Omani writer and novelist Bushra Khalfan recently won the Katara Award for Arabic Fiction at its eighth session 2022 in the category of published novels, along with Izz al-Din Jalawji and Nabiha al-Issa, for her novel "Dilshad: The Story of Hunger and Thirst".
This novel was published for the first time by Takween Publications in 2021, and it reached the short list for the International Prize for Arabic Fiction for the year 2022.
And it tells, as the Eritrean novelist Haji Jaber says about it, ostensibly about Dilshad, the child who grows up without lineage and is thrown by a difficult life in many paths. Hunger and satiety ".. Muscat, you hate it and love it, then you find no choice but to flee from it. But I did it, and now I am here, on the deck of this boat, and in this great sea, immersed in the blue that I see no other."
However, this history did not alienate the body of the novel, alienating it from harmony with it. After digesting it, the novelist was able to dissolve it in the layers of the text, so it came smoothly in the heart of the story and in its inner fabric.
And "Dilshad" is the writer's second novel after "The Bagh." She also published collections of short stories, including: "Farfa, Habib Rumman, Where No One Knew Me," in addition to open texts in books such as: "Ghubar, the Sad Bedcatcher, poetic texts in ( Umbrella of love and laughter), what do we need to be home?
It has a weekly article published in Oman newspaper.
This novel was published by Genesis 2021 publications (Al-Jazeera)
Al-Jazeera Net conducted this interview with Bushra Khalfan, so that we read the biography of hunger, approach the city of Muscat, and reveal the secrets of writing.
I will start with a confession, when I learned that Bushra Khalfan had published a novel, I was afraid that we would lose a wonderful storyteller, because most of the novelists did not return to write the story, even if he wrote it, he did not publish it.
Thank you for this compliment. For me, the spirit of the short story is closer to the spirit of poetry in its flow, and I began the experience of writing with it, and for years I found myself in it, perhaps because it was appropriate to the topics I worked on in my beginnings, and perhaps because it is closer to the spirit of poetry that inhabits me.
But I am afraid that it is no longer compatible with the topics that I go to in the novel, for what concerns me now is more suitable for the novel, in terms of space, or even in terms of the possibility of the overlapping of the arts that the novel bears.
I love the short story very much, and I might go back to writing it again, but I am now in the novel stage, in the beginning of the stage, in fact, there is a lot to discover and a lot to try, and then I may return to the short story, and I say this knowing that I will have to go back to training myself in condensation and reduction, but..
You mentioned the age stage and how it affects writing. As a writer, are you afraid of getting old?
Yes, I was afraid, like any human being, of the idea of getting sick and getting old, because that is not a good thing for my physical health.
This fear is relatively new, and it hindered me for a short period of time, but I overcame it and reconciled with the nature of things and life. I do not like to think of time as a monster chasing me, and I do not like that fear is my motive for writing.
And there must be something stronger than fear, perhaps love, love of life, love of literature, love of writing, love of challenge, that between me and myself.
Something else you're afraid of writing?
I am afraid of falling into the trap of stereotypes and repetition, of repeating myself and my ideas, and my language will die from excessive reuse, thus becoming unsuitable for the text game, a language that lacks its sensitivity and its optimal communicative ability, a barren, empty language that does not give rise to meaning.
I am afraid of losing my sensitivity and attention to details, inside and outside a person. I am afraid of my awareness of that fine thread that separates a lot from a little, in language, in details, and in trying to make sense.
I am afraid of losing my passion, of losing my soul, of being satisfied.
I do not know if the readers felt this, but every time I read you, I feel that you are leaving the book and forgetting that you are the one who wrote it..
That's good news. When I was little, I used to think that books would write themselves, and I love that idea.
Was this your goal in the books you presented?
I feel grateful towards the writers who gave us wonderful writing and were able at the same time to abandon it for our benefit, in favor of pleasure and the pleasure of knowledge, those who realized early that the book belongs to its reader, who triumphed over the pleasure of the moment of writing and left the completed text for the reader’s pleasure, grateful to those who abandoned their narcissism or managed to delude us with that They gave us eternal pleasure, and made us think that the book writes itself, and that the text and the story are stronger than the personal pictures on the last cover.
I am grateful to the writers who gave up their voices and liberated the characters of their novels from their own viewpoints and opinions, or at least managed to camouflage that and triumphed over the imagination, so they attended and did not attend.
I really hope to get to that point.
Prolonged thinking may be a trick we practice on ourselves for the purpose of procrastination.. In "Dilshad" I knew the pleasure of losing control, so some characters rebelled, who did not like their fates, so they surrendered.
How do you start writing a novel?
I relied heavily on writing maps, knowing the beginning and the end and the course of events, thinking a lot about each character, creating it on paper, setting a time line and manipulating it.
But now I'm thinking brooding might be a trick we use on ourselves to procrastinate.
And sometimes prolonging thinking becomes a trap, because we think that if we dwell on thinking more, then this means that we have surrounded everything, and that we are in complete and absolute control over the narration, but at the time of writing, one of the most beautiful things that can happen is that the writer loses control.
In "Dilshad" I knew the pleasure of losing control, so some characters rebelled, who did not like their destinies, so they surrendered.
Why did you use polyphony in Dilshad?
Until I give every character her voice, that is a period of hunger, and some think that everyone is in hunger the same, but in that the denial of the uniqueness of the personal and intimate human experience with hunger, a historical denial of the uniqueness of the experience of the hungry poor, as it is often ignored and thrown to the blindness of the margins.
There are many Asian societies whose children lived in the Gulf region and came into contact with Arab culture. Why did you choose the Baluchis in Dilshad?
My choice of the Baloch did not come from outside the text or the idea, but rather from within the place itself and by virtue of the nature of the cultures mixed in it. I grew up in that place that I described in the novel, knowing its surroundings and its interactions, so choosing the Baloch was very natural to represent Muscat, along with their Arab neighbors. Baharna and Indians.
As for Muttrah, the Lawatia appeared alongside the Baloch, and this is also due to the demographic distribution of the ethnicities in Muscat and Muttrah.
A collection of stories by the Omani writer (Al-Jazeera)
The stories of women, especially the old ones, and research in the library and archives are two ways to work on developing the background of the novel. Explain to us some secrets of writing?
There are no secrets there. The research is an original part in order to write a novel that has a historical or other feature. This research may be librarian or field, and I did both types, so I resorted to the archives in the British Library and in the Omani Studies Library at Sultan Qaboos University, and I looked at the pictures of that stage through the archives Pictures found in some European universities, and I used aerial maps of Muscat and Muttrah and historical blogs, and I was also keen on field meetings with women who knew something about that stage, especially Baluchis, because the human relationship with his founding culture is spiritual and psychological, and this is what is not found in books or archives.
The world has not paid much attention to translating the Arabic literary production due to the absence of natural levers that believe in the importance of literary production in the Gulf region, and that seek to improve the product and then present it to the world. This can only be done by expanding the area of knowledge and philosophical circulation and ensuring freedom of expression.
A long history and amazing stories fill the Arabian Peninsula region, why didn't it turn into international novels except in limited cases?
We have translated the literature of the world into Arabic, and we have read the works of the world in their original languages or translated into English and French, and through them we have become more aware of the world.
Partially yes, but I think that the biggest reason is the absence of natural levers, which believe in the importance of literary production in the Gulf region, and which seek to improve the product and then present it to the world, and this can only be done first by expanding the area of knowledge and philosophical circulation, and ensuring freedom of expression.
Then comes the role of the National Project for Translation, which is concerned with translating the selected works, in cooperation with cultural institutions and international publishing houses with high standards, which occupy a respectable space in the global publishing market.
We have to get to know our wounds, acknowledge them, and examine them well, so that we can understand the institutions of the Arab or Gulf personality, and then we will understand the actions and reactions, and the past and progressive intellectual currents, and then we may be able to overcome them spiritually and emotionally and escape our dependence on them.
The story of hunger is a relatively new subject in the Arab arena. Why did you choose this painful issue that involves wounds that are difficult to heal?
Because it has not healed in fact, healing needs knowledge. We have to get to know our wounds, acknowledge them and examine them well, so that we can understand the institutions of the Arab or Gulf personality, and then we will understand the actions and reactions, and the past and progressive intellectual currents, and then we may be able to overcome them spiritually and emotionally. And we survive our dependence on it.
How difficult was it for Dilshad's characters to tell the story individually without repetition?
There are those who say that the problem of polyphony in "Dilshad" is the repetition, but they are divided. There are those who say that the repetition did not add more than 25% to the event, and there are those who say that the repetition is the reason for the slowdown in the narrative movement, but I don't think anyone said that it He was bored, and I don't think that slowing down the movement is a problem, but sometimes it is an advantage if it serves its purpose.
In the relay race, in order to maintain the speed of running, the runner hands over the stick to the one after him, and they run side by side for some time, so the owner of the stick slows down and the next one speeds up to receive it from him, and this joint time of parallel running allows the reader, in my opinion, to pick up the thread, and the narrative remains flowing.
And here was the idea of using this technique in "Dilshad".
There is a multiplicity of internal angles of view and external angles, while ensuring the continuity of the flow of the narrative through the creation of events and moving them from one character to another.
Let us take, for example, the scene of "Dilshad" when he buries his wife. Two characters narrate the scene, and any shrewd reader can understand the difference between what Jesus tells and what Dilshad tells.
Issa tells that he is Dilshad's brother, and there is a psychological distance between Issa and the deceased Nurcihan. Issa's feelings were towards Dilshad and not towards Nurcihan, while Dilshad's feelings were towards Norcihan and his little girl.
People think that the addition is the addition of movement, but the addition here is an emotional addition, and the emotional addition may be 25% of the narrative space, but not the space but the meaning.
Of course, it required a lot of revisions, a lot of accuracy, and the use of the ellipsis tool so that I could only keep what the text needed.
The relationship you maintain with your readers.
Are you afraid of them after you achieved high readability?
I love them, but readers are scary, and my relationship with them is full of contradictions, as whenever I think about them a lot, I am unable to write, so their absence at the moment of writing is a must.
We, writers, want to establish a bond between the reader and the text. We hope that he will think carefully about what he receives. Umberto Eco says, “You only write a shopping list for yourself.” He emphasizes the reciprocal role between the writer and the reader in the process of production and reception, in presence and absence.
I do not know if there is a writer who writes and is not an implicit or imaginary reader?
We write, not out of hope for his pleasure, but rather in that look in the eyes, astonishment, approval, or even denial and disapproval.
In my opinion, there is no writer who writes for himself, but there is a difference between a writer who flatters his readers and a writer who respects himself and respects them.
I do not deny that I was afraid of readers after “Dilshad” and that the fear haunted me for a period of time. After “Dilshad” I did not write any creative text, but I am also on the way to recovery, and this is good, isn’t it?
Did you anticipate the success of Dilshad?
I didn't know if "Dilshad" would succeed or not, but what I did know was that I did my best to write well, however I was not sure of its success, and it is said that it succeeded on many levels of reception, and this makes me happy.
Do you read what is written about you?
Do you find it healthy?
Yes, sometimes it happens that I read what is written about me, and this depends on my psychological strength at the time. If I am in a stage of balance, it may be healthy for us to read, see and learn, but if my psychological energy is in a stage of weakness, then this is very destructive, but sometimes and because Sometimes the soul works unexpectedly. Some of the writings that provoke me wake me up from my slumber and make me start working again.
In your opinion, what are the factors capable of granting local literature a global spread?
The idea that the local leads to the global, although it seems cliché, does not escape the truth, as in the case of Naguib Mahfouz, Orhan Pamuk, and others who spoke about their issues and the issues of their societies, and how they portrayed Cairo, Istanbul, Beirut, and Tangier.
But who translates?
And what criteria?
Are there really standards?
As for whether we will depend on personal efforts, relationships and fortunes?
Perhaps we have to pay attention that the use of the word “global” means Europe and America, and that we mostly mean speakers of English and French, and then other languages come after it. When we talk about global, we talk about the Nobel and the Booker, and not about a prize in China, so the entry point for translation is the English language. Mostly, but who translates into English?!
Does translation mean readability in the translated languages?
What does the Western reader want to know about this part of the world?
Is he motivated by curiosity, or does he want to enhance his oriental vision?
So many questions and someone has to do the homework to deal with them.
Do you feel that you have to stop writing someday?
The question here is: Will I stop by my will or against my will?
Is stopping here a desire or a lack of ability?
Will I stop because I have nothing left to add, and I have run out of stories and tales?
This is what I don't think about and don't want to think about, but who knows.
You said that when you were young, you did not dream of becoming a writer, so why did you dream?
The dream I wanted and clung to was to be a mother and to have a family. I did not dream of becoming a writer. I liked the idea of teaching, and at some point I dreamed of being a doctor. My dreams were changing, but I did not dream of becoming a writer, but I became a mother and a writer. I don't think I want more than that.
What I did was rediscover my city and I wanted people to live the experience, but as required by the techniques of the novel.
What do you think of those who say that "Dilshad" is an attempt to write down and date a part of Muscat?
I cannot object to this, and I do not think that proving or denying it will increase or diminish the artistic value of "Dilshad" in any way. I love Muscat, and my fondness for it accompanied my texts from the beginning. / My long text is "dhar", then "bagh" and "dilshad".
Muscat is the place of my childhood and my memory, so how can I neutralize my affection and say that I write about it only for historical documentation?
I write it out of a real passion for the place, and the idea of documentation in some form is represented in everything we write.
Playing the role of a documenter or historian of a place is difficult, just as there is a big difference between a historian and an artist. We work on language and imagination, not on documents, even if they provide us with information, but we do not date and say that they are a reference. If you, as a reader or researcher, want to view it as a reference, then this is your choice. I think it's a good choice, but I didn't write it for reference.
What I did was rediscover my city and I wanted people to live the experience, but as required by the techniques of the novel.