2023-07-14 14:15:49
* I do not remember very well how this novel began now. Perhaps in January 2015 I started writing about a person named Khaled Abdel Bari, and a woman named Samia Bashandi, and I stayed with them for years, and for that I continued my wandering in the Sayeda Zainab area, and discovered some new streets and sheikhs for me. As I progressed in writing, I found other characters and events, and the novel moved forward, and it was about twice its current size. I continued editing, deleting, adding, and revising for about two years until I finished with its current form, and saw that it was ready for publication.
Another important thing about “The Bride”, it is the first novel that I write in the third person!
In my previous three novels: “Black Magic”, “Secret Self” and “The Harem”, the narration was on the tongue of the main character, in the first person. For the sake of this inevitable shift to depict the world of “The Bride”, I studied for a long time the nature, capabilities and characteristics of the third person pronoun, in order to be assured of its artistic potential and its suitability to narrate the “Bride” as I wanted.
Who is the first person to read drafts of your work?
* Nobody but me! The first reader of the final draft of this novel is the writer Ahmed Al-Karmalawi. I sent it to him for review, and to study its publication at Diwan Publishing House.
– If we say that the “bride” represents the world, or a miniature of it, one of its aspects. And the novel conveys the images of dealing with it. Fighting against it or turning away from it, its riddles, attempts to understand it, and struggle with and with it. To what extent is this interpretation correct? And what do you think about the issue of interpretation from the ground up and you are the author of the text?
* Each interpretation belongs to its owner, the interpreter, who has a vision of what he reads, and is able through citations from the text to prove the validity of his interpretation and vision, and this is the work of the critic and the expert reader. The rich text, in my opinion, is the one open to many interpretations. The writer has no choice but to listen to the vision of the interpreted reader, and not to present his interpretation, acceptance or rejection, for he has said everything he has in the text.
– According to the previous vision, and personally, I think that “The Bride” is closer to the ideas of “The Four Lines,” despite the difference in technology. Do you agree with me?
* “The Book of Four Lines” was previously written on “The Bride”, and the artistic form is completely different, but the link exists.
– On the occasion of “The Four Lines”, have you stopped writing open texts? Or do you write it but postpone its publication?
* No, I did not stop writing the four lines, and I wrote another group under the title “Wajh al-Wujooh.” I published some of them, and I have not yet prepared all of them for publication in a new book.
– Each chapter in “The Harem” had its title and its protagonist was a different woman. In the new novel, the knowledgeable narrator is linked to the inner speech of the characters, which is sometimes heard outside of them. Subject or technology, which one precedes the other for you?
* Let me call it the harmony between technique and subject matter, if we use your words. In “The Harem” I first chose that each chapter be named after a woman, and this gave the novel its artistic form and content. In “The Bride” I decided from the beginning to use the third person, and with the progress in the narration, technical and aesthetic questions appeared, and I found answers to them. This is what happened, but which came first, the technique or the topic, depends on each work separately.
– In recent years, other topics of a historical, political or subjective nature have become popular. How do you choose your topics in general?
* I am biased towards the drama of the novel, if it is correct to say, to deal with the life of the individual and human relations, and the reader of my works can realize the topics that I tell him about. Once I was at Nice airport in France, and at the exit the pretty policewoman asked me:
Do you carry more than ten thousand euros with you?
There are many gambling clubs dotted along the azure coast I was on my way to.
I said: Of course not.
She said: Why are you going south then?
I said: I am coming for a literary residency, I write novels and stories.
She said: What are you writing about?
I replied immediately, without thinking: I write love stories.
She smiled broadly, and she was very beautiful, as she raised her hand in greeting, as I headed towards the exit door.
Yes, I write love stories! The individual and his questions are my favorite subjects. I write about the mystery of human existence, freedom, love, justice, happiness, and death.
But the novel is a flexible art form, so it can be dyed with what you mentioned, it may be dyed with a historical, political or subjective character, and it may contain all of this, it is a flexible and charming art, whose wonders do not run out.
– In the previous novel, the events took place in the alleys of Toulon. In “The Bride,” most of the events take place in Downtown, the Lady, and the Pyramid. Movement in the city is an essential part of your works. On what basis do you choose your spatial space?
* The modern novel is the daughter of the city, and the city is the appropriate space for the novel, the relationship between them is authentic and essential, and Cairo, my beloved city, is the place in which my four novels took place.
I resided in many neighborhoods in Greater Cairo, from Nasr City to Giza, and from Sayyida Zeinab to Faisal, and I lived most of my years in them. Their features, topography, and streets are engraved in my heart, and my feet recognize them when I walk, without thinking. And every novel chooses its place, exactly as it chooses its title. For example, I cannot imagine that “the harem” takes place in another neighborhood except in “Tulun”, and that “secret pleasures” are not found anywhere other than Old Giza. What happens during writing is that the place, and by that I mean the literary place of course, appears with the characters, before or with them.
– The theme of the writer who struggles with writing is repeated in your works. A black magic hero says: “Writing is painful. Writing is bitter in my throat.” He also says: “Writing is hard work that is unbearable.” In the last novel, Khaled says, “What did poetry need in the first place?” do you mean this? Or are they ideas pressed to appear in the works in different forms and with different personalities?
* These are the ideas of the characters, not mine! Nasser Atta in “Black Magic” is the narrator, and he used to express his relationship to writing, and his relationship to what he narrates. Khaled Abdel-Bari’s crisis in “The Bride” is different. He is a poet, and he asks his question, “What does poetry need in the first place?” in the context of his struggles, the events of his life, and his attempts to find his poem and his poetic voice. As for me, as a writer, I have written more than one testimonial, including a testimonial titled “Writing is something that happens while writing.” It was published in the Novel magazine, and I wrote other pages, and I talked about it in many dialogues. I would like to say here only that writing is my essential life, my real life. Below are symptoms and transits, and ways that lead to them. Writing is a gift and a blessing as great as life, and it alone is sufficient to give me joy in existence.
– The characters of the novel are drawn very carefully.. Hajj Marzouk, the visual artist, Hamo Tarsa and others are really remarkable characters.. Where do you get your characters from, and were you afraid of the large number of characters in the novel?
* Thank you for your appreciation of this. I draw my characters from four main sources: the everyday world in which you and I live, my experiences and biography, my dreams in sleep and wakefulness, and also from language. I might start from a fleeting observation of a man or woman I know, or a person I saw once, or from a scene and a dream image, and I might start from the name of a character, for example, “Hamo Al-Tursa,” from whose name it came. Or I start from the features of a realistic face, as with the character “Siddiq Abu Warda”, or from my memory, or from a person who appeared in my dreams or daydreaming fantasies. In my opinion a fictional character can come from any source we can imagine, but it never becomes real except by the power of art, the work and presence of the novelist. No, I was not afraid of the large number of characters, on the contrary, I was happy with them, and I enjoyed life with them, watching them, and drawing them from the outside and from the inside.
– By the way, the scene dominates the novel.. Do you write with drama in mind?
* Why not call it “visual”? Sight is the greatest sense that we possess, and it alone gives us sight and witnesses, and it was said: He who hears is not like he who sees. The visual scene is an essential unit in every literary work, but it is not everything in the novel. The scene is a prominent unit in this work by virtue of its artistic construction, its reliance on a comprehensive setting, and a limited time, which does not exceed 16 hours only. This novel is of a dramatic nature, of course, but I only thought of it as a novel.
– Why did you prefer that the end be with Khaled’s survival, rather than with the departure of the teacher and Omar’s drowning in confusion?
* Because we started with Khaled Abdel Bari and with him, and we should have known his fate in the end.
– The relationship with the reader has developed a lot in recent years, in communication sites, reading groups, and others. How do you see the matter? Personally, do you seek to deepen your personal relationship with readers, or do you prefer to separate from them or connect with them through text only?
* I see it as a good and fruitful relationship. I always welcome any serious dialogue with readers and reading groups. Two things I love most: writing literature, and talking about literature and philosophy.
What’s new and when do you plan to publish it?
* I have dozens of published stories that have not yet been collected into books. I hope that I will be able to prepare a collection of stories for publication soon, and I have novel projects awaiting me.
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