Under The Naked Sky Short Stories from the Arab World

by Johnson-Davies, Denys

• ISBN13: 9789774246043
• ISBN10: 9774246047
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2001-04-01
• Publisher: The American University in Cairo Press

Summary

Drawing on an intimate knowledge of modern Arabic writing, Denys Johnson-Davies brings together in this collection a colorful mosaic of life as lived and portrayed by Arabs from Morocco to Iraq. From a diverse area of the world with the common factor of a written language, these thirty stories tell of an old Moroccan peasant woman who kills snakes; an Iraqi soldier who returns home as a stranger after years as a prisoner-of-war; a repairer of lost virginities in a Tunisian village; a typically Mahfouzian start to a train journey; the steamy meeting of two women and a cat at the height of an Iraqi summer; the ill-fated attraction of a boy to a magical bird in the Tuareg deserts of Libya; and a novel way of hunting ducks in the Nile Delta. The purveyors of this strange and delightful cornucopia of fictions include Naguib Mahfouz, Yusuf Idris, Gamal al-Ghitani, and Mohamed El-Bisatie from Egypt; Fuad al-Takarli and Mohamed Khudayyir from Iraq; Zakaria Tamer from Syria; Hanan al-Shaykh from Lebanon; and Ibrahim al-Kouni from Libya.

Table of Contents

Introduction	1	(6)
The Pilot	7	(3)
Mohamed Makhzangi
It's Not Fair	10	(4)
Yusuf Idris
The Ill-Omened Golden Bird	14	(9)
Ibrahim al-Koni
Traveler with Hand Luggage	23	(4)
Naguib Mahfouz
Death of a Dagger	27	(6)
Zakaria Tamer
Have You Seen Alexandria Station?	33	(3)
Abdou Gubeir
Women in Fear	36	(10)
Inaam Kachachi
An Invitation	46	(11)
Gamal al-Ghitani
The Dog	57	(3)
Abd al-Aziz Mishri
A Dash of Light	60	(5)
Ibrahim Aslan
The Cloud	65	(6)
Faud al-Takarli
The Clock	71	(3)
Khairy Shalaby
Fear	74	(21)
Ghalib Halasa
Out in the Open	95	(5)
Yusuf Abu Rayya
The Sound of Singing	100	(8)
Salma Matar Seif
The Charge	108	(12)
Edwar al-Kharrat
The Apples of Paradise	120	(11)
Brahim Dargouthi
Corncobs	131	(11)
Salwa Bakr
Snake Hunting	142	(7)
Mohamed Zefzaf
The Money Order	149	(4)
Mohamed El-Bisatie
To the Night's Shelter	153	(13)
Mohamed Khudayir
The Man Shouldn't Know of This	166	(3)
Hanan al-Shaykh
The Day Grandpa Came	169	(7)
Mohmoud al-Wardani
My Fellow Passenger	176	(6)
Ibrahim Samouiel
The Women's Room	182	(3)
Hana Atia
It Happened Secretly	185	(11)
Amina Zaydan
Whiteness of Silver	196	(15)
Abdullah Bakhshaween
The Return of the Prisoner	211	(8)
Buthayna al-Nasiri
A Boat on the Water	219	(4)
Said al-Kafrawi
Presence of the Absent Man	223	(11)
Alia Mamdouh
About the Authors	234