. Bogary’s autobiogrphical account is therefore an
explicit call to give females the right and equal chance to pursue their
education at proper schools and not at “the Kabariti Kuttab”, an old
traditional method of teaching where education did not go beyond the recitation
of “some of the Koranic chapters which {a woman} recited in her prayers”(38).
This concern with the urgent need for female education is certainly voiced by
Hamed Damanhouri’s novel, The Value of Sacrifice (Thaman At-Tadh-hiyah,1959) where
Bogary’s ‘Ustadh Umar’
Bogary
exposes in a humorous manner the narrow vision of such people in his treatment
of the character of Ustadh Umar. The traditionalists of those days suspected
anyone who “went to the countries of the Christians and could talk a language
other than the language of Muslims and [who] read huge books, the contents of
which were unknown to anyone”(40) of being “a farmasoni, i.e., a
Freemason”. Interestingly enough, Abdul-Qaddus Al-Ansari, a prominent man of
letters in Madina and the founder of the famous Al-Manhal magazine, makes a
reference to the term ‘farmasoni’ in the course of his discussion of the early
development of Saudi literature when the elite of Madina in 1346/1923 had
private literary circles at homes, and as the participants were on their way to
those secretly-held meetings, they heard the whispers of common and elderly
people accusing them of being apostates or renegades out of their conviction,
that those who had literary interests or were familiar with modern trends in
literature which were understood by very few people have deviated from the
straight path of Islam (41).
Such an attitude that reflects suspicion and
low opinion of art and literary men reminds us of the Puritans’ view toward
fiction and art in general as the former was not true and hence should not be
read. While the discussion here may encourage one to make a comparison between
the Puritans’ and the Saudi traditionalists’ perspectives toward fiction as
both showed some kind of religious rigidity and exhibited a sort of
intolerance, one may observe that in Bogary’s humorous account, a derogatory term
such as a ‘farmasoni’ is used to label highly intellectual people who swim
against the current and eventually find themselves treated as outcasts or
strangers in their society. For that reason, Muhaisin’s simple mother had to reconsider the
implications of the invitation that the Teacher extended to her son. Like all
females who are expected to be obedient, rather dull and conformist, she weighs
the situation carefully lest she exposes her son to the inimical companionship of a man who does not
enjoy a sound reputation in the neighbourhood. Hence the conservative mother
had to think “hard about the consequences of such a visit” and eventually she
decides “to go with [him] for the first time”(42).
When the innocent Muhaisin enters the sitting-room of Ustadh Umar, he is
immediately taken aback as he discovers that the Teacher is a non-conformist
who “would dare hang a picture,.., in his house [when] photogarphs were, at
that time, as good as committing a sin [and when one] would not have been able
to find a single photographer’s studio in our quarter, nor in the whole of
Makkah”(43). Though the
narration of such a delightful incident may entertain the reader as the author familiarizes him with a
certain lifestyle and conventions which prevailed in Hijaz then, Bogary is not
unaware of what the inclusion of such details entails as he is psychologically
and mentally preparing the reader and paving the path for an acceptance of the
inevitable social change where certain religious practices and rites are bound
to disappear with the change of times.
Besides in such a description of the social
atmosphere where scandals travelled at the speed of light and women played a
central role in circulating rumours, Hijaz emerges as a region where public
opinion, and not personal merits, determines how others are perceived and
treated. It looks as if a traditional society where the dispensation of justice
is evenly-handed, as the manner through which quarrels among the slaves are
settled confirms, does not think highly of the personal accomplishments of an
intellectual who is still measured according to what society expects him to do
and not vice versa. An intellectual is seen as a non-conformist who exposes
himself to an alien Western culture. By doing that, he enters into an alliance
with the outsider against his kith and kin. Such an alliance is viewed by the
traditionalists and the common folk as an act of betrayal. Through his exposure
to such a damaging culture which he wants to spread among his people, Ustadh
Umar somehow becomes a culprit in the eyes of people. The fact that he gives
Muhaisin the “small book entitled Common Expressions in the English Language”(44) confirms his desire that others
should be exposed to it too. Hence it deserves him right that justice is meted
out to him in such rigid moral terms as a corporal punishment was applied to
the slaves earlier on according to such a strict criterion. Ustadh Umar
therefore suffers ostracization and alienation which becomes the tragic fate of
an Arab intellectual whenever he brings up brilliant ideas or tries to
introduce new systems of thought. Bogary’s treatment of the issue is not as
simple as it may seem to be as he tackles a highly sensitive issue that
anticipates a clash between the modernists and the traditionalists, and it is
unfortunate that the bright intellectuals suffer defeat as they end up being
ostracized or treated with scorn and contempt as this is the case in the
stories of Muhammad Alwan and others which will be looked at later on. But
Bogary here is not as pessimistic as Alwan later as he invites us to accept the
advent of change and as his intellectual who is shunned by his community is
eventually triumphant since his ideas and thoughts related to modernization
materialize in the long run.
Importance of Setting in Siba’i and
Bogary
Bogary, like
Siba’i earlier, concerns himself with a rather limited geographical location
that he chooses as the setting of his narrative. Like Damanhouri in The Value
of Sacrifice, more emphasis is given to the portrayal of a typical Hijazi
environment. But whereas Damanhouri’s novel shuttles back and forth between
Makkah and Egypt, both Bogary and Siba’i hardly go beyond the boundaries of the
holy shrines and the old quarters of Makkah - known in Arabic as harat -
receive their utmost attention as they are intrigued by them, drawn emotionally to them and
fascinated by their exotic aroma and their highly distinguishable flavour.
Siba’i’s and Bogary’s hara (singular of harat) represents the entire macrocosm,
the global village of today through which the author’s outlooks and attitudes
toward a rapidly changing society can be viewed. The hara of Siba’i or Bogary
reminds us of the small world that a female novelist like Jane Austen or Emily
Bronte creates in Emma
or
industrial
revolution was pretty well cut off from
the influence of those forces
that
shaped the main trend of the time. Its life remained essentially the same as
it had
been in the days of Queen Elizabeth; a life as rugged and unchanging as the
fells and storm-scarred moors and lonely valleys which were its setting; (45).
Like Austen who “lived in entire seclusion
from the literary world: neither by correspondence, nor by personal intercourse”(46), Bronte was untouched by the
“bustling, prosaic, progressive world of ninenteenth century middle-class
In spite of the inaccessibility and spatial
remoteness of a confined
Furthermore, Siba’i’s and Bogary’s hara has
undergone tremendous changes, if not totally disappeared in recent years.
Instead of the narrow allies lit by lanterns in the old days, electrically lit
wide roads have been constructed, and instead of watermen who used to carry tin
cans suspended on the shoulders by a bamboo rod in the neighbourhood, water
pipes have been installed to pump regular supply directly to houses. The
superstitions of the old days were dispelled with the advent of proper
education and the increase of awareness among people. The city has therefore
replaced the old hara (quarter or district) and with the passage of time,
Siba’i’s hara is almost forgotton.
Different World Depicted in the 60s
The short
story of the 60s was primarily concerned with the impact of social change on the
lives of people in rural and urban areas. As cities grew in size, a steady
influx of immigrants from rural areas poured into them looking for job
opportunities and hoping to find better standards of living and more promising
careers in what appears to be more luxurious urban societies. As city people
were more educated, more sophisticated, more refined and cultured than village
dwellers, it is natural that the newcomers from rural areas would experience a cultural
displacement as they would be stunned to discover such a high degree of
development and progress in the city and most certainly a totally different way
of life that they were not accustomed to in the village. In fact, Ibrahim
An-Naser (b. 1933) gives us a taste of city life that Ahmed, the village man of
“Homecoming”, could only experience in the West. As he leaves his village for the Eastern
Province of Saudi Arabia, the seat of oil, to earn enough money before he could
return home dreaming of paying the required dowry for Khalidah, Abu Surayh’s
daughter, the author provides the following description of a dazzling urban lifestyle as seen through
Ahmed’s eyes:
Another world, a new world he had
never dreamed of, nor would anyone in
his
village
believe what he could tell. What if he told of thousands of foreign women
walking
naked but for transparent dresses, showing more than they hid of
beautiful
legs, broad backs, ivory breasts, walking through the city streets
exhibiting
their femininity that blew fire in men thirsty like himself? Who would
believe
the building that touched the sky, the meat and vegetables in sealed
metal
cans, the television and the movie screens on which the strangeness of life,
the
secrets of the universe appeared? If he described such things, he would not
be safe
to live in his old home. Eight years! (48)
The
reference to eight years is an indication that time needs to be given before
society accepts any radical changes which Ahmed “had absorbed thoroughly”(49) since he was exposed to them during his
residence in the city. An-Naser who is in favour of a gradual change expresses
his view concerning the essentiality of time which alone guarantees the
emergence and acceptance of change in “The Distressed” (“Al-Ashqiya’”). Sayyar,
who found it extremely difficult to convince his tribesmen that there was
nothing disgraceful in taking a job as a driver realizes that there is a big
intellectual gap that distances him from his ignorant fellow people who think
that the car is a ‘Satanic innovation’ with whose advent, peace of mind is
shattered. As he gives up hope that he can communicate his thoughts to them, he
realizes that time alone can raise their level of awareness and broaden their
horizons.
Like Ahmed in “Homecoming”, Sayyar could
never bring his narrow-minded fellow villagers to visualize what he had
observed in the industrial city, Dhahran, and it remains beyond their limited
understanding to imagine what it was like there. As the language of dialogue
fails to bridge the gap between them, his conflict is internalized. He sees
himself as the enlightened person who lives the most miserable life in an
“environment with limited horizons, where ignorance dwells and shallowness
shrouds the minds of people”(50).
The arduous journey that Sayyar makes through heaps of sand dunes and the
numerous obstacles he encounters along the journey from Dhahran to the desert
is symbolic of the fierce struggle between the two brothers, Bassam and Sayyar,
and their fellow men and the great difficulties and hardships which they had to
go through before they could reach their ultimate target, i.e., the
introduction of the car into a rural region.
An-Naser sends the message that the transformation from a rural into an
urban society can only be accomplished with great toil and hard labour. But he
sees the inevitability of change and the unavoidable intrusion of urban
lifestyle in villages and among desert dwellers. The fact that “Homecoming”
ends as it begins with an image of decaying and collapsing village roads is an
indication that old views and conceptions are bound to crumble too giving room
for new constructions and possibly new ideas and thoughts. As the story begins,
a vivid description of the village road is given as it “seemed long, twisted and filled with
hundreds of furrows and deep holes, caused by rain and the erosion of the
seasons; the ruin of mud huts lay strewn in the middle of it”(51).
The cluster of images of disintegration and decay
which start off the narrative reinforce the message that An-Naser is sending.
Furthermore, the reference to time which “had left upon it [i.e., the crumbling
rustic scene] all its dusty memories”(52)
is another indication that time is responsible for the emergence of change.
An-Naser is suggesting that the villagers of “Homecoming”, like the tribe leaders who have
lived in complete isolation in the desert in “The Distressed” (“Al-Ashqiya’”)
can never judge those changes unless they were exposed to them first.
While the above description of “Homecoming”
may allure one to go to the city, the monotony and aimlessness of city life may
push someone like Sa’id in Hijab Al-Hazimi’s (b. 1946) “Sa’id, the Searcher” to
get fed up with “the city in which everything is a ritual without meaning”(53)
and search for happiness among the desert bedouins who “are not deluded by the
city’s attractive glittering facades [since] their free simplicity is the
essence of their happiness” (54). There in the desert, Sa’id learns
“that happiness is not the elaborate clothes one wears, or in big well-designed
houses to wear them in, or in titles or servants” but rather “in the purity of
the desert, where you will find yourself purified of envy”(55).
Though Ahmed of An-Naser’s “Homecoming” and Sa’id al-Hazimi’s “Sa’id the
Searcher” may have a different opinion toward the city as their experiences
have been different, both share the fact that they have been exposed to city
life. This exposure gives them the right to base their judgements on personal
experiences.
Tension Between
the Old and the New
Unlike An-Naser’s unnamed
Bedouin of “City Ghost” (“Shabah Al-Madinah”) who remains aloof and who watches the
illuminated and dazzling city from a remote distance denying himself the
possibility of a fruitful interaction, Ahmed adapts himself to city life and
becomes part of it. An-Naser’s story is probably one of the earliest written in
the sixties when the expansion in city construction and the convenient way of
life in the city attracted outsiders. Studied together, “Homecoming” and “City
Ghost” dramatize the
tension between two ways of life at a transitional period of development in the
history of
A Close
The Bedouin
of An-Naser’s “City Ghost” resembles other Bedouins who either moved to settle
permanently in cities or who came searching for a better life in the 50s and the 60s with a
major difference that he chose to remain as an outside observer of, rather than
a direct participant in, city life . While
it was expected that the other bedouins could have found themselves in
strange environments and consequently certain problems related to social
adjustment or adaptability were likely to arise and probably solved in the long
run, An-Naser’s Bedouin’s case is different as he is adamant in his view that
the city, representing evil and danger, should be shunned. Going back into
history, the Bedouins were once the brigands who misled caravans and who were referred to as “‘The
Terror of the Night’” in Bogary’s Saqifat al-Safa as they would not hesitate to
“set up imaginary cafes whose illusory lights the caravans would glimpse in the
distance and head towards, ...., as the caravan travelled through the night
towards these imaginary cafes, they would disappear and the camels and all they
were carrying would be lost”(56).
Travelling through the desert was very
frightening before the unification of the Kingdom by the late King Abdulaziz
Bin Saud in 1932 as very few pilgrims
were fortunate enough “to arrive at Makkah without suffering the depredations
of the Bedu on the way” to the holy sites(57). The Bedouins were
therefore notorious brigands who attacked travellers and laid in ambush for
them at remote locations. The village in the early years of the twentieth
century was therefore an isolated, dark and terrifying place traversed by
howling wolves and ferocious hyenas, far removed from the vigilant eye of the
law and almost cut off the rest of the world. No wonder the unnamed Bedouin of
“City Ghost” is terrified to death when he hears the howling of wolves which
accelerated his return to his tent in the desert out of concern for his
youngsters particularly as he recollects that one of his children was eaten up
by a hungry wolf while the mother was preoccupied with other matters. As he is
about to return home; an action that lies at a stark contrast of the ending of
“Homecoming” where Ahmed moves out of the village, “the longing which has been
fuelled by city phantoms began gradually to recede to settle deep within, but neither
melt away or fade out completely”(58). The Bedouin of the second
story is torn between desert life among his tribesmen and city life which
attracts him and pulls him toward an easy going and dazzling life, which is not
without its potential
for evil which lies in ambush for him behind the city high walls and bright
light. But as long as he remains away without taking the courageous step to
march forward and discover for himself, like Ahmed of “Homehoming”, what city
life is like, he remains on the periphery of the civilized world, rather than at
its centre, where his chances of
becoming enlightened are certainly greater.
By running away from the city though he
could never get away from its deep impact or hold on him and by remaining as an
outsider, he accepts his own banishment from a fruitful experience and
rewarding interaction that will make him an enlightened person with a broader
vision and with a calibre to cope with change. His withdrawal is therefore a
signal of his defeat and inability to penetrate those thick city wills, which
only because of his weakness and as a consolation for his lack of stamina to
move forward, he sees as hills made of tiles, “representing cowardice and fear
as people encircle themselves with stoned walls and seek shelter under solid
ceilings which deprive , in his view, of the simplest pleasures of life
confined to sun strokes in the early hours of the day and its glow in the
latter part of the day,”(59).
By living in the city, he believes, one is robbed of the chance to
experience the beauty of the natural world as one locks himself within
artificial barriers. Desert life, by comparison, puts him at an advantage, as
he views the enchanting and breathtaking scenes created by Almighty, and hence
he looks at city life with contempt and scorn, because he wants to justify for
himself his fear of it and his withdrawal from it, and not necessarily because
such a view rests on a deep conviction. By moving away from the city, the
story’s ending ironically confirms his cowardice, and not the cowardice of city people.
Similarly, by staying away from the centre of struggle at the heartbeat of the city and by turning a
deaf ear to the Shaikh of the tribe’s advice that his tribesmen should deal
directly with city livestock merchants and not through the brokers who double
prices and cheat on the bedouins, he deprives himself of the chance to prosper
through a direct involvement with city traders. Such an involvement is far more
better than a
humiliating retreat and a disgraceful absence that makes a fool of him through
the exploitation of the fraudulent brokers who purchase livestock for a very
low price and sell them at soaring rates.
In fact, his failure to act on the advice of
the Shaikh of the tribe at whose residence he stopped to take a rest during the
course of his wandering expecting only hospitality that desert Arabs are
renowned for is a sign that he is a naive bedouin who can never change as he is
after his belly, running saliva and tender heart rather than his brain. He is
only after the traditional cup of coffee poured out of a dallah, like the one
exhibited at Janadriyah Festival to remind a simple bedouin of his heritage, and he expects his
sheep to graze while taking his required siesta. He is an idle bedouin who
voluntarily chooses to
withdraw from the city, though his involvement in direct
livestock trade would bring him wealth and a higher standard of living. His
reaction as he hears the Shaikh of the tribe confirms his backwardness and
naivity. He suppresses an agitating fury to spit on the face of the old man
whose words should have been respected. By turning a deaf ear to the sincere
advice of the Shaikh, the Bedouin violates an honourable code of conduct which
expects all bedouins to look up with great reverence to their elders.
Eventually, the status of the Shaikh of the tribe who holds a high position
among his people who refer to him in disputes and accept his resolutions is
reduced in the eyes of the naive Bedouin to that degrading status of the city
as both are looked down on with derision and contempt.
It appears that the Bedouin with the
parochial vision and limited understanding uses the same yardstick that
punishes the Shaikh for elevating the city and speaking favourably of it. In
his view, it deserves the Shaikh right to be treated and looked upon as that
same thing that he commends. But by his failure to act on that advice and by
choosing to remain as an aloof outsider, he is equally punished but in a
different way. His punishment that deserves him right too comes in the form of
his exclusion from the city and also in the continuity of the struggle within.
By choosing to retreat from the physical strife of an arduous life which requires his
involvement with trade in the city, he is punished with an internal struggle as
the pangs of conscience continuously remind him of his idleness and failure to
be an active participant in real life situations rather than a secluded hermit.
It looks as if by the end of the story, the Bedouin who withdrew to what seems
to be an apparent haven is robbed of an inward peace of mind as he could never
get over the struggle within. It will continue to be a source of disturbance to
him because he never experienced city life, and hence he cannot judge it like Ahmed
in “Homecoming”. The ending of the story is therefore the beginning of
restlessness to the Bedouin while the ending of “Homecoming” is a signal that
Ahmed has eventually reached anchor as his decision to leave the village and
head toward his next destination in the city is final. What therefore matters
is the mental state of each hero by the two stories’ ending. The Bedouin
retreats to his apparently secure shelter in the desert where the fear of the
wolf’s attack is never over in such a forsaken wilderness, but Ahmed takes the
same road that brought him to the village back to the city. He is at a much
higher level of awareness than his fellow villagers, while the Bedouin, as bedouins always
are, is the nomad who will never experience real rest no matter how many times
he stops at the residence of another Shaikh of a tribe to take his due rest or drink coffee. The reason is that
such a short rest can never cure him of an incessant restlessness and a
continuous mental struggle that he could have put an end to had he responded to
the practical call of the Shaikh of the tribe to take the risk to enter in
direct dealings with
city merchants and not the emotional, but transient call, to return to the
desert to ward off a danger embodied in the figure of the wolf. As the Bedouin
favoured the latter call that pulled him to the desert and the past to the
former which tries to attract him to the city and the promising future, the
struggle within him is not resolved. In fact, the short story’s title is
indicative that the Bedouin will always be haunted by the image of the city; an
image that has been imprinted deep within his memory, and hence he can never
get it out of his mind.
By depicting and analysing the psychological
state of the Bedouin and shedding light on the fierce struggle within, An-Naser
shows more maturity in character portrayal than the writers of the early
generation. At An-Naser’s hands, the Saudi short story in the 60s moved a step
forward toward modernization and change. In fact, An-Naser’s collections of
short stories, particularly Land Without Rain (1965),
represent an important stage in the development of the short story as they
record the remarkable transformations which accompanied the shift from a rural
to an urban lifestyle. Through the interior monologue, An-Naser was able to
dramatize the great tension between two opposed ways of life where the scale
weighs heavier in favour of the inevitable intrusion of city life, though
Mansour Al-Hazimi counts the excessive use of the interior monologue which
interrupts the sequence of the narrative as one of the weak points in
An-Naser’s narrative techniques (60). But apart from that, An-Naser
was successful in his use of the flashback and in his psychological analysis of
the mental disturbance and the internal conflict that his protagonists
experience as they are torn between two antithetical ways of life. He also
succeeded in drawing a realistic picture taken out of the typical local scene.
By doing so, he confirms his strong attachment to the local or the regional and
simultaneously strives to reach beyond its boundaries. He was able to move
within the first regional circle of Al-Bazi’e as he maintains distinctive
attributes drawn from the local desert environment confirming his special identity;
and he also strove through his attempts at innovation and desire for change to
move within the outer larger framework which links him to a wider human
experience.
Alwan & Meshri as
Representatives of the Generation of the 70s
But the
Saudi short story was able to pentrate the walls of the regional at the hands of
Muhammad Alwan whose first famous collection of short stories entitled Bread
and Silence (1977) was admired by Yahya Haqqi. While
An-Naser was concerned with the urban-rural dichotomy and the feeling of
alienation experienced by his protagonists due to the intrusion of an urban life pattern on
a rural one, Alwan’s stories present the conflict between the intellectual and
his village people in a different way as his angle of vision and probably the
circumstances are different from those at An-Naser’s time. Circumstances
therefore determine how an author addresses similar issues tackled differently
because they occurred at different times. An-Naser was, in fact, referring in
his writing to an earlier stage in the fifties when the conflict between the
city and the village was at its peak. But Alwan is writing about the 70s when
the level of education and the standard of living rose sharply even among
villagers themselves. The village itself was connected to the town and probably
to the city. In that case, the demarcation between city and village has almost
disappeared as if the two have merged together. And with their merging, a lot
of the natural goodness, the purity of heart and innocence of the bedouins who
welcomed the stranger, entertained the guest hospitably and cared for each
other socially seem to have gone. Urban life has therefore spoilt the
villagers. As their attention was directed toward Wordsworth’s world of
“getting and spending”(61); the
love of wealth found its way into their hearts bringing about disintegration of
the entire village community. The whole social fabric or structure in the
village receives a deadly blow that knocks it down as in a story entitled “He,
His Daughter and the Dog” (62).
The diseases of urban life have hit the
village which is no longer the safe haven to which romantic poets could
withdraw to enjoy peace of mind, be away from the distraction of the city and
contemplate the beauty of a natural setting. Nor is it the remote shelter of
An-Naser’s naive and ignorant Bedouin.
The once clean earth becomes
contaminated both physically and morally as villagers display
greed and selfishness. With the intrusion of a city lifestyle onto the village,
some kind of disruption has been caused. The village is not immune to the
corruption and dissolute life that Wordsworth’s ‘Luke’ was exposed to in
Besides, Southerners keep livestock, chickens
and pigeons at home. People gather in “Thursday Market” as in Khalid Ibrahim
Al-Fuzay’’s “Souk Al-Khamis” (1979) to exchange goods and sell their products.
Alwan captures the agricultural lifestyle of the people of Asir in a very
fascinating manner. The smell of coffee comes out of houses in the early hours of the morning.
People bake home-made bread. Then there is the smell of flowers and roses. It
looks as if a writer from the Southern region of Asir like Abdulaziz Saleh Al-Meshri (1955-2000) is so much under
the influence of the environment where he was brought up that even the
following titles chosen for his works are drawn from such a rich agricultural
milieu: The Roses are Looking for Vases (1978),
Disclosure of an Ear of Corn (Bawh As-Sanabel, 1987), Clouds and the
Growing Place of Trees (Al-Guyum Wa Manabet Ash-Shajar, 1989) and The Fragrance
of Kadi (1993). This shows the tremendous impact of the environment on the
creation of a man of letters’ distinctive identity. Like Alwan, Meshri’s
writings reflect close
attachment to his southern environment. He is also deeply concerned with rural
life patterns which he seeks to preserve and keep alive in The
Disclosure of an Ear of Corn as if he
wants to document through vivid details and lively descriptions a
certain historical epoch about to fade out. Like Alwan, he sees the necessity
of penetrating the facade of things in order to probe deep in search for the
kernel. In his first novel, Al-Wasmiyyah (1986), Meshri records the remarkable
social transformations which occurred in the southern region of the Kingdom
when the village is no longer disconnected from the extensive development
witnessed in towns and cities. As the modern city lifestyle imposes itself on
the village, we sense the impending conflict between deep-rooted traditions and
the approaching new way of life. Furthermore, as a villager like Hamdan Bin
Dhafer leaves for the city to pursue his education, he finds it quite difficult
to attune himself to the old life pattern upon his return. His exposure to a
different experience in the city raised his level of awareness to the extent
that his rejection of a rural lifestyle and conventions is natural.
Like Alwan, Mishri is aware of a conflict between two different
generations in the village: the old and the new; a conflict more or less
brought about by the intellectual’s return and before that, by the great expansion of city size and the
intrusion of an urban lifestyle on a rural one. No wonder Alwan’s stories, like
Meshri’s, depict the conflict between two antithetical ways of life. In Alwan’s
“The Bridge”, the old woman who normally narrates stories to the little girl
before she goes to bed, expresses nostalgic feelings for those old days “when
the world was a better place [though] life was hard, filled with poverty, but
it was good ...the body’s rested now, but the mind is restless, anxious”(65).
By contrasting two opposed ways of life, Alwan shows that he is not merely
concerned with the outward facade of village life. He probes into core of
things to show us what lies behind that external appearance. He wants to expose
the other side of the coin which is hidden in most cases. His writings
therefore reveal the ugliness and drabness of life in general. In “Time and the
Sun” (“Az-zaman Wash-Shams”), the final scene shifts to “the blind begger
crossing the street, leaning on a stick, extending his hand and begging for
charity as people jostle through city streets” when darkness descends with the
approach of dusk (66). Alwan draws a deplorable picture of a
materialistic society turned into humming machines where the deprived and the
crippled are totally ignored. In “The Croaking (Cawing) of the White Crow”, he
wishes that “whoever is born returns back to his womb since coming out of it is the beginning
of a reverse journey back to the grave once more”(67). While the
crow is normally associated with bad omens, Alwan chooses to make his crow white as he serves as a
reminder of an approaching danger that should be warded off tactfully and
diplomatically. As the story begins, we know that the city is about to be
invaded by a caravan of hungry people in front of whom doors are barred. A deaf
ear is turned to those who complain of shortage and need. What eventually
matters is that
this caravan of loss and hunger is vanquished with weapons which prove their
ineffectiveness in the long run. Neither a highly charged emotional sermon nor
a poem that defends the vanquisher are proper means to
combat starvation problems. Ironically, the sermon and the poem should have
been means to bring the public to an awareness of the suffering of the
deprived, if not a call for justice in their treatment. But unfortunately in a
topsy-turvey world,
they are misused to turn the public against them. Hence
rhetorical language becomes the weapon in the hands of the powerful to weild
their power over the oppressed weak. The caravan is left to suffer on its own
while triumph over it is celebrated. Though the triumphant party has distanced
itself from the danger that the caravan is bringing with it, a distance that the
dots in the story reinfornce, yet eventually the caravan is bound to return and
the story sends the message that in the age of abundance and wealth, the
opulent fail to address the problems of the needy which in the long run will
only add to their frustration and anger.
Silence is therefore not the proper solution
to solve problems. Agitating hearts full of grievances cannot be expected to
hide their true emotions. Alwan therefore sends the message that the half
suppressed voices collectively fail to send. His village in particular, and his
stories in general, in the words of Mansour Al-Hazimi, “are the playground that
witnesses a fierce struggle between good and evil, right and falsehood,
awareness and backwardness, longing and suppression”(68).
His village becomes the cosmic village that transcends the limits of time and
space. It is a village where the conflict is
internalized or brought about due to a lack of harmony be among the villagers themselves. When a homogonous
society is replaced by
a heterogeneous one, conflict is expected. The villager who
became educated will find it difficult to deal with those who did not receive
proper education or whose social and cultural awareness is limited.
Alwan and the Intellectual
Alwan’s
intellectual is almost trapped in the village. Neither can he understand his people
nor can they understand him. He feels alienated as if a wide gulf of misunderstanding and a
cultural barrier are erected between them. He has therefore to remain at the
centre of the conflict, which unfortunately ends tragically with either his
expulsion from the village or his death. He is the stranger or the outcast who
has to pay the heavy price of his own life as in “The Head of the Poet is Wanted”. The poet wrote an elegy to mourn the loss of the book that
“narrates the village history specifying its name, .. its
adress”(69). To the poet, the loss of such a valuable historical
document which was eaten by the sea mice means the loss of identity and the
distortion, if not the total obliteration, of the history of a nation.
Furthermore, the book is the gate through which enlightenment is brought to the
‘sleeping’ villagers. Not only does it connect them to their past and preserve
their history, but it also leads them onto the future. The book is therefore a
major symbol in the story as it relates to the past, the present and the
future. Thus, the ‘Sea mice’ realize that the poet is a man of vision, probably
a Vates, who sees the approaching imminent danger, warns his naive people, and yet
they turn a deaf ear to his sincere advice. They tell him “You among them
comprehend things ... but they are illiterate”(70).
Eventually he meets his doom as he stood by himself in the centre of the
village plaza. He is totally ostracized from his fellow men. Though he
eventually loses his head for the poems he composed, the values he upheld and the great
ideal principles that he had struggled to defend, his only consolation is that
before his death his words are heard by his people. He partially succeeded in
arousing awareness. But it is still
tragic that the intellectual meets such a heart-breaking end in a number of
Alwan’s stories.
In “Earthen Walls”, the artist who has displayed his
paintings at numerous exhibitions and won several contests, returns to the
village to observe a change as his people look more elegant now though they are
less brave. Thus it is a superficial change that cares more for external looks.
The villagers no longer let their hair grow but the old lifestyle is more or less
maintained the same. They have not invented a cure for camel scabies yet as
camels still gnaw at their humps. Ants are still collecting food to store for
winter. The villagers have been waiting for this intellectual’s return to
change their lifestyle, provide solutions for their endless problems and
possibly take them out of their current situation. Unfortunately, he thinks
that through art, he can change the stagnant, backward and primitive society into a dynamic, advanced and
sophisticated one. But he is only met with scorn and derision. They laugh at
his paintings and at the ‘stupid’ brush that depicts features of modern life.
But they fail to realize that through his paintings, they will reach a higher
level of awareness and a deeper vision life. Hence they are destined to remain
as shallow and superficial to the and. They expect him
to teach them how “to defeat
sickness” or “stop the movement of the sand”(71).
Eventually they burn all his portraits in front of his eyes, and as they are
burnt, his dreams and ambitions are crushed and destroyed.
The story ends with the intellectual’s
defeat, the intellectual who will always remain at a distance from his people
because he is at a much higher level of perception than his fellow villagers.
He will therefore rebel against the traditional lifestyle that his people have
been accustomed to and he will always call for a change that they can never bring themselves to
accept. As the language of dialogue fails to bring them together, the gap
between the two widens. Through the conflict between the intellectual and the
villagers, Alwan dramatizes the tension between the preservation of tradition
on the one hand and the call for change on the other. The villagers seem to
link the continuity of traditions with the good old days of solidarity and
unity among them while the coming days of change are harbingers of loss and
disconnection. The intrusion of the new is bound to disrupt the continuity of
the old. How can harmony be achieved between these two contradictory trends?
How can bridges of understanding be built to narrow the gap and how can an equilibrium be struck between the needs of the individual
who finds himself above his people intellectually and socially and the needs of
the entire tribal community which expects social conformity but looks forward
to change? Alwan is aware of the difficulty of reconciling the two antithetical
needs. Hence his emphasis on defeat is significant enough. But this dilemma
remains beyond
reconciliation or remedy. As tension grows between the individual
and community, one would expect that the intellectual will either adapt himself
to his new circumstances, though by doing that, his role in the process of
change is marginalized, or the community will have to change. But if none of
the two optins is possible as the case is in most of Alwan’s stories, the
intellectual is thrown out of the village. Even if he is not banished, he is
left to suffer the most.
Withdrawal, Silence and Shout in
Alwan’s Stories
At times,
Alwan’s protagonists recoil into the self and find consolation in withdrawal
rather than active participation. The only place that a man, who is denied his
freedom and possibly his simplest rights of choosing a lifelong marriage
companion, can run to when external pressures of a hypocritical society that
cares for appearance
add up, is the self to introspect and reflect on the meaning of
his life and the limits of a father’s authority. Though a kind of imprisonment
is imposed on the self
that can only keep silent and accept its retreat, that should not
be viewed as defeat, “silence could be at a
few occasions the base for a swelling shout”(72) that may
bring out a revival in “Bread and Silence” when the young man decides to say
‘No’ to the father’s marriage proposal. The astonished father could not control
his anger at the son’s disobedience.
Thus he addresses him: “You say ‘No’ with
insolence
you dog?”. Not even the mother has the right to discuss the matter with the
domineering father who shouts at “a face full of question marks, signs of
weakness and sad withdrawal”(73). But the father who thinks that he
can silence the mother or deny the son his right to express his free thoughts
is blind to the inevitability of change. In fact, the story’s ending that “a
snake got out of its hole after the sloughing off of its skin”(74)
is meant to send the message that the father is powerless to do the least to
what the coming years will unfold. The silence that the father expects from his
son and wife builds up suppression. Taciturnity is eventually broken when a
volcano of protest and fury is about to erupt. If that were to happen, there is
an indication that change at times forces itself through violent means or a
forceful shout when peaceful ways are blocked. According to Al-Bazi’e, shouting
in that case becomes the means to send a particular social and
political message which expresses protest against prevalent suffocating or
oppressive conditions. Furthermore, shouting becomes the means for self-expression and self-assertion.
Al-Bazi’e quotes the Qatari female short story writer, Nurah A’al-Sa’ad, when
one of her characters at the end of The Final Shout says: “Shouting is a sign
of nervousness: Do not you see that silence suffocates us? There is no other
alternative. We need to shout to express certain things that all languages fail
to translate. We need a shout that penetrates the walls of silence”(75). This view is in complete
agreement with Saleh Al-Ashghar’s; the author of a collection of short stories
entitled The Clamour of Doors (Dhajeej Al-Abwab). Clamour becomes a symbol for
self-expression and the means through which liberty is attained. While noise is
normally associated with chaos and discord, Al-Ashghar uses it as a positive
symbol that stands for the author’s desire to penetrate the thick walls of
silence which suffocate his voice. Through shouting, he can send a message that
can only be heard once a loud cry is released (76).
Alwan expresses a similar arttitude when he says: “the story
is like the shout that I have to give out because I have something to say and
something I suffer from, not because such a suffering is personal, but because
it is part of the suffering of man, his happiness at times, his disappointments
and triumph”(77). No wonder that Alwan probes deeply into the heart
of the matter and penetrates external walls to expose the hidden reality as if
reaching the core or the essence of things can only be accomplished once the
outer facade is obliterated. In “The Cracked Mirror”, as Al-Bazi’e asserts, we
realize that it is only
when the mirror that reflects the outer surface, and not hidden
thoughts and suppressed feelings, is destroyed that a journey toward the
discovery of reality is possible. It is only then that the man who flirted with
the bedouin lady who sold unripe apples discovers the true ugliness of himself
and the world around; an ugliness that can only be revealed once a shout
emanates to break the outer surface. As the huge black shoe “which he painfully
recognizes” breaks the mirror and the soap is scattered all over the place, he
realizes “for the first time that faces can be seen as they are in reality....
he saw them but in a cracked mirror”(78).
The broken mirror
becomes the symbol that exposes reality; a reality that Alwan takes excessive
pains to depict and reveal.
Creativity in Alwan and Al-Ateeq
Though
Alwan treats common themes related to compulsory marriages in villages as
in Bread and Silence, the drabness of life in general, the disruption of
village life due to the intrusion of an alien lifestyle and the alienation of
the individual who is at times seen as a stranger who comes with foreign ideas
which he wants to impose on villagers, yet his treatment of such subject matters is not the same as
some of the early generation of men of letters represented by Melibari, Siba’e
or Awwad who have tackled some of those issues and showed some awareness of a
tension between the old and the new in general. Creativity is therefore an act
that treats a common theme in a different way, style and approach. Perhaps a
reference to a story by Fahad Al-Ateeq entitled “A Drawing Lesson” (“Hissat
Rasm”) elucidates the meaning of creativity through which a story transcends
the limits of the regional to gain wider dimensions and appeal to the taste of
a larger audience. It is after all
Al-Ateeq’s handling of his subject-matter, his exposition method, his
angle of vision and his brilliance in conveying a certain message which make it
possible for his story to break the deadlock of the traditional and reach
beyond the boundaries of the provincial. The story’s title implies that drawing
is an art which sharpens creativity and polishes individual talents. A drawing
lesson should therefore offer
school children the chance to give full rein to their
imagination. Hence they can only be innovative in a lively, energetic and
competitive atmosphere which frees them from the restrictions of a blind
imitation of their instructor. One would therefore expect a drawing lesson to
be active, vigorous, full of movement and noise and
bustling with life. But contrary to our expectations, the children in their
first period, when their excitement and energy are
normally at their peak, are lethargic and sluggish. They lean on their
desks expressing a deep desire to go to sleep; a desire “hidden behind a thick
curtain of fear and sadness”(79).
Exhaustion is obvious on their lazy faces. The setting creates a repressive and
suffocating atmosphere which tightens the bolt of the gate toward creativity.
The author describes the cold school room from whose ceiling dry red lumps of
mud hanged down and in whose corners black cracks appeared as if they were
rivers flowing on the palm of a wet ground.
On its yellow walls one could see drawings of distorted faces. Such a school
description adds more to the bleak and gloomy atmosphere that the opening
paragrph creates. Furthermore, the wintry overcast and dark morning which
reminds the pupils of “rainy days, the sound of thunder and collapse of houses”(80) reinforces the dreariness and
depression of the entire scene.
When the instructor enters the classroom, he
strikes his wooden desk with the stick in his hand rewakening dormant feelings
of fear in their hearts. Such a violent act is immediately understood by the
pupils as its implications are not oblivious to them. By his inclusion of such
details, Al-Ateeq exposes the failure of repressive educational methods which
restrict movement and kill creativity in its infancy. No wonder children who
are brought up in such a manner are impervious to argument and free thought.
When the instructor gives them the freedom to draw what they like and use
whatever colors they wanted, we realize that the freedom he grants them is an
artificial one. He is in fact running away from his responsibility to teach
them how to be creative. But how can he do so when he is holding the stick to
asphyxiate their imaginative powers and silence them through force and closure
of any channels leading to discussion! Al-Ateeq is highly critical of an educational
system which
bars the doors of innovation. The instructor who should stir the children’s
creative powers becomes an instrument through which such powers are smothered
and slaughtered. But creativity remains a single act. Though the children imitate
their instructor and fall asleep, Khaled, the mischievous and active boy who
sleeps for four hours a day, stands apart from the rest. He is physically and
spirtually awake while all others are physically and spiritually dead. He is
courageous enough to go to the blackboard and draw a picture of the sleeping
instructor in whose eyes all students are indistinguisable. But Khaled is
different. He draws an animate and lively picture of a dead person in every
sense of the word. Khaled as the true artist is a symbol of regeneration and
re-birth in a world completely devoid of any signs of life and vitality. The
creative man of letters, like Khaled, brings a whole nation to life as he
raises the level of consciousness among people and awakens their dormant creative
powers. As Khaled finishes his picture, the drawing lesson comes to an end and
the instructor wakes up ordering “the pupil teacher to collect the drawing
sketches”(81). Al-Ateeq’s story
revolves around a simple and commonplace incident, but he manages to create a
fascinating story out of it because his treatment of the incident departs from
the ordinary. It is the new way that
Al-Ateeq or Alwan adopts in his treatment of a common theme that makes it
different and new as they deviate from the norm; and this is the essence of
creativity, which is to look at old things in a new way. It is this creativity
which knocks down the
boundaries of the provincial and endows a work of art with a
power of its own to transcend the regional limits.
A New Role for the Reader
Not only
does Alwan treat common themes in a new way, but also he expects a new role
for his reader. Hardly a story is written without dots which leave space for
the reader to join in and become involved in giving meaning to the text. Unlike
Abdul-Jabbar or Ruwaihi of the early generation who call upon the reader to
give his assessment of a finished off product, Alwan calls for an acive
participation of the reader in elucidating the ambiguities of the text. In this
way, Alwan, like Fielding, appeals to the reader’s ‘sagacity’ which “aims at
arousing a sense of discernment” that assists in bringing out “the meaning of
the novel [i.e., Tom Jones]”(82).
Alwan is therefore aware of the new role of the reader who is no longer a
passive recepient of the literary text, but rather an active participant who
plays an influential role in discovering the layers of ambuguties in the text.
He acts on the words of Wayne C. Booth who says that “the most successful
reading is one in which the created selves, author and reader, can find
complete agreement”(83). Hence
both the reader and author become partners of the act of understanding as if
they sign a pact whereby certain responsibilities are shouldered on each. This
mutual relationship of give and take is referrred to by Wordsworth in “Simon
Lee” whet the poet scolds the passive reader
who reclines back anticipating a tidy moral or a brief lesson to be
handed down to him. Thus he addresses him:
My
gentle Reader, I perceive
How
patiently you’ve waited,
And
now I fear that you expect
Some
tale will be related.
O
Reader! had you
in your mind
Such
stories as silent thought can bring,
O
gentle reader! you would find
A
tale in every thing (84).
The poet requires active participation on the reader’s part; and it is only
through his participation that the meaning of the tale can be found. But that
meaning can only be discovered if the reader contributes something rather than
sits silently or else he will get nothing in return for his passivity. By his
insistence on the reader’s role in the poem, Wordsworth is rejecting what
Abrams in The Mirror and the Lamp defines as “the pragmatic theory of poetry”
where the poem is “something made in order to effect requisite responses in its
readers”(85). Such a theory
characterized the “principal aesthetic attitude of the Western world”(86) and was in application during the Augustan Age which preceded the
Romantics when more emphasis was given to instruction. As the early generation of Saudi literary men were more concerned with
instruction and ‘preaching’, the role of the reader as a participant in the act
of creation of the meaning of the text was not thought of much. More concern
was given to the chronological sequence of events which aroused the reader’s
suspense making him wonder what would happen next. But the second generation of
Saudi writers paid less emphasis to events and called upon the reader to get
involved in discovering the meaning of the text which becomes a mutual act that
brings the author and the reader together. Furthermore, the dots in Alwan’s
stories are deliberate as the reader is expected to fill a space or a distance
through his active participation. The dots are also an indication that the
author is not so much interested in chronological sequence of details. We may
jump unexpectedly from an internal scene to an external one or the reverse.
This shuttling back and forth between the inside and the outside is a feature
of the modernists’ style.
Besides, in Alwan, action is internalized
rather than externalized. The stream of consciousness is employed to get an
inside picture of the agony that the protagonists of Bread and Silence go through.
“The outer movement is only a reflection or a true echo of what we feel inside
us”(87). There is more depth in
the psychological analysis of the problem in Alwan’s Bread and Silence. In fact, in the
introduction to the collection of short stories, Yahya Haqqi writes that
in this
modern story, the status of the pleasurable tale has diminished, more
emphasis
is given to feelings, focus shifts to the inside rather than the outside,...
I ts time sequence is no longer
chronological; daringly treats
sexual
issues; its primary tragedy is the estrangement of man and the multitudes,
are sometimes the heros not
individuals (88).
By observing the above set of rules, Alwan
managed to break the deadlock of the provincial. His attempts to innovate and
move toward change and away from the restrictions of the legacy of the past are
indications that the contemporary Saudi short story is capable of transcending
provincial boundaries and limitations. While Abdul-Jabbar as representative of
the early generation gave recommendations which would enable Saudi literature
to transcend regional limits in response to Al-Manhal magazine’s concern over
the suitability of Saudi literature for exportation in 1945, Alwan has put into
effect Abdul-Jabbar’s recommendations, and proved by deeds, rather than words,
that Saudi literature is capable of penetrating the deadlock of the regional
once it seeks innovation in both its form and content and once it addresses
contemporary issues in a new, bright and creative manner. As Al-Jabiri says in
his discussion of the contemporary crisis that the Arab nation faces:
In my opinion, restructuring the present
should take place simultaneously with
the process of
restructuring the past..... Any renaissance should emanate from a
heritage
reconstructed with the intention of going beyond it. It is a grave error to
think that the Arab
identity can rise by a mere recourse to the past and the choice
of what is suitable
in it. It is equally a grave error to think that the same identity
can rise and march
forward by a total rejection and turn away from its past to
place itself in a
proper order in the framework of an alien heritage or to throw
itself upon a present
that has moved at a faster pace it cannot catch up with. No,
a human being can
only be creative within the framework of his own culture
and emanating from
the base of his heritage. Creativity,
meaning authentic
innovation, can only
be accomplished on ancient rabbles contained, represented
and transcended by
contemporary intellectual tools renovated with the renovation of science and
advanced with its forward march and progress.... We are in need of a new Arab
intelligentsia: Arabian one as it belongs to a heritage that should be renewed
or revived from within, and new as it belongs to the contemporary international
thought that it keeps pace with .... (89)
Al-Jabiri reaches Al-Bazi’e’s solution
though the former is a philosopher and a scholar of Islamic and Arabic Thought,
while the latter is a literary critic. But the two share the view that while it
is essential to maintain the local identity through the revival of the past
heritage and the assertion of distinctive features associated with the land and
the environment as Al-Humaidin, Al-Thubaiti ,
Al-Saikhan in “Fiddah Learns to Draw”, Al-Meshri in Al-Wasmiyyah and certainly
Alwan in Bread and Silence have done, it
is equally important to establish the link and extend the connection with the
larger human endeavour and experience.
paragraph
The paper therefore illustrates that the selection of Saudi literary works
under investigation and which represent two different periods in the
development of Saudi literature moves
within two frameworks: the regional one and the one that transcends provincial
limits. The regional one belonged to the early period
of
experimentation when Saudi literary figures and even critics lacked the
refinement and sophistication that characterized the writings of the second
generation of the 70s. But in spite of the early writers’ consciousness of
their limitations and their employment of literature for the exposure of
certain frailties within societies, their contributions toward the
revitalization of the early literary scene cannot be ignored. Furthermore,
their realization that certain conventions have to fade away due to the
onslought of modernization and the inevitability of a change in the traditional
Saudi lifestyle laid the cornerstone for the generation of the 70s who
witnessed remarkable transformations in the country and who tackled in their
literary works numerous problems brought to the surface during the years of
sudden affluence. The paper therefore sees that both generations of the 30s and
the 70s worked toward a common objective. Writers from both periods called for
a change. But the circumstances of each age determined the nature of that
required change. While it may relate to the disappearance of suffocating
traditions for the early generation whose literary production remained confined
within local boundaries, it meant that Saudi literature should adapt itself to
external changes in such a way that it blends with them, rather than stand
apart from them. That can only be
possible once it transcends provincial limits. One cannot live in isolation of
what is going on at the international scene out of fear that his external
movement away from the provincial may bring a loss of identity. It is the other
way round in fact. Too much obssession with the local and failure to transcend
it results in marginalization, particularly in a multi-cultural world of
globalization, rather than a preservation of identity. But by taking the
courageous step to move beyond the provincial and within the second framework
of Al-Baze’i, literature gains recognition, the Arab intellectual crisis is
overcome and the path toward modernization and change is paved. Alwan, who
opened the gates for a group of Saudi writers like Meshri, Sagh’abi, Al-Ashghar
and others, has been successful in his attempt to transcend the provincial as
he keeps pace with the contemporary and as he moves toward innovation in the
form and content of the short story; and through his stories many suppressed
voices are given the chance to be heard.
Endnotes
1) Muhammad Surur As-Sabban, Hijaz Literature Or A Chapter in the Literary
Production of the Young Hijazi
Generation Including Prose and Poetry, Collected and Arranged by Muhammad Surur
As-Sabban (Cairo: Egypt Press, 1926), The Introduction, p.10. The Arabic text
that I have translated reads as follows:
وأنا أشعر بأن قيمتها
الأدبية ربما لا تساوي شيئا" في سوق الأدب، بل ربما تكون محل سخرية من البعض
كما تكون محل عطف وتشجيع من الآخرين.
2)
For the biogrphy of As-Sabban, see Omar At-Tayyeb As-Sasi, A Concise History of
Saudi Arabian Literature
] الموجز في تاريخ الأدب العربي السعـــودي[,2nd Edition (Jeddah: Dar
Zahran Publishers, 1995), pp. 82-83.
3)
As-Sabban, Hijaz Literature, p. 10. The Arabic text reads as follows:
ونهضة صادقة تعيد الى الحجاز والحجازيين مجدهم المندثر
وكرامتهم التي يستحقونها.
4)
From an article by Muhammad Hasan Al-Awwad, “Who is the Contemporary Liberal?”
]"من هو الحر العصري؟ “[
in
Hijaz Literature, p.113. The translated Arabic text reads as follows:
عصريين في ألسنتنا ، عصريين في
تفكيرنا، عصريين في دفاعنا في أقلامنا،
عصريين في عاداتنا، ولكن بشرط ألا نتفرنج ولا نشط ولا نزدري كل قديم،
وباختصار نكون عصريين معتدلين لاعصريين متفرنجين، فان الاعتدال هو روح التوازن في
كل شيء.
5)
See Omar At-Tayeb As-Sasi, “Critical Evaluation in the Writings of Early
Pioneers of Modern Saudi Arabian literatwe
]"الأحكام النقدية عند جيل الرواد الأوائل في الأدب العربي
السعودي"[
Journal of
6)
See Muhammad Abdullah Al-Owain for a full discussion of the dispute between
Al-Awwad and Al-Ansari ,The Literary Article
in Modern Saudi Literature: 1343-1400
] المقالة في الأدب
السعودي الحديث من سنة 1343 إلى سنة 1400 [
(Riyadh: Middle East Press, 1991), pp.
490-504.
7)
Abdullah Oraif’s article is referred to in Al-Owain’s book, p. 130.
8)
“Poor, Oh! Chastity” by Muhammad Al-Melibari appears in Abu Bakr Bagader and
Ava Molnar Heinrichsdorff, eds, Assassination of Light:
Modern Saudi Short Stories (Washington: Three Continent Press, 1990), p.
53.
9)
Ibid., p. 54. ‘Tawafa’ means Pilgrim Service Establishments.
10)
Ibid., p. 53.
11)
Muhammad A’bed Al-Jabiri, Heritage and Modernism: Studies and Discussions [At-Turath
wa Al-Hadathah: Dirasat wa Munaqashat] (Beirut: Arabic
Unity Studies Centre, 1991), p. 54.
12)
“Auntie Kadarjan” by Ahmad al-Siba’i appears in Salma Khadra Jayyusi, ed, The Literature of Modern Arabia: An Anthology (Austin:
University of Texas Press, 1990), p. 480.
13)
Ibid., p. 480.
14) Ibid., p. 480.
15)
John Shaw and David E. Long, Saudi Arabian Modernization: The Impact of
Change on Stability (New York: Praeger Publishers, 1982), p. 109.
16)
Muhammad Abdul-Rahman Ash-Shamekh, Literary Prose in the
فقد كانت لهذه القصص عظات
تحاول إيضاحها، أو آراء تريد إثباتها والدفاع عنها. وإذا كان هناك خلاف فيمت بينها
فإنما هو في الطريقة الفنية التي عولج بها الموضوع القصصي، فقد جانب التوفيق بعض
الكتاب الذين لم يحذقوا الأسلوب القصصي ولكن عددا" آخر من الكتاب، كالأفغاني
وحوحو قد أصابوا شيئا" من النجاح في قصصهم.
17)
Al-Bazi’e draws attention to the similarity between Abdulaziz As-Sagh’abi’s
“The Question” (“As-Sua’al”) and T.S. Eliot’s “The Love Song of J. Alfred
Prufrock” showing that both Hasan and Prufrock suffer from schitzophrenia.
See
Sa’ad Al-Bazi’e, Desert Culture: Studies in the Contemporary Literature of
the
] ثقافة
الصحراء:دراسات في أدب الجزيرة العربية المعاصر[
(Riyadh: Al-Ubaikan
Publishers, 1991), p.
182.
As-Sagh’abi
therefore uses the short story to probe into intense moments of confusion,
bewilderment, frustration and feeling of loss and fragmentation experienced by
some of his protagonists.
18)
This is my translation of the
following lines in Al-Humaidin’s poem Shakings on the Face of
Stagnant Time
إرتجاجات على سطح الزمن الراكد:
ثم يرتد إلى معجم الذكرى
يفلي عن معان
صاغها الإنسان ... وشاها
بحروف قالها الإنسان في الغابر...
The
lines are quoted in Sa’ad Al-Bazi’e, Desert Culture: Studies in the
Contemporary Literature of the
19)
Sculley Bradley & others, eds, The American
Tradition in Literature, Fifth Edition, Vol. 2 (New York: Random House,
1967), p. 1526, lines 4-8.
20)
Salma Khadra Jayyusi, ed, Modern Arabic Poetry: An
Anthology (New York: Columbia University Press, 1987), p. 18.
21)
Ibid., p. 28.
22)
Hani A. Z. Yamani, To Be A Saudi (London: Janus
Publishing Co, 1997), p. 22.
23)
As-Sasi, A Concise History of Saudi Arabian
Literature, pp. 106-107.
24)
Amin Salem Ruwaihi, Wal’uthn Ta’ashaq [ والأذن
تعشق ] (Cairo: Memphis House for Publication,
1958), The Dedication, p. 15.
25)
See As-Sasi’s Concise History for the full discussion of Abdul-Jabbar’s views
on the importance of ‘Thaqafa’ for literary men. ‘Thaqafa’ in this case does
not just mean culture, but broad horizons, extensive reading and a wide
awareness of the literary, cultural and social backgrounds, pp. 105-108.
26)
Abdul-Rahman Munif’s views are expressed in an interview in al-Ma’rifa 17. no. 204 (February 1979), pp. 188-99. The quoted lines from p. 199, in
fact, conclude the interview. I came across the translation in Issa J.
Boullata, “Social Change in Munif’s Cities of Salt,” Edebiyat: The Journal
of Middle Eastern Literatures
8. No. 2 (1998), p.
215.
27)
Chinua Achebe, “The Novelist as Teacher,” in African Writers on African
Writing, ed. G. D. Killam (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1973), p.
1.
28)
Perhaps a reference should be made first to Fredric Jameson, “Third World
Literature in the era of multinational capitalism,” Social Text 15 (1986):
65-88 and also Aijaz Ahmad, In Theory: Classes, nations, literatures (London
& New York: Verso, 1992), p. 107.
29) Ibid., p. 9.
30)
Aijaz Ahmad, “Orientalism and After” in Colonial
Discourse and Post-Colonial Theory: A Reader, edited & introduced by
Patrick Williams and Laura Chrisman (London & New York: Harvester
Wheatsheaf, 1993), p. 167.
31)
Issa J. Boullata, “Social Change in Munif’s Cities of Salt,” p. 195.
32)
Sa’ad Al-Bazi’e, p. 29.
33)
Mansour Ibrahim Al-Hazimi, The Story as a
Literary Genre in Modern Saudi Literature
{ فن
القصة في الأدب السعودي الحديث } 2nd Edition (Riyadh, Ibn Sina House for Publication, 1999),
pp. 87-88. The Arabic text reads as follows:
ولكن السباعي .... ظل مشدودا" إلى الماضي، والى فترة تاريخية بعينها، أثرت
في طفولته تأثيرا" لا يمحى، وهي فترة أواخر العهد العثماني في الحجاز وأوائل
العهد الهاشمي. إن الكاتب
في أكثر كتبه وقصصه يحاول استعادة تلك الحقبة التاريخية العتيقة
وانتشالها من براثن الإهمال والنسيان لاحبا" فيها، بل إنقاذا" لذكريات
الطفولة، مهما كانت مرارتها ....
34)
Ian Watt, The Rise of the English Novel (London:
Penguin Books, 1977), p. 11.
35) From Saqifat Al-Safa, quoted in Salma
Khadra Jayussi, The Literature of Modern Arabia: An Anthology, p. 330.
36)
Ibid., p. 331.
37) Ibid., p. 335.
38)
Ibid., p. 334.
39)
Ibid., p. 334.
40)
Ibid., 332.
41)
See As-Sasi for the discussion of early Saudi literature, pp. 52-55.
42)
Saqifat Al-Safa, p. 332.
43)
Ibid., p. 333.
44)
Ibid., p. 333.
45)
David Cecil, Early Victorian Novelists (London: Constable & Co.
Ltd., 1966), p. 148.
46)
James E. Austen-Leigh “Memoir of Jane Austen”, in Emma: An Authoritative
Text, Backgrounds, Reviews and Criticism, edited by Stephen M. Parrish (New
York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1972), p. 343.
47)
David Cecil, “Emily Bronte and
48)
Ibrahim An-Naser’s “Homecoming” is included in Abu Bakr Bagader and Ava Monlar
Heinrichsdorff’s collection of Modern Saudi Short Stories, p. 61.
49)
An-Naser’s “Homecoming” is included in Salma Khadra Jayyusi’s The Literature
of Modern
50)
An-Naser’s “The Distressed” (“Al-Ashqiya’") appears in Muhammad Saleh
Ash-Shanti, Studies in Saudi Arabian Literature
}سلسلة الأدب العربي: في الأدب العربي السعودي “وفنونه واتجاهاته ونماذج منه” {
(Hail:
Al-Andalus Publishing House, 1997), pp. 350-353. The quoted lines are my
translation and they read as follows in Arabic:
في بيئة محدودة الأفق، يعشعش عليها الجهل وتنيخ الضحالة على
عقول أفرادها.
51)
Jayyusi, “Disappointment”, p. 414.
52)
Abu Bakr Bagader, “Homecoming”, p. 59.
53)
Ibid., p. 68.
54)
Ibid., p. 70.
55)
Ibid., p. 70.
56)
From Saqifat Al-Safa in
Jayyusi’s The Literature of Modern
57)
Leslie McLoughlin, Ibn Saud: Founder of a Kingdom (London: Macmillan,
1993), p. 80.
58)
My translation of the ending of “City Ghost” which is included in Mansour
Ibrahim Al-Hazimi’s book The Story as a Literary Genre in Modern Saudi
Arabian Literature, p. 159. “City Ghost” (“Shabah Al-Madina”) is included
in An-Naser’s collection entitled Our Mothers and the Struggle (1960).
The Arabic text reads as follows:
والرغبة التي ألهبتها أشباح المدينة تتراجع بالتدريج لتستقر
هناك في أعماق نفسه ولكنها لا تذوب ... أو تتلاشى
تماما".
59)
Ibid., p. 157. The Arabic text reads as follows:
تمثل الجبن والخوف حيث يسور الناس أنفسهم بحيطان حجرية
ويتراصون تحت أسقف متماسكة تفتقر - في نظره - الى أبسط متع الحياة التي تنحصر في
لسعات الشمس عند البكور ووهجها في الأصال،
60)
Ibid., p. 44.
61)
The lines are from William Wordsworth’s “The World Is Too Much With Us” in Frank Kermode and John Hallander (eds), The
Oxford Anthology of English Literature, Vol. II (New York & London:
Oxford University Press, 1973), p. 174, line 2.
62)
“He .. His Daughter ... And the Dog” is included in
Muhammad Alwan’s collection of short stories entitled Thus Begins the Story
[Al-Hikayah Tabda’ Min Huna] (Al-Riyadh: Dar Al-Ulum Publishers, 1983), pp. 65-
70.
63)
Wordsworth’s Michael, A Pastoral Poem in The Oxford Anthology of English
Literature, p. 167, lines 442-447.
64)
Muhammad Alwan, Bread
and Silence (Cairo: Dar Al-Marrekh, 1977), p. 64.
(My
translation of the Arabic text which reads:
الحب
... ارتباط رائع ...امتزاج تمثله
المرأة والأرض .. ليس هناك انفصال الانسان بلا أرض انسان
بلا حب.
65) Muhammad Alwan’s “The Bridge” in Jayyusi, pp.
299-300.
66)
Alwan, Bread and Silence, p. 77. {My translaion of the Arabic text which
reads:
سقط الضوء على شحاذ أعمى
يقطع الشارع متكئا" على عصا مادا" يده يطلب الإحسان والناس تتدافع عبر
شوارع المدينة..
67)
Alwan’s Bread and Silence, p. 73. (My translation of the Arabic text
which reads:
ياليت من يلد يعود من جديد لرحمه فالخروج بداية الرحلة
العكسية للقبر مرة ثانية.
68)
My translation of the following lines from Al-Hazimi’s The Story as a
Literary Genre in Modern Saudi Arabian Literature, p. 109:
أقام علوان من قريته مسرحا" للصراع الدائم بين الخير
والشر، بين الحق والباطل، بين الوعي والتخلف، بين الرغبة والكبت،
69)
Bread and Silence. My translation of the line from “The Head of the Poet is
Wanted”, p. 80:
لقد كان الكتاب يحوي تاريخ قريتنا محددا" اسمها .. عنوانها
70) Ibid., p. 80. The Arabic line reads as
follows:
أنت من بينهم تدرك الأشياء .. أما
هم أميون..
71)
Ibid., p. 30. The Arabic text reads as follows:
علمنا كيف نهزم المرض؟ .. علمنا كيف نوقف هذه الرمال؟
72)
Ibid., p. 34. The Arabic texts reads:
الصمت ربما يكون في قليل من
الأحيان منطلقا" لصرخة متورمة..
73)
Ibid., pp. 36-7. The Arabic text reads as follows:
(
"لا" أتقولها؟ وبكل
وقاحة أيها الكلب؟ ) ..... تتحرك الى صرخة في وجهها
المليء بعلامات الاستفهام والضعف والتراجع الحزين.
74)
Ibid., p. 37. The Arabic text reads:
.. وخرج ثعبان من جحره بعد أن غير جلده.
75)
The lines are quoted by Al-Bazi’e, p. 168. The Arabic text reads as follows:
"الصراخ هو
العصبية. ألا ترين أننا نختنق صمتا". ليس هناك من بديل. نحن نحتاج الى صراخ
يخترق جدار الصمت"
76)
Al-Bazi’e, pp. 136-139.
77)
Ibid., p. 138. The Arabic text reads as follows:
"كانت الصرخة
بمثابة الصرخة التي أصرخ بها لأن لدي ماأقوله وما أعانيه لا على اعتبار الهموم الفردية، بل لأنها
جزء من هموم هذا الانسان فرحه وخيبته وانتصاره".
78)
Bread and Silence, p. 41. The Arabic line reads as follows:
كانت المرة الأولى التي يرى الوجوه على حقيقتها..... رآها
لكن في مرآة مشروخة.
79)
Fahad Al-Ateeq’s “A Drawing Lesson” (“Hissat Rasm”) is included in Muhammad
Saleh Ash-Shanti’s book on Saudi Literature, pp. 405- 407. The Arabic
line reads as follows:
(رغبة) تختبىءخلف
ستار ثقيل من الخوف والحزن.
80)
Ibid., p. 405. The Arabic line reads as follows:
يذكر بأيام الأمطار وأصوات الرعود وسقوط البيوت..
81)
Ibid., p. 407. The Arabic line reads as follows:
يأمر عريف الفصل بجمع الكراريس
82)
Wolfgang Iser, The Implied Reader: Patterns
of Communication In Prose Fiction From Bunyan to Beckett (Baltimore &
London: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1974), pp. 31-32.
83)
Wayne C. Booth, The Rhetoric of Fiction (Chicago:
The University of Chicago Press, 1961), p. 138.
84)
William Wordsworth, The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, ed. E. de
Selincourt and H. Darbisher, 5 vols (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1967), IV: 63,
61-68.
85)
M. H. Abrams, The Mirror and the Lamp (New
York: W. W. Norton & Co., 1958), p. 15.
86)
Ibid., p. 21.
87)
Bread and Silence, p. 35. The Arabic text reads as follows:
الحركة في الخارج ليست جميعها سوى صدى حقيقي لما نحسه هنا
في أعماقنا..
88)
Ibid., p. 7. The Arabic text reads as follows:
في هذه القصة الحديثة تضاءلت مكانة الحدوتة، تركز الاهتمام
على الشعور، النظرة في أغلب إلى الداخل لا إلى الخارج... كسرت
ترتيب الزمن، أصبحت أكثر جرأة على معالجة الجنس، مأساتها الأولى اغتراب الإنسان،
الجموع لا الفرد هي البطل أحيانا"...
89)
Muhammad A’bed Al-Jabiri, Problems Related to Contemporary Arabic Thought
[ إشكاليات
الفكر العربي المعاصر ]
(Beirut, Arabic Unity Studies Centre, 1989), pp. 62-63.
The
original Arabic text reads as follows:
وفي رأينا إن إعادة بناء
الحاضر يجب أن تتم في آن واحد مع عملية بناء الماضي... إن النهضة، أية نهضة، لابد
أن تنطلق من تراث تعيد بناءه قصد تجاوزه. ومن الخطأ الجسيم الاعتقاد أن الذات
العربية يمكن أن تنهض بالرجوع إلى الماضي واختيار ما يصلح منه. كما أنه من الخطأ
الجسيم كذلك الاعتقاد
في أن هذه الذات يمكن أن تنهض بالأعراض الكلي عن ماضيها والانتظام في تراث غير
تراثها أو الارتماء في حاضر يتقدمها بمسافات شاسعة. كلا، إن الإنسان لا يمكن أن
يبدع إلا داخل ثقافته وانطلاقا" من تراثه . إن الإبداع بمعنى التجديد الأصيل لا يتم إلا على أنقاض قديم
وقع احتواؤه وتمثله وتجاوزه بأدوات فكرية معاصرة تتجدد بتجدد العلم وتتقدم
بتقدمه...... إن الحاجة تدعو إذن إلى قيام انتلجنسيا عربية جديدة: عربية بانتظامها
في التراث العربي لتجديده من الداخل، وجديدة بانتظامها في الفكر العالمي المعاصر
ومواكبتها له...
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