Writing in times of war ... Arab writers reveal to Al-Jazeera Net about the effect of turmoil on their creativity

In times of conflicts and wars, and with the decline of literary production of writers in countries that have witnessed conflicts and wars;

Many questions have arisen about the extent of the impact of the political reality and the insecurity in many countries on literary production.

Does this literature associated with instability vacillate between documentary and its historical writing spirit, and between literature and its required imagination?

There are questions about whether the writer is subject to the necessity of political stability in his country, or if he reflects the conditions of his society, whatever they are?

Al Jazeera Net addressed these questions to writers who have suffered from the experience of war and insecurity in their countries.

A reflection of stability on literature

Iraqi novelist Zuhair Karim begins his answer with a sentence contained in an article on genius within the Knowledge World publications, which says, "The genius of the artist is like extremely high temperatures that have the ability to disassemble the groupings of atoms, then assemble them again in another order." And he says that this analogy refers us to An issue related to the link between creativity and imagination.

Karim continues, "We need peace and psychological stability when we are faced with a problem. Political stability is of course an important condition for creating a calm, mature literature, far from convulsions. Countries in which political upheavals occurred - and for a long time - did not create good literature except what was scarce, or literature itself takes Paths shrouded in mystery and lack of clarity of vision, or turned into an enthusiastic voice melted into an ideological discourse. "

This is what the Yemeni writer Ahmad Al-Salami supports, saying that creativity needs freedom, physical security and economic independence first.

It is not easy to write while fearful for your life, the existence of you, your family, your home, your library, and your activity schedule.

And Al-Salami added, "At the same time, I do not very much look at the writer from the angle that makes him appear in a constant need for the blessings of the authorities and the circumstances around him. All the circumstances in our region are exceptional and frightening and bring anxiety and tension; and therefore we descend to the level of public anxiety in this geography when We summarize the creative’s need for a stable political ritual. With the exception of wars and threats to life, or the person’s exposure to the possibilities of perdition, the writer can tolerate anything else.

And he continues, "As for the lack of political stability or its availability, this matter only serves the politicians. As for the writer in it, the stability of the environment of reception and the revival of the consumption of arts so that his commodity becomes popular, which turns into an evolution of the profession and frees the writer from a series of needs and dependencies."

In the same context, Iraqi critic Sabri Hammadi affirms that without stability, "literature in general cannot flourish, for example the novel, it is an art that needs planning and calmness, and the arts of narration in general, in addition to theater that cannot continue without political stability." .

As for poetry, it may differ relatively - according to Hammadi - “because it does not need a long time to write it, and the poet can create his poem wherever he wants and whenever he wants. Poets like Al-Sayyab and Al-Jawahiri wrote in difficult circumstances, but the issue of the mechanisms of reaching the recipient from a printing press and paper remains, which makes us We need to stabilize again. "

For his part, Iraqi writer Salah Salah considers that the required political ritual is the availability of space for freedom.

"The political system based on ideology, whatever this ideology, wants you to be consistent with it. The emergence of creativity should have a ritual that allows you to write about what is going on in your mind and allows you to write down your own imagination without fear. Dictatorships are afraid of writing, and they are." She produces only scant literature, she does not understand creativity. "

Quantum and Opacity

In turn, Sabri Hammadi believes that the amount of literary production has decreased in countries of wars and conflicts, and recalls his experience - as an Iraqi - during the so-called "Second Gulf War", saying: We fled to the fields, I could not read a book or write or do anything.

After the end of the war, it turns into a literary experience, like the novel "Frankenstein in Baghdad," which expressed the remnants of the war and its dire consequences, according to Hammadi.

While the novelist Zuhair Karim does not rely much on the importance of quantity, he believes that what is important is “good literature that gives the reader an opportunity to interact with it, good art that presents a vision and asks silent questions about it, literature that reveals, influences and points to the defect, and even puts its finger on the wound. But I also agree with the idea that the creative product naturally decreases during wars; armed conflicts militarize society, establish a false discourse to convince people that they are part of the conflict, and conflict princes employ everything for the sake of war, and turn literature itself into a machine to serve the philosophy of conflict. "

The swing between documentation and literature

Writer Salah Salah attributes this decline to the writer's need for a space of time, dedication and unity, often.

To reformulate reality, reach conclusions, and discover new insights.

And he adds that "after the conflicts is the most important chapter, the most vital and the most far-reaching; when an accumulation of events occurs, the novelist will sit alone to rearrange things. In the midst of the conflict, we will only have to record and take notes, after which building on what the writer sees. Depth in writing is after the end. The tragedy - the trauma - and every contemporary writing of a witnessing event, you can then use it to formulate a literary. "

Salah compares between documentation and narration, saying that documentation may tend to documentary and rapid transcription, such as: short stories, testimonies, blogs, and poetry clips.

As for writing a novel, it is completely different work.

The novel is a major work, a collection of everything from poetry to philosophy to event to conclusion to visions to the body, and this will take place after the war.

Reality blurry

In response to a question about the image of the current scene, is the author waiting for some stability to form a clear point of view?

The writer Ahmed Al-Salami replies with another question: Who is the author in this case?

If we mean the novelist, for example, then novelists have plenty of time to digest events and then employ them.

Al-Salami added, "The poet also is no longer concerned with transmitting the vibrations of the moment. The media and the Internet now play the role of accompaniment, analysis, reading and foresight. As for the writer, his mission differs, and he can capture the essential from everything that is going on, reading between lines of events. Some have intuition and the ability to write about the current moment." No matter how loud the flame is, and there are those who are waiting and watching, but the picture is clear. "

He adds that we are in a stage quite similar to us;

Societies trying to be consistent with who they are and with the blockage in which they live.

We hope that chaos and wars will teach everyone a lesson, and it may be a hot tool that pierces a balloon to move to another comedy, or generates different ways of thinking towards reality, and produces solutions to the accumulated problems.

But the picture of the real scene today is not clear in the opinion of the writer Salah Salah;

He believes that we cannot reach conclusions, we only record visions that are in front of us, but we cannot sort clearly, we cannot arrange the story.

In the beginning, things are mixed.

From images, poetry clips, imagination, revolution, turmoil, rampage, rebellion, stillness, thinking, deduction, arrangement, subjective music in the mind of the writer, and a hidden voice narrating the story or poetry passages.

The writer needs to rearrange everything.

The current situation is similar to the well-known puzzle game.

In the beginning the world is like the first day of creation, everything is intertwined, then things are cleared, the fog escapes, the rain stops, and then the cycle of writing begins.

Close to that, Zuhair Karim believes that, in order to reach a good degree of understanding, and then provide a good opinion, we need to move an appropriate distance away from the place of the event, and our presence within the clamor that accompanies big problems makes us unable to see clearly. Live events.

Most of what was achieved about wars and unrest was many years after they had stopped.

I think that the conflicts in Iraq, Libya and Syria will produce great literature later. The creative vision will become clear, and we will see everything, write, draw and produce cinema that deserves to be welcomed.