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THE SHORT STORIES OF ZAKARIA TAMER ABDO WAZEN Hammering a new style into the Arabic short story Zakaria Tamer spent his life writing the story, forsaking any other type of literature. The story was his one domain, which he took up with courage and skill. He created a previously unknown story world, using language immersed in intensity and poetry, fabricating characters most original and human if at times joining the ranks of “butchers”. Tamer brought to bear harsh reality – of which he was a victim in his youth – together with a vast imagination that cast a magical quality on people and events. Zakaria Tamer joined the writing world through the door of the blacksmith’s trade, which he began practising at 13 years of age. This forced him to leave school, like many children in his poor Damascus neighbourhood. When Tamer moved to the “profession” of writing, he did not abandon the hammer with which he had struck metal, “rather, he remained a violent blacksmith, but in a country of clay,” as his friend Mohammad al-Maghut once said about him. The young writer rose quickly in the field of writing, through his stories and satirical essays. He began working for magazines and was appointed editor of Al-Mawqif al-Adabi, published monthly by the Syrian Ministry of Culture. When Tamer published his first collection of stories, The Neighing of the White Horse (1960), he captured the attention of critics, writers and readers. With these first stories, he was able to find his place in the Arabic short story movement, whose pioneers included Yusuf Idris, Naguib Mahfouz, Tawfiiq Yusuf Awwad, Youssef al-Sharouni, 78 BANIPAL 53 – SUMMER 2015
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HAMMERING A NEW STYLE and others. A unique voice had appeared, with simplicity and depth, with symbolism and clarity of language not unlike that of modern poetry. Tamer was one of the few prose writers welcomed onto the pages of Shi’r magazine, after the magazine had found in his work features of modern prose that introduced a new horizon for its own difficult art with its own norms. It might be said that Tamer brought about a revolution in the art of the story, going beyond the realism which had chained the story down for long years, creating an impulse to experiment – with language, style, and narration. He succeeded in writing stories that erupted from the Damascene neighbourhood, his first setting which he never abandoned. His sadat-times characters, stories, and anecdotes were all harvested from this neighbourhood; all he had to do was bestow his spellbinding touch in order to direct the local families to speak to the readers wherever they might be. Zakaria Tamer perfected drama, bitter sarcasm, and scorn which arose out of a serious, unhealed wound. It is not odd that his reality was close to fables or short myths, that the story became a theatre of fantasy, shadows and faces. In a story called “The Deal”, a conversation occurs between a mother and the foetus inside her who refuses to come out before knowing what kind of life is waiting for him. In “The Policemen”, the “hero” turns into a peg, then a crow, then a knife, then a wall, as his wife becomes a couch and then a tree. In the famous story “Tigers on the Tenth Day”, the tiger becomes a citizen and the cage a city. Tamer’s stories are full of strangeness, fantasy, and sarcasm, but they do not hide his black vision of the world he despairs. Always his characters are victims: victims of misery and fate, victims of butchers who mask their faces. Zakaria Tamer is a pioneering short-story writer, with his inimitable yet seemingly simple writing style, and the narrative spaces he creates between reality and illusion, between the black of memory and the white of dreams. Although he wrote less than ten short story collections and some collections of stories for children, he founded a unique school for the Arabic short story that leaned on his deep experience, on his skilfulness as a blacksmith, and on his good taste in world literature. Translated by Clayton Clark BANIPAL 53 – SUMMER 2015 79

THE SHORT STORIES OF ZAKARIA TAMER

ABDO WAZEN

Hammering a new style into the Arabic short story

Zakaria Tamer spent his life writing the story, forsaking any other type of literature. The story was his one domain, which he took up with courage and skill. He created a previously unknown story world, using language immersed in intensity and poetry, fabricating characters most original and human if at times joining the ranks of “butchers”. Tamer brought to bear harsh reality – of which he was a victim in his youth – together with a vast imagination that cast a magical quality on people and events.

Zakaria Tamer joined the writing world through the door of the blacksmith’s trade, which he began practising at 13 years of age. This forced him to leave school, like many children in his poor Damascus neighbourhood. When Tamer moved to the “profession” of writing, he did not abandon the hammer with which he had struck metal, “rather, he remained a violent blacksmith, but in a country of clay,” as his friend Mohammad al-Maghut once said about him. The young writer rose quickly in the field of writing, through his stories and satirical essays. He began working for magazines and was appointed editor of Al-Mawqif al-Adabi, published monthly by the Syrian Ministry of Culture. When Tamer published his first collection of stories, The Neighing of the White Horse (1960), he captured the attention of critics, writers and readers. With these first stories, he was able to find his place in the Arabic short story movement, whose pioneers included Yusuf Idris, Naguib Mahfouz, Tawfiiq Yusuf Awwad, Youssef al-Sharouni,

78 BANIPAL 53 – SUMMER 2015

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