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THE SHORT STORIES OF ZAKARIA TAMER DENYS JOHNSON-DAVIES Leading writer of short stories Zakaria Tamer first came to my notice in the early ‘seventies in Beirut when my friend the poet and publisher Yusuf alKhal gave me a copy of a volume of short stories entitled Saheel al-Jawad al-Abyad (The Neighing of the White Horse), which he told me had been written by a young man from Damascus. I was impressed by the originality of the stories and decided to include one of his stories in the volume Modern Arabic Short Stories. This volume, published by Oxford University Press in 1967, was the first volume of short stories from the Arab world to appear in English translation and contained twenty stories by the leading writers of the time, stories by such writers as Naguib Mahfouz, Yusuf Idris, Jabra Ibrahim Jabra, Mahmoud Teymour, Yahya Hakki, Tewfik alHakim, Tayeb Salih and Ghassan Kanafani, Latifa el-Zayat and another Syrian writer Abdel Salam al-Ujaili. It is surely significant that I had found a story by a completely unknown writer named Zakaria Tamer worthy of inclusion in such a volume. It seems I was not wrong in my judgment, for this writer was later to make a name for himself as the leading Syrian writer of short stories. Later on I decided to publish a whole volume of his stories in translation and this came out under the title Tigers on the Tenth Day; later still, a series of small but excellent children’s books were published in Cairo by Dar al-Fata al-Arabi. I was asked to make a translation in English of these books, many of which were written by leading writers. Among them were several by Zakaria Tamer, stories that contained the same delightful folkloric wisdom that is the basis of many of his short stories1. And now the fact that another translator, has interested himself in Zakaria Tamer’s work has made it possible for my original volume to be republished and for several more of his stories, which were 94 BANIPAL 53 – SUMMER 2015
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LEADING WRITER OF SHORT STORIES to be found in various collections, to see the light of day in a single book2. Today the short story, whether in Arabic or in English, has lost much of its previous popularity. The time was when I could translate a story from the Arabic and know that, here in Cairo, there were several magazines that would include it in their pages. Even, at one time, many of my translations first appeared on the English-language programme put out by Egyptian State Broadcasting. This state of affairs was further proved to me when I looked up in a book on modern Arabic literature of which I had just done a fulsome review. Let’s see, I told myself, what he has to say about Zakaria Tamer. I was shocked to find that the name did not appear in the index. I then looked up the modern Egyptian short story writer Said elKafrawi, a representative volume of whose stories I had published in translation, and here again I found no mention of him. It just goes to show that the short story in the Arab world has lost much of its popularity. And yet the short story is not a genre that should be ignored. One of England’s most prolific writers of short stories once wrote: “Readers forget novels; short stories stay in their minds.” He’s right; do we not still read Poe, Maupassant, and Chekhov and myriads of other writers of short stories with great enjoyment? Stories like Tolstoy’s “How much land does a man need?” or Hemingway’s “Hills like White Elephants” and “The Snows of Kiliminjaro” stay vividly in my mind while the same writers’ novels have somehow merged into the whole structure of my reading culture without possessing the lasting affect of an outstanding short story. I hope the same can be said about many of Zakaria Tamer’s stories, for he is a writer who has concentrated all his literary talents on this one genre of literature – the short story. Notes: 1 These stories for children by Zakaria Tamer include The White Pigeon, Locusts in the City, The House of White Paper, The Horse and the Merchant, and The Horse of the Green Land, all of which were translated into English by Denys Johnson-Davies and published as single illustrated children’s books by Dar al-Fata al-‘Arabi in 1985. 2 See “The Hedgehog”, a novella by Zakaria Tamer, translated by Brian O’Rourke, and Other Stories, translated by Denys Johnson-Davies, reviewed below, page 102. BANIPAL 53 – SUMMER 2015 95

THE SHORT STORIES OF ZAKARIA TAMER

DENYS JOHNSON-DAVIES

Leading writer of short stories

Zakaria Tamer first came to my notice in the early ‘seventies in Beirut when my friend the poet and publisher Yusuf alKhal gave me a copy of a volume of short stories entitled Saheel al-Jawad al-Abyad (The Neighing of the White Horse), which he told me had been written by a young man from Damascus. I was impressed by the originality of the stories and decided to include one of his stories in the volume Modern Arabic Short Stories. This volume, published by Oxford University Press in 1967, was the first volume of short stories from the Arab world to appear in English translation and contained twenty stories by the leading writers of the time, stories by such writers as Naguib Mahfouz, Yusuf Idris, Jabra Ibrahim Jabra, Mahmoud Teymour, Yahya Hakki, Tewfik alHakim, Tayeb Salih and Ghassan Kanafani, Latifa el-Zayat and another Syrian writer Abdel Salam al-Ujaili. It is surely significant that I had found a story by a completely unknown writer named Zakaria Tamer worthy of inclusion in such a volume. It seems I was not wrong in my judgment, for this writer was later to make a name for himself as the leading Syrian writer of short stories. Later on I decided to publish a whole volume of his stories in translation and this came out under the title Tigers on the Tenth Day; later still, a series of small but excellent children’s books were published in Cairo by Dar al-Fata al-Arabi. I was asked to make a translation in English of these books, many of which were written by leading writers. Among them were several by Zakaria Tamer, stories that contained the same delightful folkloric wisdom that is the basis of many of his short stories1.

And now the fact that another translator, has interested himself in Zakaria Tamer’s work has made it possible for my original volume to be republished and for several more of his stories, which were

94 BANIPAL 53 – SUMMER 2015

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