Between nineteen or twenty years of age, he left his hometown, Medina, to Riyadh, the capital, carrying dreams in the palm of his right hand and aspirations in the palm of his left hand.
He did not look behind him, as the knight did not look back, even if his body was embraced by the kisses of spears, tickled by arrows, or even touched by the stones of his chest. He arrived in the capital, perhaps he was overwhelmed by the confusion of housing, study, work, economic savings, as he used to walk distances to save a few pennies.
And here was the beginning of the story of breaking isolation, self-affirmation, events and experiences, and the side talk of the owners of black clouds in which there is no shadow or water.
He did not take with him from the city except his shirt, which contained the smell of the city, its people, its people, childhood memories, games with the children of the neighbors and other things.
He had a loin stronger than the loin of the sea, which was absorbing salt at every moment, and legs stronger than the legs of the earth that bore the steps of all kinds and colors of people and animals.
The Saudi Arab storyteller, Hussein Ali Hussein, represents an interesting anecdotal experience, the person who lived in the sixties and seventies of the last century in Medina, drawing details of the urban scene and its old image. To stop in front of global narratives.
He had a special relationship with Arab writers, such as Ihsan Abdel Quddous, Hanna Mina, Al-Tayeb Al-Saleh and others.
Hussein Ali Hussein presented a number of collections of stories and on “Departure” he wrote what hurts, and on the music of “The Frightened and Chased Man” he excelled, and he did not forget the “iron water queues”, and about the models full of heat, humidity and the shiver of the coming, past and present days in “Kabeer Al-Maqam”. And about the confused endings in “The Smell of the City” and about the children and wife in “The Café.”
In his novel “The Faces of the House,” he revealed many secrets, pain, and wounds, something that might be called the unspoken.
Hussein Ali Hussein is similar to Naguib Mahfouz in his love for the environment, and he interacts with Zakaria Tamer in pain and the search for identity and dreams that are still suspended between heaven and earth, and he meets novelist Amin Maalouf in taking the historical piece and merging it between the present and the past and painful projections.
Critics saw that his fictional works indicate artistic maturity, and a narrative context open to a wide horizon. In addition to providing important approaches in the context of brokenness, grief and alienation.
In answer to a question in one of the press interviews about the short story generations in the Kingdom, he says:
– The first generation, from my point of view, is represented by Ahmed Al-Sibai, and after it comes the generation of Abdullah Al-Jifri and Ibrahim Al-Nasser, and our generation I consider the third generation, and it has many remarkable names, but most of them – unfortunately – stopped. Among them are Suleiman Sindi and Abdullah Al-Salmi. There are now Muhammad Alwan and Abdullah Bakhshwain left, but the generation that started after us has greater enthusiasm and unyielding determination, and this makes me reassured that the short story is still able to run the long-distance race.
Storyteller Hussain Ali Hussain admits that he is from the generation of defeat. When he was asked about the characters of his stories often being surrounded by tragic anxiety, isolation, and frustration… Why do the elements of oppression and refraction overlap in his stories?
– He said while holding his pen, like a knight still standing on his horse in the middle of a desert…or like a bird between heaven and earth, with a puzzle written by his grandmother on top of his head, in which there is a picture of a woman and a drawing of a girl trying to curl her body to hide some treasure.
He says in the answer: I am from the generation of defeat, which they called a setback. This defeat, along with ignorance, oppression and lack of freedoms, produced a generation of writers. This generation will remain the same. Because the light in our Arab East is still scarce, and the hammer is still on the head. The task of the writers is to point out this in order to reach a society similar to the society of the high world, where each individual has his own entity, independence, and his share in water, air, university, factory, and land. What the Arab citizen asks for is not a luxury, it is a need, and our task is to point out this need.
The storyteller Fahd Al-Khelaiwi says about the knight Hussein Ali Hussein: A dear friend with whom I have an old friendship that began approximately in the mid-seventies AD, brought me together with Abu Shadi the concerns of writing, especially creative writing, as that literary stage witnessed the presence of the short story as a literary creativity that went beyond the traditional stories narrated for the purpose of entertainment to formulate These stories, with their social and human dimensions, become short stories with modern artistic techniques and rhythms expressing the spirit of the new era, on the outskirts of which we lived as passive spectators due to the dominance of the exclusionary thought movement in our country, which succeeded in that period in curtailing all enlightenment ideas at all levels and not at the level of modern local literature. Just.
As for Dr. Mansour Al-Hazmi, he said about him, “It seems that the heroes of Hussein Ali Hussein are fond of loitering. You only see them on the sidewalks and in the old alleys and the innermost popular neighborhoods.” of the modern Arab story in Saudi Arabia.
From the novel Faces of the Monster; Which is an artistic and historical piece that is very important to researchers and scholars, as it is a gift to the people of the country that something happened, but rather things that must be stopped.
– The novel begins with a chapter titled “The Faces of the Hush,” which explains in general the situation of the city during the period of Turkish rule, within the city’s outskirts, especially the Haush al-Agha. It is followed by fifteen chapters entitled with the names of personalities who lived in the yard or passed through it and left an impact on its owners.
An important documentary work for the city in the past, in which it explains the alleys and streets of the city and its direction from the sanctuary and its inhabitants, the popular customs and games used at the time, the people and their profession.
Dr. Muhammad Al-Dabis says about the novel “The Faces of the House”:
The writer excelled in illuminating the mysteries of that stage and its turns, the unknown and the unspoken in it, and sided with its deliberative lexicon in life affairs with its subtle details and details, and its psychological and intellectual mood. Accurately, a panoramic picture of the environment of his characters, the paths of tension in them, the patterns and levels of social relations, and the disturbances they experience.
He also dealt with the bright aspects of that environment. Scientifically, culturally, and humanly, in the textual context of the events, which adopted the narrative description aspect in most of the novel, whose chapters and textual contexts permeated limited dialogues between the characters.
And Dr. Al-Dabis concludes his talk about the novel.. the long story of Al-Ahwash, formulated by the vision of Hussein Ali Hussein, as he delves into memory, history, and social heritage, to bring the Al-Ahash to life, restore life to it, and traces, with his artistic and human perspective, the life of the Al-Ahash and the lives of the people in the Al-Ahash, as no novelist did. Kiss.
In conclusion, I say that one of the characteristics of the storyteller Hussein Ali Hussein and the elements of his strength in his narrative texts is the wonderful photographic camera that you find in portraying the characters of his works.
In his narrative texts, the storyteller Hussein Ali Hussein was able to apply the storytelling in an enjoyable way for the recipient. He even applied the definition of storytelling as he knows it, which is the story that is based on two foundations: the content that includes events, and the way the story is told. The story is told through the narrator of the one to whom it is narrated, with the influences it is subject to related to both the narrator and the one to whom it is narrated, which is the case in which the topic of the story is transferred from its realistic image to the linguistic image.
The storyteller's use of interactive art was prominent, in which words and actions are used in a way that reveals the elements and images of the literary text, to encourage and stimulate the mind of the listener or reader, which is a form of ancient expressive art.
He was also distinguished in the excitement and interaction of the reader with the characters, which is the narrative magic that the narrator performs in his fictional texts.
The storyteller has also used the two-way interaction between the narrator and the one who is narrated to him through direct and tight linking between the two parties.
He was also proficient in using expressive, figurative language to communicate the idea, purpose and meaning.
The narrator has mastered the use of procedures such as pronunciation, movement, and gestures, through the text, when the narrator can make the reader a partner in the text, and you, as a reader, are among the characters in the text, and I mean here that you live the situation as if you are inside the text, watching, waiting, expecting, and being surprised, which is what the narrator does. in his texts.
The narrator succeeded in using artistic forms such as hidden emotion or explicit emotion, projections of much of the past onto the present, dealing and coexistence between people as if he aims to deliver messages to a world that has stripped itself of morals and dealt with the other who disagrees with you in some matters and has forgotten that humanity and morality bring us together.
The narrator brilliantly portrayed the human condition, the rural condition, and some of the relationships that bind people and the interaction between them with love and peace without any obstacles, as if the narrator wanted to say that this is how we lived without direct or indirect wars.
And I imagine, as a regular reader, that the stories of Hussein Ali Hussein are among the fertile imagination that played a key role in making the text a life reality that some people lived, and perhaps the storyteller lived it.
You feel that the narrator in his texts bears that his ribs are broken, but he cannot bear to hear the sound of his ribs being broken, as he does not bear wherever he turns, he finds backwardness, ignorance, and the search for humanity and lost identity between generations.
Whoever reads the texts discovers that the characters were not real, they are symbols through which time breaks and accumulates time is lost, and the narrator was able to show me as an ordinary reader the contradiction of man in his life, work and dreams.
The narrator has a special philosophy in creating texts that are dominated by thought in an atmosphere that envelops the world, and even transcends the current moment and moves to another world. In some texts, you feel that he almost forgot that at this moment he is a storyteller, and in moments he is almost critical, but he returns to the biography of the storyteller in a philosophical way. Intellectual societies that have sunk from their feet to their heads in a corruption that wreaks havoc in a society that suffers from contradictions.
Mr. Hussein, that star that used to light the way for you to leave your hometown to the hometown of your dreams is still there. Did you know that it is the twentieth star that your grandfather wanted to catch?!
Or as Ibn Tarout, the poet, Professor Mahdi bin Hussein, says in his poetic text, “The Toilers.”
“It is said that my grandfather slipped out of bed at night to speak to the twentieth star.
He used to talk to the stars star by star every evening so that you would think he knew them.”
Hussein Al-Sununa
