Suhail Najib

The short story as seen by (Segre) "is that which tries to present images as we see them, not as our imagination draws them." Others also stipulated that the modern story should provide a degree of brevity and reasonableness, a layer of wishfulness, and an acceptable degree of morality attracting various segments of readers. It is important for the narrator to launch a set of modern ideas in its text to keep pace with the movement of time, and for its writer to be committed to abstractness and stay away from guardianship. The renewal claimed by any story writer lies in the new form in which it appears. As for the content, no narrator claims that he "came with what the ancestors did not come with." We find many of these rules in the story collection (Neither Is Your Night Mine Nor Are You Me) written by the writer Abdulaziz Al-Saqabi in the early eighties, although his commitment to them came in varying proportions.

The storyteller understood that vision and was convinced of its map, so he wove his collection within its framework. He did not jump to modernity from a void, or dive into contents that did not concern his reader. He drew his subjects from the lives of the people who pass around him, and those who live next to him. He excelled in inspiring characters and historical events and stories of the past and their lessons that do not conflict with the spirit of the modern short story. Therefore, the storyteller did not hesitate to benefit from that feature with caution. This is evident in some of his stories through cutting time and segmenting events as a procedural act to calm the reader. The segmentation process takes place through numbering or character sequencing so that the story proceeds to its end in one path without the writer installing himself as a guardian or a wise man providing solutions that free his heroes from their suffering and problems.

Al-Saqabi mixes in writing his texts between narrative, descriptive and dialogue, and balances between the imagined aesthetic and the realistic without losing his control over the course of events. He helps his characters reveal their wishes, and say what needs to be said, and does not involve them in reckless adventures. He does not settle for the role of witness and narrator always, but rather participates with his characters in the search for safe outlets to escape their predicaments. The success of storytelling requires sincerity of feeling and depth of reflection, skill in selecting characters and placing them in the appropriate place, and boldness and rationality of presentation. It needs the integration of other elements, the art of managing time in the course of events, and the integration of narrative, descriptive and pictorial scenes.

If each story has its own language and each creator has his distinguished alphabet, then the success of specificity is measured by the harmony of the language and the story subject and the storyteller's reaching his al. This is what we find in Al-Saqabi, who is sometimes criticized for the tendency towards direct reporting, as we find him addressing the reader's emotions at times, and mimicking his mind and imagination at other times, because he does not write for the elite, nor is he od at deceiving the common people. This may be attributed to the overlapping of his theatrical and story styles. The completion of the story structure and choosing the appropriate language avoids the reader's distraction to search for the meaning of some words, and thus his mind being occupied away from following the event and losing the pleasure of tasting the idea of the text. Also, dialogue plays an important role in distinguishing the narrative style, and raises the level of influence in the plot of the event. It is required that the dialogue be characterized by speed of rhythm, brevity, and avoiding excessive description and elaborate details and be consistent with the level of the character, its role and status.

The collection included twenty-five short stories with varying contents, and characters belonging to different social backgrounds. Titles include: (The Night is a Strange Obsession, Vain Hopes, The Search for Soil, The Mirage, The Sun is a Child, Yesterday's Dream, The End of a Man, Blackness, Insomnia in the Sky, A Closed Road, Drought, Neither Is Your Night Mine Nor Are You Me, Surrender and other stories). Al-Saqabi surrounded in his texts the economic and social transformations and the accompanying development and gradual openness and changes in daily life behavior and prevailing customs. He excelled in conveying their effects and reflections on the members of society, and left his characters free to express themselves and their social awareness. He provided room to highlight people's division around them between rejection and acceptance. The storyteller also presented models of real social life, conveyed aspects of its suffering, monitored its feelings, interacted with its concerns and crises, and shared its anxiety, frustrations, joy and success to confirm his role in the common concern.

There is some similarity between the heroes of some stories in traits and behavior and in choosing the endings they choose by their will. Some texts also intersect in their contents, especially those that discuss social and human concern, which constitute most of the collection's stories, despite the writer's attempt to beyond localism with two or more texts like the story (Surrender). Experimentation reached its peak in the story (The Sun is a Child), which was devoid of characters and included appropriate symbols and hints. Poetic language predominated in some texts like the story (Mashhour). We should also mention the narrator's repetition of some phrases in a number of stories that are similar in terms of idea despite the richness of his language and vocabulary. It is also noted that some scenes are prolonged and stuffed with details that the idea cannot bear, which confuses the event and scatters the idea. The aesthetic of the texts was also harmed by neglecting punctuation marks and a bit of spelling and grammatical errors and using prepositions in the wrong places, and the abundance of local colloquial vocabulary despite the existence of eloquent alternatives that the reader understands everywhere.

Indication: 

Neither Is Your Night Mine Nor Are You Me, a story collection by the writer Abdulaziz Al-Saqabi, publications of the Taif Literary Club 1403 AH / 1983 AD (95) pages.