A brief overview of the novel Chronic Longing The novel centers around Salah, a character who is characterized by a captivating and different scent, and he has a strong attachment to his mother that reaches the stage of holiness in respect, love, and attachment. This appears in his conversation with her as he sits near her grave, which he returns to to celebrate her birthday, there, and distributes sweets to the graves in a surreal way. Symbolism. The first chapters talk about Salah, the adventurous and loving child who travels long kilometers to see a girl who lives on top of a mountain. He has not heard her talk or met her, but he loves her. He talks about his adventure with his friend Mustafa when they went to join the revolution to fight their enemy. She talks about Salah, who works at the newspaper and then leaves because he reaches retirement age. Najat, the director of personnel affairs at the newspaper, talks about this aspect, as does the security man who asks him to cooperate with him. Then the novel talks about Salah through the character of the cemetery guard, Fawzi, as well as through a woman named Salma. They both hear him talking to his dead mother, and then Amira, his childhood sweetheart, talks about him, who grows up, gets married, divorces, and meets him again. There is the character of Colonel Zahra, who summons him because of his attempts to transport his deceased mother and all the dead in the neighborhood to their homes due to being threatened. Salah organizes a reverse funeral that transports the dead from their graves to their homes, which is a symbolic funeral more than a real one, in order to preserve their memory as displaced people. It later becomes clear that Colonel Zahra is the same girl that Salah loved in high school. There is the character of Saber, who is the other side of Salah, who sometimes judges him and reveals some truths at other times. The novel restores consideration to man's relationship with his natural mother, his mother, the earth, and his mother, the cause, and raises the alarm of the disappearance of the memory of the displaced due to the practices of extremists who want to burn and plow the cemetery. Technically, the novel follows the short story approach, where each chapter constitutes a short story that the reader enjoys, but encourages him to continue reading.
The ram ***
*It is as if Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony is a “blow of fate” that we receive, causing us to wake up from a voluntary slumber and an involuntary faint.
When we read “The Ram” by Anwar Al-Khatib; We realize that a memory that does not contain some of that man’s creations is a distorted memory. It has the right to hide in shame or become scattered in vain.
We are overwhelmed with wonder as we ask the author: What imagination sweeps through you and storms your brain when you dress up with a brush to write and even draw a novel that combines surrealism, abstraction, fantasy... and realism?!
* With captivating imagination, we rode the water with you, and we were certain that illusion is the certain truth that we practice with merit and distinction.
* The novel is a painting or a choir playing one extremely wonderful symphony, and each individual player shows his special skill on his instrument. Then the maestro comes with his stick to bring everyone together in one musical arrangement. He connects all the threads of the novel, leaving you in a state of astonishing shock, or say madness.
* Al-Khatib accompanies the animal world with its splendor and sublime “humanity.” He avoids the human world with all its meanness and brutality, and I will not say its animality.. for animals have become more sublime than us.
* Amazement, par excellence, accompanies you from the beginning of the striking and question-provoking title, even as you close the second leaf of the book, announcing the end of reading. Then you discover that your mouth is still open with astonishment and astonishment. And perhaps we will remain on that platform of astonishment until he surprises us with his new edition.
