In the introduction to his first collection of short stories, the Chinese storyteller Lu Xun says that he found himself driven to write because he felt intense loneliness. He was not able to forget, or, rather, he was not able to forget completely; So, he wrote stories about the past.
This is exactly what prompted me to write: overwhelming loneliness. I also failed to forget, so I wrote what remained in my memory about Syria before the war.
Sometimes, exiles write about nostalgia for a country they miss and wish to return to. This is not like the nostalgia of Syrians: the country has completely changed, and even disappeared. We long for a place that does not exist, except in memory. And memory, as you know, writhes, colors, and churns. I am no exception, and my memory does not claim to be completely faithful to reality, but I tried hard to write exactly what you dictated to me.
Hopes, dreams, and losses are all fading quickly, and so is the country, and what remains of it is in us: as if it were a half-smile, or a summer cloud, or a bright comet passing quickly, only to disappear completely moments later, before the eyes of curious, bored viewers, indifferent to its fate...
On Animal Farm, the horse Boxer believes everything he is told, and works hard day and night. This pure naivety paves the way for evil people to rule our world. Naivety is not infallible. Gullibility must be accompanied by intelligence, knowledge, caution and foresight. This is wisdom. To be wise, you must know evil and see it clearly, and you must also be naive enough to believe in your ability to resist it. Through his collection of stories, Uday Al-Zoubi seeks to raise a question about the limits of wisdom, and its relationship with naivety. Foolish, unwise naivety, and evil, unnaive wisdom, almost dominate our world, spreading confusion and darkness and making the world a dangerous, ambiguous mixture of things, ideas, and stories.
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