Saddam Abu Mazen - Sanaa

The Corona pandemic's impact not only on culture is by preventing cultural events and book fairs, but it also affects intellectuals themselves who are susceptible to infection with the virus like others. 

Abdel Hadi Saadoun and Fathia Dabash, two Arab writers, the first resides in the Spanish capital, Madrid, and he is an Iraqi writer, academic, translator and publisher who moved with his family to life in Spain in 1993, and a Tunisian fiction writer holding a master’s degree in Arabic language and literature. She is currently working as an independent writer and researcher where she has lived for years In the French city of Lyon. 

The authors Saadoun and Fathia Dabash spoke to Al-Jazeera Net about the fierce confrontational diaries that each fought with Corona infection in isolation conditions at home, talking about love, honey, medicine, reading and reflections on life during the confrontation with the virus.

An unimaginable infection
 Saadoun begins to talk about the Corona infection, saying, "It can be transmitted by means that cannot be thought of," and indicates that he does not remember the exact date of transmission to him, but he stated that his symptoms began to intensify after March 13, and he continued "I must have contracted one of the people I met in the places I passed or attended before a week or more from this date, especially since I frequently visit public facilities, forums and cafes."

On the ferocity of the confrontation with the disease, Saadoun said that "the disease is severe and penetrates the body and causes here and exhausting fatigue to the point that the patient can not maneuver, and all his weapon is endurance only until it reaches the end with recovery or the other end!"

Saadoun notes the conditions of isolation that he lived in his home in the capital, Madrid, noting that he was not a supporter of going to the hospital, especially with the confusion, chaos and the fullness of health centers with thousands of people.

"So I wager on my tolerance and strength and waited for the result. Then everyone advises that if you are outside the system of the elderly and have not had a serious illness previously, it is better to monitor oneself in an isolated room until the risks pass," he says. 

"The truth is that I have hidden my status from all the friends, loved ones and close family who have been communicating with me and asking constantly. No one knew that I had the disease other than my wife. That is why she was the only one who was on my side. I am very sensitive to disturbing anyone or influencing them with news." Annoying, you might make them worried and confused about how to help me and reassure me. I am not concerned with others until I see my white thread of black! ”

He also explained that throughout the period of domestic isolation, he took only paracetamol for headache, headache and cough syrup made from medicinal herbs and the like. 

Sadoun recalls the most miserable cases in his diary of his struggle with Corona, which is that "You cannot open eyes with head drums and body weakness does not allow you to read or write anything, and these were my greatest daily suffering in addition to tolerating illness, the inability to embrace my daughter and sit near the family." But after days of knowing that I had triumphed over the disease and after my ability to walk and act, I did not stop reading, as for writing, I did not write otherwise than the text on (My Unrestricted Wrestling with Corona) which I published on my Facebook page.

Saadoun concludes that “Corona’s resistance lies in the love of life,” and he advises readers, “When you surrender for a moment, victory will come from the virus’s ally. Then life will continue with us or without us and the crisis of this virus will end, the important thing is that we absorb the lesson and not let down humanity and nature with a larger coming epidemic We cannot forget the other, the other is also us. "

Fierce confrontation

Not far from Spain, the Tunisian novelist and writer Fathia Dabash lives in the French city of Lyon, where she worked as a professor of Arabic at schools in Tunisia and France and studied Arabic language and literature at the University of Lyon, France, and she was issued with three narrative books: "Dance of Fire", "Silence of the Blues" and "Milanin" ".

Fathia Dabash talks about a bitter experience she had with Corona in isolation, which is a single room in her home, which inside her walls she felt imprisoned on a charge.

On the start of her infection, Dabash reported that what she called the "cofidic experience" started with her from March 4 to the 16th of the same month, and after that it is considered a "recovery period and post stress".

Fathia Dabbish had a fierce confrontation with Corona, and here she says, "Corona, this unknown who reminds me of cancer but is more urgent than him, more fierce than him, and more voracious than cancer. Cancer is silent in the cells and it may be a long time before he announces himself." Corona, like a thunderbolt, knows very well what he wants and attacks one attack. "

Fathia continues her speech, "I don't know how long it was in me when he sat me down, but I can say that I was shopping and suddenly a dry cough wounding my throat, a headache like the hammer fell on the anvil sweeping me, weight in the joints as if run over me by a huge car, that cough leaves pain in the chest and prevents the bronchi The airway does its full tasks, and the matter mixes with the air.

She says, "I left my things and went back to my house for a rest because I thought it was just a malaise as a result of the many weather changes in France, but the matter quickly turned into more than malaise, when my joints burned to a level that exceeded the reasonable limits and something had to be done."

A prisoner without charge
 and about the conditions of isolation, Dabbash said that she had become defenseless before the virus and had no choice but to resist, and Fethiye recounts the diaries of the Koronian confrontation by saying: You feel that you are turning into a rope that pulls corona on one side and you hold on to life on the other side .. you are really isolated Alone, because the condition of your first victory over him is to protect your surroundings, and so the prisoner became in my room without charge.

Responding to Al-Jazeera Net’s question, “In this battle, who stood next to you?” The writer said, “Corona expelled my husband and children around me, separated me from myself and threw me on my bed between two worlds: death and life.”

However, "Who will stand beside you other than the doctor who will monitor your condition from a distance as long as you are isolated from your house because your condition is" stable "with medical logic, and you must rejoice because it is not sour because it is not stable? ... He will stand by your side the love of those who love you and love them from behind the walls of isolation when they address you from behind The doors, they follow your condition and provide you with the courage that calls for the warrior spirit in you, so you resist ... The medicine will stand by your side too, as it is your weapon that is indispensable as it is useless if you surrender. "

And about medicines that are useless, she said, "What a nonsense is that the doctor says that and what is your greatest awareness while realizing that you are really in a fight and that you are defenseless ... I will not hide that I added to the drugs a recipe I used in an old book for herbal remedies, which is" syrup of thyme and boiled garlic mixed with With honey. "

But "in the early days you miss even the desire to eat, even for the flavor that the meal gives you a wind from ... but you try to eat a can of yogurt or half of it to accompany the drugs, only, but you drink a lot a lot .. and then you convince yourself with a lot of hot vegetables if You managed, and you will discover when you come back to life, again, that you have lost a lot of weight. 

Love of Life
 Before Fethiye Debash ended, by giving advice to others who have not yet faced the disease, she says, "A month and a half months ago Corona made me my home and cut me off from the world and put me in front of death as someone who looks at the seventh earth from the seventh sky."

Then she concludes with a tip for readers saying, "Corona (this damn!) So far, he has hidden many of his secrets from us .. He does not naked but denotes us. He compels me to tell you: Reconsider the practice of your life, we have to love life more until we leave it and have been comforted. We have to love We have to soundly resist ourselves in order to resist. We must also rethink our priorities, which for me are, according to her words, "science and our spiritual things."