Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Series Editor's Foreword
- Acknowledgements
- Preface
- Dedication
- 1 Introduction: The Awakening Story
- 2 Revolutionary Pioneer: ʿAbd al-Malik Nūrī in Six Stories
- 3 Realism and Space in the First Iraqi Novel
- 4 From Khamsat aṣwāt to al-Markab: ‘Writing about the People of Iraq’
- 5 The Other Shore: Dialogue and Diference in Mahdī ʿĪsā al-Ṣaqr's al-Shāṭiʿ al-thānī
- 6 Two Houses, Two Women: Iraq at War in Mahdī ʿĪsā al-Ṣaqr's Novels
- 7 Reading and Writing in al-Masarrāt wa-'l-awjāʿ by Fuʾād al-Takarlī
- 8 The Long Way Back: Possibilities for Survival and Renewal in al-Rajʿ al-baʿīd by Fuʾād al-Takarlī
- Epilogue: Relections on Iraqi Fiction, Inluence and Exile, or the Life and Times of Yūsuf Ibn Hilāl
- Bibliography
- Index
2 - Revolutionary Pioneer: ʿAbd al-Malik Nūrī in Six Stories
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 February 2014
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Series Editor's Foreword
- Acknowledgements
- Preface
- Dedication
- 1 Introduction: The Awakening Story
- 2 Revolutionary Pioneer: ʿAbd al-Malik Nūrī in Six Stories
- 3 Realism and Space in the First Iraqi Novel
- 4 From Khamsat aṣwāt to al-Markab: ‘Writing about the People of Iraq’
- 5 The Other Shore: Dialogue and Diference in Mahdī ʿĪsā al-Ṣaqr's al-Shāṭiʿ al-thānī
- 6 Two Houses, Two Women: Iraq at War in Mahdī ʿĪsā al-Ṣaqr's Novels
- 7 Reading and Writing in al-Masarrāt wa-'l-awjāʿ by Fuʾād al-Takarlī
- 8 The Long Way Back: Possibilities for Survival and Renewal in al-Rajʿ al-baʿīd by Fuʾād al-Takarlī
- Epilogue: Relections on Iraqi Fiction, Inluence and Exile, or the Life and Times of Yūsuf Ibn Hilāl
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
Story One: ‘Faṭṭūma’ and the Cultural Scene in Baghdad (1940s–50s)
Faṭṭūma
The groaning of the handmill stopped for a moment, as Faṭṭūma wiped her damp hand on her loose blue dress, looking gravely out into the enveloping night that crouched low over the tumbledown houses. The misshapen moon gazed at the world with a cold eye, casting its languid shadows on the earth that was drunk on the powerful vapours of summer. The still air shifted vaguely from time to time and the fragrant scent of lavender filled the desolate surroundings. Passing breezes whispered together among the wheat and wild thorns, bearing the lovesick neighing of horses from round about and the murmuring and grunting of the sheep lying close by the huts. Every now and then from out of the deep silence came a long melancholy howling from a pack of jackals, answered by a storm of barking dogs. Then no sooner had the storm passed and calm returned to the desolate spot1 than the croaking of frogs and the chirping of crickets rose up from the banks of the irrigation channels, whose waters trembled at the touch of the moon as they made their way slowly towards the tumbledown houses.
(Nūrī 2001: 224)In 1948, ‘Faṭṭūma, a short story by a young Iraqi writer, ʿAbd al-Malik Nūrī, won the first prize for the best Arabic short story in a competition organised by the literary magazine al-Adīb(Beirut).
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- The Iraqi NovelKey Writers, Key Texts, pp. 30 - 72Publisher: Edinburgh University PressPrint publication year: 2013