“فكِّر في حياتك بعمق وانطلق نحو السعادة”، للكاتب ويل باكينغهام، وترجمة “ديوان آرابيا”، والذي يمثِّل زاداً معرفياً يصحبنا من خلاله القارئ في رحلة ممتعة نستقي بها .
Zainab and Ahmed are two children who were separated from sharing school seats by Zainab’s move with her family to Ankara, and her boyfriend staying in Istanbul. The letters became their way of maintaining their friendship by exchanging funny stories, daily adventures, and discussing the oddities of the adult world: adults’ confusion in front of their managers, and parents’ desperation to showcase their children’s talents. “The wonderful ones” in front of the guests, and the parents’ insistence that they were all outstanding, obedient, honest, and of course the top of their class.
In this novel written for children, parents, and teachers alike, Aziz Nesin reconstructs events from the perspective through which children see the world, judging the behavior of adults and the double standards they live under. Like his always controversial books, the book - this time - provokes adults by revealing their image in the eyes of their children, thus asking: What happens to children when they grow up?
Salman visits the dead cities to make a documentary film about them, those cities that were symbols of ancient civilizations, before they became cities of broken columns and stone remains. But he finds there, in the house of one of the city's elders, a painting of a wounded deer, signed by his mother, "Fatima." Soon, the owner of the house presents him with possible scenarios for his film, all of which revolve around “Fatima,” and he finds himself entering a magical world and a confusing maze as he spies on the hidden faces of his mother, realizing that he only knew one face of her.
In this novel, Khairy Al-Dhahabi manipulates times and multiple voices to write about dead cities and Fatima with its many mirrors. Who is she? What is its truth? What is the secret of wishing? “If her name wasn’t Fatima”?
