The novel “Waiting for Flying Dishes” by Bashir Al -Damoun is not a narrative exercise of a girl that is broken in the alleys of an ancient city. The novel, in my appreciation, is a thick text with its psychological and social levels; A crowded text with the tensions in which the desire of the body, the city at home, the mother of the female, the dream of punishment, loss, fragmentation, and a feeling of alienation. This novel deserves, in my estimation, many readings with specialization in the field of criticism and literary analysis. On the occasion of an honor in presenting this narrative masterpiece organized by the Association of Durar for Development and Culture on May 28 of the current year, and because I am neither a critic nor a specialist in the field, I selected a pivotal clip of the novel (pp. 45-50) that caused me and tightened me strongly; It is a clip in which symbolic signs are accumulated to give the reader an unforgettable scene: a complete scene with images of exposure and collapse, in which the words weave a fabric of pain, desire and loss.
The narration in the novel and in this passage as a model is based on the roof of a house in the ancient city of Tetouan. The surface here is not just a place; Rather, a symbolic limit between what is seen and what is forbidden, between what is imagined and what is practiced. On top of it, dreams are thrown as potatoes are thrown, in a satirical alphabet of a reality that the moral authority controls more than any law.
In this symbolic space, the character of “Naima” is embodied not only as an attractive and seductive woman, but as a void female, granted and withdrawn, seduced and punished. Her visual presence is very clear, but touched her far away, deferred, fraught with danger. It is a seasonal apple, which is not eaten in its season, its name itself – “Naima” – referring to the lost bliss, to a promise that is not achieved, into a pleasure that turns into a punishment.
The mother in this text is not just a secondary figure. It is the “conservative” city, angry, cruel. The conclusive moral authority represents the sergeant who dwells within the self and works with punishment with an indelible hand. The mother summarizes the speech of the old city when her son refuses to be obedient, not by talking alone, but indeed: a potato is ejaculated as a stone on the head of the hero as a means of discipline and punishment.
Black comedy reaches its climax in this passage when the two bodies approach, the body of the hero and the hero, and the moment is not complete. Instead of euphoria, the strike comes. The “apple” – the symbol of love, body, and paradise that the hero dreamed of into potatoes as a tool of a tag, turns, and Eve’s apple embodied by Naima’s personality turns into a mockery, restricting the case to the bottom of ruin. No salvation there, no redemption. Just a small knee wound, great insults from the mother, and a clear denial of the city.
The hero descended into the “ruin” in search of a chicken, in fact, descending into the city’s belly, to the memory of the forgotten layers, where the broken wood, nails and ash. The place itself not only reflects poverty, but the collapse of the dream, the erosion of time, and the deposits of a non -ruthless society, does not yearn or forgive.
The ruin is not very different from the street, nor from the home. All sites of symbolic drama governed by an accurate ethical geography: the surface is a dream, the ruin is seduction, the door of the house is a punishment. The city here secretes its sons as if it is a moral sorting machine. Whoever makes a mistake, is the maximum, whoever wants to be insulted, whoever dreams of throwing a potato as if the dream has become impure.
The city is not just a background, but rather a symbolic being, a corrosive, angry, which produces its children and then pronounces them, cultivates longing and shame in them, and let them rot in closed surfaces or destroyed ruins, which are not romantic, or loving, but a repellent city, protecting its “honor”, and preserving its borders with repression.
The hero comes out of the experience, not to maturity; But to the expulsion. As the mother says: “From today, go to search where you will live, O dog, the lame, and God, if you entered my hand, I will kill you” p. 50. A clip not only means expelling from the house, but from identity, from the city, from the same masculinity. As if the ancient city is no longer able to contain its children; Rather, you push them out, to the void.
The text does not revolve around a moment of brine; Rather, it dismantles with the intention of a deep psychological and social struggle, where the body is threatened, the identity is broken, and the dream is suspended in a city that only gives rejection. It has a high poetic domination of reality, and a bitter sarcasm that does not empty the meaning; Rather, you are weight to symbolic connotations. It is a text that reminds us that cities are not always places of housing; Rather, living creatures may be monitored, held accountable and expelled by those who do not fit their moral shape.
Thus, the city turns into a parallel text, speaking, harsh, and issuing rulings, and the dreamer remains only a tag, ruined, and the remnants of an apple.
City background in this text is not just an external decor; Rather, a symbolic depth penetrates into narration paths and the fate of the characters. The city in this text is an accurate ethical geography, as the spaces are linked to taboos, desire and punishment. It is a city that stands as an honorable moral object, which cannot dream, and does not have mercy on the body, but rather meets the desire to reject, and to get beaten.
The city is placed in the novel “Waiting for Flying Dishes” for Bashir Al -Damoun as an eroded time -class, accumulated over itself, not renewed; Rather, it was suffocated by the weight of history and the rubble of ruins. Even the mother, devastation and potatoes are only tools that express this symbolic breakdown. The result is: frightened collective, and dreams postponed to the “apple season”, where there is no dream that is not fulfilled.
By the way, you attended comparing this wonderful text with other texts, such as “Casablanca” by Muhammad Zafzaf .. The text that worked on the city; But the contrast is clear between the two cities, the city of Zafzaf is swallowed and emptied, while the city of Damon is expelled and punished. The first is tempted and perished, the second is monitored and prevented. They are not only different cities (modern versus ancient); Rather, two different visions of the Moroccan city: one sees in the city a consumption space, and the other sees it as an ethical prison.
The title comes “waiting for flying dishes” to complete this symbolic construction, as it refers to the absurd waiting, into a dream that does not come, to impossible salvation. “Flying dishes” never attend; But it remains a mysterious promise of salvation, with another life, in a civilization that saves the individual from the roofs of shame, the outskirts of poverty and punishment. It is a satirical title, which opens the novel on a cosmic horizon; But the reader keeps hostage to the Earth, as only broken dreams are fractured. It is an expression of an extended waiting, about the arrest of individual salvation in a suffocating collective reality, waiting that may turn, as the apple turned into potatoes, from a promise of salvation to a symbolic slap that ends the dream before it is completed.
It is a narration that is not satisfied with the story, but rather digs in the geography of the city/ self/ body, and reminds us that some cities, in their symbolic depth, do not inhabit us; Rather, we expel us … and do not give us bliss; Rather, we flogged with his illusion. A novel requires more than reading, and deserves more than waiting.
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