The hero of the novel “The Philosopher’s Dance” is a controversial strategic thinker. He worked and still is an advisor to an Arab leader. He took up his job after leaving Palestine on the run after he was accused of dealing with the enemy during wartime, namely Hezbollah.
This thinker or philosopher practiced political dancing. He theorizes democracy and secularism while working for a non-democratic, non-secular leader who supports extremism. He also believes in Arab nationalism and does not recognize Palestinian nationalism. He engages in a sexual relationship with his Israeli colleague (Tzipora), then continues the matter and justifies his actions. He describes it as resistance. He claims his love for his wife, Layal, and at the same time he lives with a Moroccan woman of Jewish origin during his stay in Britain. This woman plays a major role in the novel as a visual artist and has the ability to listen and remain silent.
The philosopher moves to reside in Britain and discovers an attempt to assassinate him by a Druze soldier who was working in the Israeli army. Here the novel sheds light on the reality of the Druze, accusing them and trying to do justice to them at the same time. The credit for thwarting the assassination goes to a man from southern Lebanon who runs a restaurant in London.
The philosopher receives a letter from a deported Palestinian who took refuge in Lebanon, asking him at the end: How do you feel in your homeland? The message affects him greatly, and he searches for the answer whenever he has the opportunity, and there are many opportunities, but he fails to answer. The question forms a basic pillar of the novel as well.
Although the novel is realistic, it does not follow an ascending ladder of events, and what lies within it is much greater than the events mentioned. The novel, as much as it is a novel of events and actions, is an intellectual novel, and here lies the difficulty of talking about it.
The collection “The Hidden One Who Survives Interpretation” includes 28 poems, some of which are short and some are long, and deals with emotional, national, philosophical and contemplative issues. The relationship with women constitutes an important axis in the collection based on the poet’s refined humane and civilized view of women. Exile also constitutes a major axis since the poet lives in exile. Many years ago. The poet also resorts to writing abstract, contemplative poems sometimes as a result of his interaction with external existence and his preoccupation with humanizing things. The collection in our hands is the eighth in the series of Anwar Al-Khatib’s poetry publications, and it comes in the context of his poetic project that aspires to establish a different language and a different, vibrant and diverse construction of the Arabic poem, so that it escapes itself from routine, repetition, and rigid templates.
