DIWANIYA
‘She Throws Sparks’
By Dr. Kamel Farhan Saleh
In his novel “Spewing Sparks as Big as Castles,” - also known as “She Throws Sparks” - that has won the $50,000 International Prize for Arabic Fiction (the Arabic Booker), the novelist Abdo Khal aligns himself with people living on the margins of society – the simple people.
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| Abdo Khal |
Khal does not enter the world of prose from an ivory tower, but arrives through the gate of human agony. But he comes to this world much like a man who is surprised to have come across a treasure.
In his prize-winning work, as in his other novels “The Mud”, “Barking,” “Immorality,” “Cities Eating Grass” and “Death Passes from Here,” Khal lays bare the details of difficult lives and personalities with incomplete features who experience great pain, bitterness and fear about the future.
He is skilful at writing stories. He has the ability to listen to people, all people. He scrutinizes an event, a traditional adage, an old song, the bounds of places and the functions of his personalities. He is not ashamed of going as far as breaking magic spells and saying what he wants, even to the point of being quite blunt sometimes.
The role of the protagonists
In the book, published by Al-Jamal Publications in Germany, Khal uses the collage technique for his protagonists and the time in which the novel is set. He recalls events and dates deeply embedded in society’s memory, which have a direct impact on the novel’s protagonists. Many personalities play the role of the hero and Khal links them in a mesh of intertwining relations. He deals with “social, urban and behavioral change” that has swept them from their simple marginal life to face what they cannot bear.
The novel does not stop at local personalities, but uses expatriates who have come to the Kingdom, as an added ingredient to demonstrate the change in values, conduct and morals. The events in the novel take place in Jeddah over the past 40 years and end on the first day of the last Hijri year.
Deadly desires
“She Throws Sparks” is the story of a place where the sea has been walled from “Hell” or “The Pit” as its inhabitants - the fishermen - call it.
Its personalities struggle among themselves to control and destroy others through wealth, immoral acts and deadly desires. It is a novel in which the struggle between classes appears clearly, as well as man’s eternal striving to return to paradise (Al-Firdous), which he had left.
In the novel, however, paradise, the earth and hellfire are symbols that depict different things – here it is not the Paradise that Allah Almighty created but it is the heaven of instinct and tyranny. It is not the virgin earth on which Adam (peace be upon him) set foot, but a land of foul-smelling stagnant pools.
Greedy people rush for wealth and power. It is not the Hellfire where Allah said would be the abode of the unbelievers and unjust people, but it is the hellfire of human sins, absolute evil, and the pleasure the tyrants take in people’s suffering, subjugation, killing and maiming.
Man’s home
Entering the world of “She Throws Sparks” can be likened to entering a man’s house, as the area, colors of the walls, differ from person to person.
As much as life has its facets and topographies, Abdo Khal has been able to go into detail in re-forming it. He has created a new framework for life itself. What remains to be said is that it is impossible to specify one hero in this novel and in his previous novels. There are many heroes and the stories have no end; there is a big hole in memory. Khal struggles to control and arrange it so that it does not pollute the essence of the theme. However, he leaves it to flow and weave together the worlds of astonishment and the pleasures of meditation. – Okaz/SG
Sunday, 21 March 2010 - 05 Rabi Al-Thani 1431 H
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