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MOHAMED EL-BISATIE (1937-2012) |
Denys Johnson-Davies shared his tribute to El-Bisatie, which asks:
“How was it that I came to add
El-Bisatie’s name to the short list I already had of writers whose work should
never be passed by unread? Was there any particular story by him, which
converted me, or did I gradually decide that here was a writer who should
not be ignored?
“As it happens there was one
particular story that told me that here was a writer who demanded attention. I
remember coming across the story in some magazine or other. Normally,
perhaps, I would have ignored it, seeing that it was not printed in one
of the well-known literary journals and was not by a writer known to me. I
remember that the title of the story was ‘A Conversation from the Third
Floor’ and it opens with a scene of a woman being stared at by a policeman
close by who is seated on a horse.
“Slowly it emerges that the woman
has come with her young child to visit someone in the large building in front
of which the policeman is standing. She is worried about the presence of
the policeman, but explains, hesitantly, that she has come to visit her
husband, who inhabits this large building which, we learn, is a prison that is
about to be pulled down…
“Suddenly a face appears at one
of the windows and a voice calls out to her. It asks her whether she has
pruned the two date palms. He then asks her whether, as requested by him,
she has brought the cigarettes he wants. It seems she has brought him the cigarettes
but, somehow, two of the packages have been mislaid. The man says it
doesn’t matter that two packages have disappeared. He then tells her he is
being transferred to some other prison. He’ll tell her when he knows. For
the time being she shouldn’t come back to this building. She takes a last
glance at the prison window but there’s no face there any longer and then
she passes by the policeman; his eyes are closed and his hands are holding
the pommel of the saddle, as she makes her way along the narrow passageway
towards the main road.
“And so the story ends.
“As I wrote in the introduction I
did for the book of his short stories that I published under the title A Last
Glass of Tea: ‘While there is drama in his stories it is never highlighted:
The menace lurks almost unseen between the lines.”
More here from Arabic Literature (in English)
