Critics unanimously acknowledge that making the myths and literature of prehistoric civilizations alive and immortal to this day is the work of their authors, performing miraculous (supernatural) acts that have a profound effect on our fears and psychosis through metaphorical stories and superheroes. Our souls, readers.
Syrian artist and writer Souad Al-Jundi, in his new collection of stories, “Ms. Rowena and the Chamber of Lost Things,” tends to create his own stories and characters similar to the paintings he creates; Simple, meaningful and open to interpretation, thus motivating the reader to participate in the interpretation of meanings based on himself.
Recently published by Mosaic for Studies and Publishing, this collection contains over 70 pages of medium pieces, and includes 17 short stories, including the author Mrs. Includes stories from Rowena and her friends and the life encounters and social challenges they face. A story that mixes reality with dreams and takes on miraculous scenes as a way of addressing its readers.
Women and their dreams
In the story entitled “Mrs. Rowena and the Chamber of Last Things”, the author – who lives in Bulgaria – describes to us the course of a dream she had seen, in her youth and adolescence, when she wanted the guide to warn the young man. A woman should become a woman other than Rowena, but “soon a middle-aged woman wakes up, only to find what she has lost in her dreams.”
And Rowena is not alone in losing her youth. Next to her is her friend Minerva, whose husband betrayed another without finding a definite reason for the betrayal. – Sitting in a cafe, eagerly awaiting the arrival of a former colleague, a few minutes after their meeting was over, she was overjoyed, and she was overjoyed to tell him of the prelude to the wedding. To hear a woman dressed in a short dress, Ms. Minerva sighed in frustration and went fast, “Don’t twist anything.”
With these two stories and the other, two women (Rowena and Minerva) dreamed of another life after they were too old to live; Saud al-Jundi tells us about women who grew up in a society where they dreamed of presenting their justifications to us in other stories, finding the same answer in the word “defect” to every desire or action they desire. So they succumb to the power of habits that prevent them from choosing, choosing or achieving their dreams.
Nevertheless, the soldier does not hesitate to criticize the exaggerated expressions of liberation from these rules, because we see his heroine Rowena in a story entitled “The Chewing Guy”, who sat next to a tomboy girl on a plane and was amazed at the chewing gum chewing. Provocatively, as the chewing gum slowly descends from the runway of an old man, a passenger scolds her, and Rowena says to herself, “This is the first time I have learned the true meaning of this. The phrase: ‘My sore has healed’.”
Thus, in a society dominated by patriarchal traits the soldier reviews in his stories the poor awareness and behavior of some women who neglect their femininity for one reason or another in exchange for the suffering of others.The gentle are often weak and oppressed. Half, under religious, social and traditional pretexts issued centuries ago.
He adds, “The heroines in my stories feel the impact of this oppression, whether they’re economically, beautifully, elegantly married, divorced or mothers, sitting in car drivers and cafes. They feel burdened, as evidenced by their constant search for happiness, stability, self-assurance or the fulfillment of desires.
Wonderful rooms
Critics unanimously acknowledge that making the myths and literature of prehistoric civilizations alive and immortal to this day is the work of their authors, performing miraculous (supernatural) acts that have a profound effect on our fears and psychosis through metaphorical stories and superheroes. Our souls, readers.
A style in which the author tries to borrow and modify its tools to fit the vocabulary and symbols of our modern age, simulates our growing fears, especially the wars that befell us two years ago and the wars that erupted and still erupted.
In a story entitled “Lady Rowena and the Elephant”, Rowena had to deal with a large elephant that suddenly appeared in her home saloon and began to destroy her furniture, so we see Rowena run up to her husband and tell him. It happened in the hall, but he promises not to see anything.
And the elephant in the story is “a creature that no one sees except Rowena. No one sees the harm caused by anyone other than her. She may want to look at herself and scream or crush her at her big feet.” Paradoxically, at the end of the story the elephant destroys the house and no one can see Killed her husband.Whether it was a fire or an earthquake.
A big elephant on the level of the story is the war that exhausted the writer’s country on the level of reality; A war that suddenly erupted and wreaked havoc, before anyone could see it, without seeing the horror of its catastrophe, stopped before it could destroy the country.
Regarding the miracle story and his belief in its symbols, the soldier tells Al Jazeera Net that “the miracle in my stories is a kind of room to face reality or escape from it. And achievable. “
From the outside of masculinity and femininity to the space of the city
Most of the stories in the “Lady Rowena and the Chamber of Lost Things” collection center inspire men, women and husbands to do what they can not handle in the community around their desires, beliefs and everyday challenges. You have to carry them no matter how they move.
But as we approach the end of the group, the events of the stories begin to take another turn, in which the writer moves from the problems of men and women to the problems of the modern city, which in a short time changed its inhabitants. Infection and decline of rationality. The soldier told al-Jazeera Net that “men and women have narrowed their cities and minds, and they all want to go screaming.”
With the release, the group’s last story ends, with Ms. Rowena regaining her vitality after a long period of isolation from an epidemic, and decides to go to a language learning class and move to Cairo, so the writer reflects on her. I look forward to a brighter future where dreams come true and go free.
“Coffee evangelist. Alcohol fanatic. Hardcore creator. Infuriatingly humble zombie ninja. Writer. Introvert. Music fanatic.”
