“Summer of Bulbuls” in the time of Corona

The novel “Summer of Albulbul” (Arwad for the printing and publishing house – Tartous) by the poet, novelist, researcher and former minister Tarad Hamadeh, was written – as stated on its first internal cover – “In the time of Corona – 2020”. The time of this writing has its meaning, because the time of the epidemic, which is one of the times of the novel, is the time of the Crown, which formed the space to write this novel, the impulse to search for salvation.

The title “Summer of nightingales” is a sign of the world to which the novel arrives. And since we know that al-Bulbul is the “translator of wishes”, and from him Ibn Arabi derived the title of his well-known book, we realize the identity of this world to which the novel’s journey leads. This world is a “new heavenly city on earth.” The participant in his “construction” calls the sower of roses, vegetables, forests and fruit trees, the lover and the lover, of his language and the language of his partners in “Al-Ammar”, the “whistle of the nightingales” that speak with love and love, in the understanding of these partners It is existence, knowledge and anguish …
The novel ends in this world on a long journey, and its narration takes, at the beginning, the structure of a framework story, interpreted by an informed narrator, who narrates that Thabit Ibn Marra, the encyclopedic scientist, traveler and reliable storyteller, meets in the ruins of a world that has been destroyed by corruption, epidemics and tyranny, and his proximity to a saddled horse. For him, he is a striped bird who needs someone to decode his symbols, so he rides a horse and travels to a green city, a building inspired by the construction of old agricultural villages. Participate in the construction and receive a name that is Ammar, a house and a field, and choose to plant a flower. And when he did, confusion and all the birds inhabited the field, and a space was formed as if it were the sky. While the constant of his life continues in the “city of God and man”, as he calls it, his memory burns as if it were a flame lit by the hearths of the stars, and the repercussions flow, of all kinds, in a memory process in which times are mixed, in a Bergsonian permanence represented in the memory of the near and distant past that does not drain the blood of their days and tears. His nights, awareness of the present in which the architecture of the city takes place, and a vision of the future that pretends to be the time of salvation, the time of anguished summer.
Then he becomes the narrator, and then there is a rotation between the two narrators: the knowledgeable narrator and the personal narrator, so that the two visions: “from behind” and “with” alternate in the formation of the structure of the novel that advances in a context in which the repercussions are organized, which is the context of the story and the setting, and these repercussions vary between events and stories. Dialogues, television episodes, conferences, intellectual, scientific and political texts, poetry, dreams and nightmares …
It tells, in the context of the story frame, a life story of the world of corruption, looting and … the stories of the epidemic …
Meet a beautiful girl, scholar, cultured artist, professor of philosophy and literature, and art researcher. She is Rose the Gardener. Here, the story proceeds on a linear path interrupted by recovery, interrupted by the description and inclusion of various texts. Rose decodes the manuscript and discovers that it is from Hayyan Ismail’s collection of poetry, entitled: “Hard Times Texts, Winter – 2020.” He is Hayyan Ismail, a poet, to whom memory returns, that is why he tells his story, the story of the poet, the writer, the world, the true connoisseur …
He believes that the name Ammar Al-Adami is the name of the adaptation in the world of memory that brought the present to its past. She tells her story and he knows that she belongs to the Earth Party, known as the Green Party, that is building this city. And he also knows that on his way to flee the world of corruption and the epidemic to this city, he escaped from a car accident that caused the death of two friends, who were members of the party that promised salvation.

Nature and man are encyclopedic, the lover and the adored, and the relationship between them

It seems that choosing the name of the main character in the stage of remembering and participating in the construction of the “new city”: Thabit bin Marra represents a significant milestone, since two of the great figures of Islamic Arab history refer to my name , Thabit bin Qurra (836-901 AD) and his grandson Thabit bin. Sinan bin Thabit bin Qurra (d. 975 AD), are children of a family of scholars, and each of them is an encyclopedic scholar and writer, and since the first of them, in addition to his encyclopedia, was noted for working with music, the second of them was, in addition to his encyclopedia, a traveler, a narrator and historian. Thabit ibn Marra makes it clear that his real name is Hayyan Ismail, and he becomes the main character of the novel, in the next stage of the novel, it is revealed to the recipient that Hayyan is Thabit ibn Qurrah of this time, since it is an encyclopedia of knowledge and a scholar in its various types, so the names of the scholars are ancient and modern, the Arabs. Muslims and Westerners are very numerous in the novel, and his quoted texts are also abundant, which indicates Hayyan’s encyclopedia, in addition to being a poet and producer of knowledge. This means that it represents a rebirth of the Arab and Islamic character, the encyclopedia of knowledge, in its historical extension, and it is a character that has the identity of which we spoke recently about its components, and the name of Hayyan Ismail, which means rebirth … The earth, and this is the meaning of the name Ammar the Adam, since Adam is relative to Adam, whom God brought to earth to be his successor in it. Ammar here is Ammar, who possesses the identity of constant and hayin, and plows the fields, planting roses, vegetable bushes and fruit trees, and Rose al-Bustani’s mistress is his mistress, and her name has a clear meaning that does not needs to be interpreted: the flower of the orchards, and the two lovers are among the participants in the construction of the new city whose daughters are conjugated to represent a human association In this regard with a “symphony” in which many elements participate, which They are nature, and the encyclopedic knowledge of the human being, the lover and the adored, and the relationship that exists between them, which is a love relationship that gives goodness, that the nightingales sing in their agaridae, that translates human love into nature and his brother man, who makes the “Summer of Bulbs”, which is the moment when a person is the successor of God in his land, where he lives in a trial stage, and seeks his first home represented by the gardens of the eternity, to be among those who go through the stages of love, like the birds in Farid al-Din al-Attar’s logic of birds. Thus, this novel has provided a model for a new city in which a person finds his salvation from corruption, tyranny and pestilence … It is a model of a utopian city, a dream of humanity in its search for salvation in both worlds.

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