Dalya Rushdie’s Affairs – Hazim Kamaledin – coming soon

Extract

Dear Dalia Rushdi, our promising writer

Following the devastating suicide bomb attack on al-Mutanabbi Street, I was assigned to write an English-language anthology to commemorate that Street. It would be a pleasure if you could contribute a short text and I shall translate it.
Cordially and yours respectfully
Abdulhamid W. Clinton,
University of Virginia.”

Skirmish!
Yes!

What a predicament!
I must reply to the email and confirm my acceptance, I should, I must take this risk, even though my knowledge of al-Mutanabbi Street is mere recollection of university collogues’ chatter and scattered memory of my father’s tales. My classmates whom were obsessed with buying publically banned books, as a matter of fact, steeling displayed books gave them ecstasy.
My father used to sneak into the street every Friday, afternoon around 02:00 pm, he would then return carrying books, sandwiches and fictional tales; untold stories or perhaps, stories spilled out of al-Rijab’s grandson’s mouth, who had bizarrely nicknamed – The Man with a single Jaw. He used to reveal secrets, spread rumors, distribute pamphlets, and selling all sorts of bootlegged cigarettes.
Hold on; are these two shabby sources sufficient to write about this place? A place that immerses in the glory of the past! I’m tempted to write about the world beneath the surface, rooms without locks, old style lounges from the Abbasid age, large stair case built with clay. A multiple laired tome with basements that leads into hexagonal shaped halls, four of those are without windows but the other halls have roof lights that allows sun light to warm up a lengthy intimate whispers.
If I intended to write a significant piece, I must mention the sleepless basement guards, who used to remain awake until they die, then buried standing, each on the floor they had guarded. I should write about clues hints for delayed catastrophes, or perhaps about books surrounded with secrecy, some of which caused mysteriously deaths during the Abbasid rulers, or immediately after the Mongol departed from Baghdad. I ought to describe the maze shaped library, which prides itself with fine books which can only be sublimed when they are sealed and freed off the censors’ captivity.