When poets write a novel!

In a question by the British novelist Zadi Smith about the reason for choosing to write in the distant third person, she chose to answer in comparison with the experience of her husband, the poet Nick Laird, who was sharing the stage at the time, and she said - what does it mean - that, unlike the experience of poets, she does not want her writing to revolve in the orbit of "the ego." "Judging from the language.

The novel remained on the edges of everything;

War, killing and severe harm, but - on the other hand - she overlooked all of that without falling into it, which was sufficient to convey the meaning and feeling, as does that excessive dose, and perhaps more.

From this standpoint, I might have been wary - in advance - that the changing Syrian poet Al-Huwaidi would turn towards the language and lean heavily on it, while writing his first novel, "Black Cloth", so the experience in the end would not be further than a recycled poetry in the form of a narrative, but he contradicted my belief. And well did!

The novel issued - recently from the Kuwaiti "Takween" publications in 260 pages - narrates the story of the Syrian tragedy, or rather an aspect of it, but this time in a tone that I want it to come out quiet, as if the coming of the novel temporarily follows a long screaming, so it was only necessary to identify with the sound Mabhouh and tired tendons.

The novel remained on the edges of everything;

War, killing and severe harm, but - on the other hand - she overlooked all of that without falling into it, which was sufficient to convey the meaning and feeling, as does that excessive dose, and perhaps more.

The work starts in Al-Raqqa, during the control of ISIS over the province in northern Syria, where he tells the story of "Nisreen", the young woman in a long waiting period;

Starting with the absent husband in prisons, and going through the moment of emancipation from the village, which is witnessing unrelenting battles, and not ending when waiting for old wishes that barely loom until what disperses them comes.

It is believed for the raider that he gave his back - and with the same calmness with which the work was accomplished - to tempt writing about the hustle and bustle of events under the rule of ISIS, a clamor that would have dragged the experience, perhaps to an expected area;

Hence, she becomes apathetic in terms of life.

Instead, the writer sided with the small, but authentic, stories of life that resides in the dark, but full of desire and expectation.

Even the heroine of the work did not take up the most space for herself, she was as close as possible to a lamp that illuminates everything around her;

Places, events, and personalities, and only fragments of what are reflected in their light will receive at the end of the matter.

This, I think, fits a lot with her esoteric personality withdrawing from the world into herself, and overwhelmed waiting for things to happen.

It occurs on its own, as the young woman is never certain that she will do something, and she is always in the object.

Nisreen spends time while praying night and day - and even this was at the will of her husband's father - to sew black cloaks for the women of the village, which are the same cloaks that you will see after a while being thrown into the air before they are trampled after the defeat of ISIS, so you do not know whether you will be happy or sad. That cloth hoped she would survive one day, but now it is dirtied.

How similar is that to the rest of her things!

Assia, the sharpest and most knowledgeable character, appears to accompany the heroine on the journey of survival from the battles, but these qualities were nothing but the veneer that conceals the same weakness, in an open ploy to confront the harsh life with similar features.

Nevertheless, Asya's presence helped infiltrate Nisreen's attention

Pay attention to what you have more than what you miss;

So, on a rare occasion, while a dialogue is taking place between them, she finds herself approaching her goal with the necessary clarity:

- "you love him?

- No, I don’t know.

- Scared?

She asked me and pulled her fingers.

- I want to recover myself, to test how I feel about him in a circumstance other than this. I want to know if I love him, or, in short, I repeat the same mistake with another man I need and show him the keys to my cell.

The journey ends in the middle, when everyone is stuck in a region insofar as it is outside the circle of death, never destined to enter the circle of life.

The people of the village are moving to a plain waiting to cross, which will not be achieved, to a safer place.

There the wait is renewed, and it is the only possible action when people do not have their minds.

Things move around them, and they can only watch it;

We hope they will never get involved in its course.

They fear rain, the wind, the sound of bullets, and the darkness.

So, here are the hopes dwindling, so that a safe window becomes the ceiling and the desired goal.

As if the novel here tells about the condition of the survivors of death, but without life written for them.

In the plain, the description condenses, so the skill of al-Mughira results in itself more clearly, and even if he ruled out of his own will to resort to poetry, he employed the image ably, and provided the reader with an important amount of approach, since the details are the capital of the narrative scene.

The text also escaped the dilemma of using the first voice, the “speaker's conscience,” as all the stories that the heroine was not part of were justified.

However, it might be better to move away from this narrative fatigue, in light of the multiplicity of personalities and transient events, by resorting to a more broad and potential conscience.

It remains that Nisreen's insistence on speaking Fusha in her conversations with Asya seemed to me completely inconsistent with the context of the text, even with the writer's justification that the young woman is a study and preoccupied with literature, and for the same reason Asia may have seemed to me more sincere and natural.

The open end was apt for this type of writing that was quiet, fleeting, and not showing off her charms with everything she had.

It seems really interesting that all this abstraction comes under the creative experience of a poet!