The subconscious is a world full of life, which has no rules or pre-determined form. It is a life like a crashing wave, in which stories occur that only their owners know, and which rarely reach paper. Wading in this sea is a very complicated matter, but it is a very enjoyable matter, and the more you know, the darker it becomes, because ideas throw their impurities into it, forming in this way their opposites that disturb us whenever we sail in them.
The life of an expatriate is a journey of pain and happiness, loss and discovery, success and disappointment. It is a painting in which contrasting colors, very dark and very bright, clash. The life of an expatriate is a journey whose end, according to plan, is a return to the mother’s embrace, the mother who carried him and watched over him as a child, and the homeland mother that contains all his previous memories, but it often ends with the end of the expatriate before the end of the journey or with the end of the mother. This book presents stories of the life of an expatriate that are almost identical to reality, and carry within them all those emotions that we mentioned at the beginning, and it has a tendency toward presenting the condition of the expatriate without adding the usual touch of romanticism, as it is, and without exaggeration or frills.
The village has always been a symbol of simplicity in its system of life and in the psychological makeup of the villagers, who rarely suffer from what is called “phobia” or “mania,” and accept everything that happens to them as normal, no matter how harsh.
This was in those eras when crops fed those who worked the land and provided them with a surplus for sale that provided them with an important part of their living expenses. However, after agriculture became a loss-making business, and sometimes a heavy burden on the farmer that did not provide its owner with the minimum necessities of life, the village mixed with the city due to the migration caused by various crises, which generated sharp paradoxes that were nullified by that person who was imposed on him in the city a new way of life. At the same time, his customs, traditions, and connections to the village remained strong, which created a duality in him that made him a rich and diverse personality. This friction that occurred through migrations, as well as due to the great technological development that occurred, also transferred part of the city with its relationships and way of life to the village, which constituted a shock to a part of the villagers whose thinking remained based on the old pattern of rural relations.
All of this constituted, and continues to constitute, an important source of literature and drama. In this book there are a number of stories whose events take place in the village of Umm al-Tanafas, a name taken to be a symbol of the village in all works that touch upon the village. This will be the first village notebook and will be followed in the future by other notebooks, because the village’s stories are inexhaustible.
The period of writing these stories extended for many years, extending from 1987 with the story “The Smell” to 2013 with the story “May God prolong his life.” They were all written under the weight of heavy tyranny, which made our thinking almost paralyzed and made us free executioners and observers of ourselves. It is “natural” for most of them to be apologized for publishing, as happened with the story “The Smell” which was either apologized for publishing or was ignored by all the newspapers to which it was sent at that time, as well as It happened with several other stories.
All the stories are united by a single concern and a similar atmosphere. Their events take place in the imperial atmosphere, with the meaning of the emperor’s word. The reader does not need effort or help from anyone in deciphering it. They speak of a general concern that everyone feels the burden of, without exception. Some were vocal about it at the times when the stories were written. Some people kept it quiet, but despite the fact that the majority were forced to remain silent, and those who opened their mouths paid a heavy price for not remaining silent, for everyone it was a heavy burden that a person could not get used to, or at the very least hope that it would go away.
These stories were among the forms of expression of that general pain. Some of them were destined to come out to the screen - in some short periods of relief - to reach the audience, even in different formulations from the stories in the book, and some of them remained imprisoned until circumstances allowed them to appear on the pages of this book in your hands.
