Samiha Khreis: The historical narrative is a cognitive challenge

Hussein Nashwan - Amman

Jordanian novelist Samiha Khreis, winner of the Katara Prize for Arabic Fiction in 2017 for her novel "Pistachio Ebeid", said her narrative work revealed very sensitive aspects of the executioner's relationship with the victim when they were torn apart by feelings of love and hatred that a man could not separate and remained clinging to a distant dream about freedom.

The novel, which was born in Amman and was preceded by "The Tree of the Anus", "The Panther Tree", "Poppy" and "The Flood", showed that her novel deals with an issue in a country as remote as Sudan and mysterious to many Arabs. "But this approach was not enough to weave the events of a novel, especially as I usually mean the details, and I believe that the novel must touch the corners of man."

Kharis, who holds a BA in sociology from Cairo, acknowledged that the choice of writing about the Sudanese subject put her in the face of a complex search, the issue of slavery, and thus not only the novel about Sudan, but also an African and humane issue of human injustice.

As for the letter, the Jordanian Writers Association noted that the task of "Pistachio Obaid" was to search for the roots of the issue of slavery, focusing on Sudanese geography as a model for Africa and other countries of the world.

Kharis said: "The message that the novel carries to the extent that condemns the slavery of man, it condemns all the powerful who sold and bought and traded in the human. The novel examines the issue of slavery from new aspects when the Lord himself is a slave, and when the slave can live in the spirit of a master, That in his debt a slave and a master. "

Women and the suffering of Africa
The award-winning author of the State Appreciation of Literature in 2014 will depend on the subject of a woman who is strongly present in her work, specifically in "Pistachio Obaid", where she bears the sufferings of all Africa and is subjected to the assassination of her humanity and the loss of her dignity.

Khreis said that this woman has a high spirit and pride that passes through her pains and tragedies, pointing out that this is not fabricated in the text, but because the nature of people who wrote about them was tolerated such spontaneous models powerful able to face the world.

She pointed out that since the first novel "Abanos" based on the model of "governance", a woman living in the west of Sudan in each population group, which has the upper word, is the wisdom and the artist of the tribe and the poet and the Koran portfolio, and this is a realistic model unlike any other Arab, The first novel came in the second novel to complement the march of power through a stormy sea of ​​weakness and exploitation. The novel, according to the writer, used spiritual revelation and the woman's intuition to understand the world around her, and to overcome wounds, tolerance and love.

Although the events of the novel begin with the time of the Mahdia revolution of 1843 and continue throughout World War II (1939-1948) and shortly thereafter, the novel raises a current issue in the second decade of the twenty-first century, which discusses the concept of freedom and slavery, and the event's apparentness is reflected in the recently discovered networks International trade in human trafficking and holding them in stables like sheep, slavery in all its forms not finished, the bondage of the body and thought and decision and will.

Executioner and victim
The relationship between "Pistachio" and her earlier novel "The Epanos" is linked to many things as a single project, but it has been accomplished separately. The novels can be read to complement the picture historically, as they deal with the lives of people from the region One and sometimes family ties.

The evolution of fiction and reality and the idea of ​​historical fiction explained the weight of reality on the text, asserting that nothing happened on paper did not happen in life, but the composition of the characters and the sequence of events and arguments about the internal storm of the oppressed and the oppressive man was the design of my imagination.

Khreis pointed out that the writer borrowed from his life tools, realizing that he has to fill the depths of his imagination and suggestions, the historical novel represents a cognitive challenge completed by the writer research and study, and must pass by adding his own perceptions and readings of the unique history, it offers an intellectual and artistic proposal on life .

In the year 2017 she received the Katara Prize for the Arabic novel, the Jordanian writer said that this award is one of the Arab awards that have great credibility with the Arab intellectual, pointing out that the awards bear the creative responsibility doubled.