The novel “Khatam Salimi” by Reem Bali mixes the exotic with the realistic (Al Jazeera)

“On the marble bench beneath the hand dryer, forgotten in the corner, his eyes froze on that silver ring for a moment. Those black and turquoise oriental decorations engraved on it perfectly called to him, and his heart sank when the dragon (fixed on the ring) winked at him with the malice of someone who says: Hey...you.” .. Didn't you remember me?

This happened on a gloomy autumn day in 2017 at Beirut Airport, when the Spanish photographer Lucas Ortiz Pérez accidentally spotted the ring of his beloved Aleppo, Salma Al-Attar, “engraved with decorations that told wondrous stories that Lucas had never understood.” And it had been four years since the last ring. A connection between them, and about a decade since their last meeting in the Syrian city of Aleppo.

Thus, from the first pages of her novel “Selim’s Ring,” shortlisted for the 17th International Prize for Arabic Fiction (2024), the Syrian novelist Rima Bali abandons the crude vocabulary of reality, plunging her reader into a narrative world in which truth merges with fiction, and the exotic mixes with the real.

Calling on him to submit to the laws and logic of this world in an attempt to discover the secret of the strange ring thrown at Beirut airport while its owner did not leave her home in her afflicted city of Aleppo.

A puzzle is the reader’s doorstep to an enigmatic world with the stories of its people, its places, and the nature of its times. In this imaginary world, the novelist goes beyond the traditional form of the plot, and intends to break up narrative time with its unorganized transition between the worlds of the past, the present, and the dream (the future), to give the impression that it is one time.

Thus, the awareness of the characters meets their unconsciousness, and strange perceptions and events harmonize with the feelings and facts of daily life, so that the reader finds himself at the end of the novel confused, wondering whether its hero is alive and recounting a dream or dead and his biography being retraced.

Above all, “Khatam Sulaima” is a narrative that traces the biography and destinies of a group of characters who lived in the Syrian city of Aleppo at the beginning of the third millennium, before the war cursed it, the siege was imposed on its people, and the city transformed from an oasis of literature, art, industry, and heritage into a ghostly, destroyed and deserted place. .

Syrian writer Rima Bali has four novels (social networking sites)

The ring between lost love and lost kingship

The narrative in “Khatam Sulaima” is based on intertextuality with heritage and historical narrations, and by simulating realistic events witnessed by the city of Aleppo.

Narratives and events that the novelist was able to employ remarkably in the narrative construction of her strange story about the love triangle that brought together the antiques seller Salma Al-Attar, or “Celine” as her father called her, the Italian musician and orientalist Silifo Caroloni, or Shams Al-Din, and the Spanish photographer Lucas Ortiz.

The events of the novel take place between the Spanish cities of Aleppo and Toledo (Toledo), a few years before the outbreak of the Syrian war, where the destinies of these three characters are intertwined between these two cities, who differed in origin, culture, and aspirations, but who united in their love for Aleppo, which “groans under the rubble of lost dreams and opportunities.” And on chasing the magic of things, fantasies of love, and desires of the body that formed the focus of events in the novel.

As the narrative progresses, Salima’s magic ring becomes the living link between the ancient history of Aleppo, with its crafts, industries, and arts, and its afflicted present under the rubble of collapsed buildings. At the level of the story, the ring serves as the miraculous link between the characters’ present, past, and future, and thus the ring turns into a textual focal point from which connotations are generated and shaped in The path of its intersection and final formation of the social, political and cultural connotations of the work.

Returning to the events of the novel, we find that Salma possesses two copies of the magic ring decorated with an inscription identical to the inscription that adorns the wall of one of the gates of ancient Aleppo. Salma gave one of those copies to Shams al-Din (Silifio Caroloni) and called it “Solomon’s Seal.” As for the other copy, she kept it. With it, she made it indistinguishable from her victory, and called it “the Seal of Selima.”

Because the legend tells of the ring of the Prophet Solomon - peace and blessings be upon him - with which he leads mankind and the jinn, speaks with his power to animals, and through which his kingdom is established and his throne is established, Salma wove her legend about her “seal of Solomon.”

Through him, Shams al-Din was granted the secrets of kingship, knowledge, and absolute wisdom.

While the other ring, “Salima’s ring,” remained a puzzling mystery, a magical thing, and a story that Lucas Ortiz was waiting to hear from Salma, who occupied him with his secret for many years before he found his twin by chance at the Beirut airport without finding a trace of its owner.

The two rings, with their magic and their movement between fingers and places, define the features of the love story that brought together Salma and Shams Al-Din on the one hand, and Salma and Lucas Ortiz on the other hand.

They organize the narrative, produce the element of suspense, reveal the insides of the characters, and contribute to drawing the different destinies of our heroes.

Suleiman’s ring, with its strange move to that random corner of the Beirut airport, leaving Shams al-Din’s finger, was the witness to a stormy love story that was not destined to continue between its owner and Salma. As for the textual level, this abandoned ring was a metaphor for the loss of the kingdom in Aleppo, the great city, and the destruction of its people. And the destruction of its construction after the death of Suleiman (Shams al-Din), leaving the city he loved deserted except for Salma, the “keykeeper,” who remained guarding its ruins.

Dreams and poetics of flame

Following the approach of the famous Spanish novelist Antonio Gala in his “The Crimson Manuscript,” dreams dominate the novelist’s attention, as she singles out entire narrative units for Lucas’s dreams and nightmares that reproduce, generating scattered stories that do not adhere to logic.

The dream in “Salima’s Ring” sweeps through time and space, making the narrative a mirror of Lucas’s subconscious, delving into his needs, desires, and fears, displaying the inner fragmentation of the photographer wandering over Salma, far away by land and sea, and lost in the corridors of his alienating reality.

We see him resorting to dreams of sleep, begging for a better reality with love for Salma as its broad title.

Dreams here are not a transfer of what is realistic, but rather a journey into the realm of what is possible within that hypothetical narrative world that Paley proposes to her reader, inviting him to take a break from the monotony and repetition of what is logical and rational, and to delve into dreams that enrich his imagination and give him a glimpse into half of life. People spend it sleeping.

The novelist does not limit himself to dreams to add to the poetry of her narration, but a flame is kindled around Lucas to illuminate for him the path of visions on a magic carpet that Salma taught him how to lie on to enter the world of dreams.

In this way, the novel follows the perception of the French philosopher of beauty, Gaston Bachelard, when he said that the flame “perpetuates a primal dream, and possesses a great presence that separates us from the real world and transports us to the sleepy dream world.”

In addition to dreams and flames, Aleppo rugs occupy the largest part of the poetic space in the novel. We find them present from the beginning in the cover painting that the novelist allocated to a rug embroidered with floral and geometric motifs, passing through the profession of her heroine Salma, who works in collecting and selling antiques and antique Aleppo rugs, all the way to the Lucas rug. The magician brings visions and dreams.

Rugs, candles, rings, and dreams form the poetic vocabulary of the novel, reflecting through a mixture of magic, exoticism, and authenticity the spirit of Aleppo, the city of love, poetry, inns, carpets, and perfumery before it was destroyed by war.

The aesthetics of the place

Bali celebrates the rich aesthetics of its city of Aleppo, and the narrative moves like a camera between its places, describing its most precise urban and heritage aspects, wandering through its ancient neighborhoods, and moving between its squares, alleys, and inns, conveying all its details, including the distinctive smells of its shops and shops, so that the reader imagines himself as a tourist in the markets, archaeological inns, restaurants, and cafes. Al-Atiqa of Old Aleppo.

Old Aleppo has two sides in the narrative:

The first is the external frame in which the events of the story take place, while the second appears through the moral and historical value of the city, with which Salma has a relationship that “neither ages nor sleeps,” making it a mixture of reality, imagination, and magic.

Aleppo is the incubator of the narrative event, and the spatial center in which the dreams, aspirations and destinies of the characters are intertwined.

It remains the main concern of our heroes even after they leave it to escape the war.

Although the war is only present in a few scenes in “Khatam Salima,” the reader feels its shadows while the city gradually loses its identity due to the bombing and theft that affected the old markets, Shams al-Din’s house, and Salma’s antiques shop.

By conveying images of destruction, Bali succeeds in establishing a contrast between Aleppo’s ancient past and its afflicted present, to reflect the futility and cruelty of war and the depth of the tragedy it left in the souls of its characters.

Salma leaves Aleppo to attend the cremation ceremony of Shams al-Din, who in turn left Aleppo on the brink of death in grief, while Lucas remains in Spain, unable to reach Salma even after sneaking into Aleppo through an illegal crossing.

The novel closes on a blurry event with which the reader does not realize whether Lucas is alive, dreaming, in a coma, or dead, so the writer leaves the reader the freedom to weave an ending to an incomplete love story that brought together Lucas Ortiz and Salma.

Rima Bali is a writer and novelist born in the Syrian city of Aleppo. Her literary credits include four works of fiction: “Milagro” (2016), “My Blue Ghadi” (2018), “Khatem Salimi” (2021), and “A Flute in the Arab Takht” ( 2023).

Source: Al Jazeera