Some critics say that contemporary Arab culture struggles to compensate for the absence of an intimate aspect in the relationship of writers to their writings, the habits of writing, its spaces, its tools, the sources of inspiration, the masses of dreams and feelings that invade the body at the moment of writing and thinking.
In comparison with the Western culture in which these external factors are present in the emergence of the act of writing, the meetings and dialogues attempt to celebrate the so-called “first manuscripts” found in various institutions and museums of the world. Read also It happened in memory.. Sudanese doctor and novelist Amir Taj Al-Sir, a storyteller Happened in memory.. Yemeni poet Hussein Moqbel and the journey of the countryside, the city and exile Happened in memory.. Egyptian poet Samir Darwish and the poetry he was born with It Happened in Memory.. The Syrian Storyteller and Playwright Mustafa Taj al-Din al-Musa and The Room of Ghosts and Betrayal
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In this corner, “a new nostalgic space” that Al Jazeera Net opens, a number of Arab writers of all colors, generations, sensitivities, and creative and intellectual trends reveal the rosy dreams that invaded their imaginations on the verge of publishing the first book. The publisher’s opinion, and what happened after the book was published, and did people now deal with them on the basis that they were writers? Then what has changed in their lives? Do they regret editing their first book?
Today’s guest is the Algerian writer and journalist Abdel Razzak Boukaba (44 years old), one of the literary faces that swept through its diversity and richness in contemporary Algerian literature, especially that the group of Arab writers who married in their writings between zajal, story, novel, criticism, journey and theater, in a way that is almost hysterical at the level of attachment By writing, as a new entry into existence. His writings are dominated by the daily dimension and the social relations in weaving the bonds of a relationship with the text, which makes it a deep extension of the cultural work that he is doing in a group inside Algerian cities.
Abdel Razzaq Boukabeh has published a number of literary books, such as “Who Trampled Sibawayh’s Slippers in the Sand”, “Wings for the Mood of the White Wolf”, “Shadow’s Lashes”, “The Waterwheel’s Thirst”, “Hands for Three Girls”, “Ashes Leave in Silence”, “A Traveler at Home And here is his testimony about the questions Al-Jazeera Net asked him.
Sheikh’s prophecy
It was issued in September of 2004 in a joint edition of the Algerian National Library and Dar Al-Barzakh, and its title was “Who Trapped Sibawayh’s Shoe in the Sand?”, a group of short texts in which poetry mixed with narration in a way that makes it difficult to classify the experience, so some wrote about it as a story Too short, and some classified it in the category of modern poetry. Even an Algerian academic, Mohamed Arous, published a book titled “Experimentation in Contemporary Algerian Poetry: Who Tucked Sibawayh’s Slippers into the Sand? By Abdel Razzak Boukaba… An Applied Blog.”
A month after its publication, he participated in the International Book Fair, and it surprised me that it was among the new titles that drew attention to it. Even the novelist Rachid Boudjedra did not stop declaring that the book represented a new and different threshold in the Algerian poetic code. I stumbled upon these constructed opinions and was horrified at my possible inability to get past my first, which might become a barrier to entering into further experiences.
This explains the fact that I did not release my second book, “Wings for the Mood of the White Wolf,” which won the “Beirut 39” competition, only after 4 years. It also explains my regular writing in many literary genres, including a novel, a story, a very short story, a journey, theatre, a biography, and a cultural article.
I was thus freed from the collar of the first book that my father carried and went around with it to the shops and gatherings of the village, saying that his son had issued a book and by this – says my father – he fulfilled the prophecy of the good guardian who said before my birth in 1977 that he would have a son who would write books for people to read. The origin of the story is that my father got married in 1964, so he delayed his birth from my mother, who was in the midst of divorce because of that, under pressure from his family, so he offered them to visit a righteous guardian alive. He will write books that people will read. In fact, I came to writing from the angle that I had absorbed the prophecy of the sheikh since my childhood, so I wrote so as not to make my father and mother disappoint in the prophecy of their sheikh, then I liked the game, and it became a personal choice in my life that is not subject to any motive except the motive of love.
Burning the manuscript “Female Clouds”
I was eager to have a name since my childhood, so I decided in 2002 to immigrate to Algiers, where there is no glory outside of it for those who aspire to glory in distant cities. It was recently emerging from the experience of violence and terrorism, and its various doors were closed, which put me at the mercy of its streets for several months, as I lived human experiences that I needed to get rid of the previous judgments that formed my awareness, including my relationship with the language that I found myself spontaneously demanding to link it to the living, not the reading. I burned my poetry manuscript, which I wrote in the previous contexts, entitled “Female Clouds”, as an indication of a symbolic, psychological, philosophical and linguistic break with that stage.
From here emerged the language of the first book shocking and rebellious and rejecting many structures of Arabic grammar and morphology as a conception of existence. This explains the meaning of the book’s title “Who tucked Sibawayh’s slippers into the sand?”, as I had to tuck the seat of grammar into the sand so that my own rhetoric could prove itself, as writing became to me in this experience an act that contradicts the prevailing, stereotyped, ready, stereotyped, ideological, and servant to others. The self in its attempt to be the focus of creative and human action.