A new novel by the Jordanian writer Jalal Barjas has recently been published, entitled (Notebooks of Warraq), which tells the story of "Warraq", a reclusive intellectual and an avid reader of novels who loses his family and home, and becomes homeless, similar to the ancient Greek philosopher Diogenes; A number of events happen to him that make him the talk of the Arab street at a time when the new social media has become its most important component.
Al-Warraq wears the characters he reads about in novels and acts through them, but as a result of isolation, loneliness, homelessness, and the cruelty he faced in a noisy world, his condition worsens and his schizophrenia is completed, so he lives a conflict between two voices within him. One incited to commit a number of crimes in the face of a reality that did not give him his right to live, and the second stood in his face, leaning on a deep knowledge notebook.
In addition to this approach, the novel reveals who will prevail over the other, and how the stories are intertwined with each other to lead to a main saying in the novel that “fear will inevitably lead to ruin.” It also raises a number of questions, the most important of which are: To what extent an individual can shape his life in isolation from what is around him Effects? And when can the second personality within a person go out into the open, and the person turns into a monster?
Tales of Amman
Through a number of notebooks, the novel - consisting of 368 pages - recounts the life events of some people who lose their homes, some of them lose their homes, others suffer the crisis of unknown parentage, and others suffer not belonging to large families; This sheds light on an aspect of homelessness versus the noise that cities are experiencing. The destinies of the personalities intersect each other, highlighting the value of the house that bore the symbol of the homeland in exchange for more than one form of ruin.
Speaking to Al-Jazeera Net, the Jordanian novelist said that a deep reflection on the geographical form of Oman was what inspired him the idea of the novel, noting the demographic nature of the Jordanian capital and the tremendous diversity that it enjoys, and thus approaching its people to understand what a city like it suffers from economic crises, and the emergence of a corrupt class that affected On the capabilities of the country, those crises that certainly have ancient roots that the novel touched upon.
Barjas added, "From here, the character of Al-Warraq Al-Muthaqaf was born in the face of a time in which the culture was retreating to be replaced by new ways of life. The world is changing at a terrifying speed that the Arab man cannot keep up with. That is why many crises arose, one of which is what the protagonist (Ibrahim Al-Warraq) suffered."
Police techniques
The novel is based on police techniques and a thrilling psychological awareness in narrating its events, and its idea is based on the nature of the crisis that the text deals with; It goes back to the beginnings of the proposed crisis, where the narrative alternation between a number of notebooks, each of which tells a story from some side to complete the picture, as the novel intends to unleash the characters by saying what they have, characters that come from an old time 1947 and characters in the present time 2019.
The personalities of (Notebooks of Warraq) suffer from several forms of alienation, in contrast to the contradictions that cities present. Such as the tremendous speed of urban expansion in front of the increasing number of homeless people who are without homes, the growing instances of loneliness in a noisy city, and the sense of isolated individuality at a stage in which the tribe is still entrenching itself, in contrast to a striking contradiction, which is the pursuit of post-modern tools to glorify the individual in exchange for exclusion Group and the abolition of centralization; The protagonist fluctuates in terms of consciousness between the village, his hometown, and Amman, where he lives, and the subsequent stages of his consciousness, according to the Jordanian novelist.
These contradictions lead the characters of the novel to meet at a certain point, framed by a question about the home as an objective equivalent to the homeland, and the family that the German philosopher Hegel believes that the state's goodness is dependent on its righteousness, despite the growing public anger regarding the deterioration of social, economic, political and cultural conditions, and standing on the thresholds of the disappearance of the middle class in In the midst of a world of many burglary.
Book seller
The novel tells the story of Ibrahim Al-Warraq, who lives in a popular neighborhood in Amman, and works in a bookstore in the center of the country. Al-Warraq, who is remarkably reclusive and educated, discovers that he has not contributed to shaping his life, and that it is being obstructed in a way that refers him to complex paths that meet at this point the destinies of The characters all realize the main idea, upon which the novel is based, which sheds light on the symbolism of home and family in a time that is rapidly changing and in which the value of the human being is declining.
The stories told through a number of notebooks take upon themselves the objective approach through the subjectivity, as the characters of the novel are various models from the city of Amman, and thus they are models from the rest of the Arab cities that are experiencing many crises in the stage of new global changes.
It is noteworthy that Barjas is a Jordanian poet and novelist, born in 1970. He works in the aeronautical engineering sector. He wrote poetry, story and literature of the place before heading to writing novels. He also worked in the Jordanian press for a number of years and headed a number of cultural organizations. He is now the head of the Jordanian Narratives Laboratory. And presenter of a radio program entitled (House of the Novel)
He has published in the literature of the place “Madaba windows guarding Jerusalem” (2017), and “The Tales of the Old Café” a joint novel (2019). For his novel “The Dreamer's Guillotine” (2013), he won the Rebekah Dudin Award for Narrative Creativity in 2014, and for his novel “Snakes of Fire” (in the category of unpublished novel) the Katara Prize for Arabic Fiction (2015), and it was issued by the Prize Board in (2016). His novel "Women of the Five Senses" has reached the long list of the International Prize for Arabic Fiction (2019).