With Ghada in “If Only You Knew”

As I see it

Adel El-Baz

(1)

“How can love be able to and how can the sound of the wind become melodies and resonances… and how can a whisper resound in the depths while the sound of the world around me fades and becomes dry grass.”

“Nour” dived into her past to gather the fragments of herself and scatter the sorrows of her love in a beautiful novel, that love that she did not live for long and only forgot a little.

(2)

“Ghada Abdel Aziz Khaled” dedicated her first novel to the Sudanese library “If Only You Knew”, which was published last week by “Madarek Publishing House”, to join the list of Sudanese female novelists who have risen with merit after an interruption that lasted more than a generation.

Since Buthaina Khader Makki appeared in the world of Sudanese feminist novels, more than two decades have passed, after which Laila Abu Al-Ala “The Translator – The Minaret” ascended, then Laila Salah “The Secret Forest”, Estella Gaetano “Withered Flowers” (I still consider her Sudanese), Ruqayya Warraq “The Lamentation of Frost”, Nahid Mohamed Al-Hassan “The Warriors”, and many others (Showers of Mercy on the Grave of the Owner of – The Wide Void – Queen of the House).. Now “Ghada Abdel Aziz” ascends the platform with merit to tell a love story that was not completed.

(3)

After extracting her story from the past, the heroine of “If Only You Knew” began to tell… and tell.

Nour’s past in the novel seemed like a curse that haunted her harshly and a tool that worked as a wrecking ball for her entire life.

Her childhood was overshadowed by deprivation, her youth by sorrow and the rest of her life was left to be prey to sorrows.

When she opened up to live her life like the girls of her generation, loving and being in love, she found the curse of the past still haunting her, so she ended the game of her first love that turned her into a wreck of a woman.

One of the surprising paradoxes of the novel is that that past, her father’s past, which caused those pains to the heroine of the novel, is a bright past that was not tainted by betrayal.

The second paradox is that despite that past causing her those pains, it remained a source of celebration and pride for her.

The third paradox is that the state of love that the heroine lived provided her with an enormous ability to forgive even those who contributed to putting the noose around her father’s neck, and that is a rare case.

Lovers, do you have the energy to forgive like Nour?!

(4)

The author “Ghada” chose the story of her first novel through the tongue of her heroine “Nour”, and only a few voices interfered with her, and they are the voices of characters who worked to shed light on an aspect of the past such as “the uncle”, or to give advice to “the father” or to dispel illusions in the case of “Ne’ma” (the friend).

Despite the heroine’s celebration of her father, you notice the overwhelming influence of the mother on her, and so we almost understand why the writer dedicated the novel to the mother three times.

(5)

“Nour” held the reins of her story well, since the first “sip of orange” the automatic association began for “Nour” to introduce us to the history of her story “flashback”, until she ended the novel with “If only you knew”, which is its last chapter to draw for us the features of a woman whose lover broke her heart because of a history that hung around her neck like a rope from a chain forever.

We discover this during the tragic narration of the details of a life whose past and future were written by tragedy.

(6)

The lover and beloved “Jamal” appeared as a faint shadow in the folds of the novel. Chance alone brought him together with “Nour” in “Ne’ma’s” house, to become attached to him and be enticed by the game “the game of love” open to spaces of innocence, wealth and rosy dreams. But the successive events of the novel soon revealed that “Jamal” the beloved was part of those who wove the rope that wrapped around her father’s neck. “Jamal” who knows the truth and his role as the devil’s advocate in the execution of her father, and thus the tragedy of her life, “Nour” did not go far and withdrew early from her game of love.

“Jamal”, despite the human weakness that overcame him as he entered that game, was soon overcome by a state of awakening that lovers do not realize, so he preferred to leave “Nour’s” world as a martyr.. “I was an integral part and a reason behind the events that you lived, I was part of the matchstick that time lit in your soul, leaving a great fire in it.. I do not deserve you, Nour, despite my awareness of your sorrows and pains.”

(7)

The author “Ghada” tried to create a state of sympathy with “Nour” against the man who was portrayed as having betrayed her love “Jamal” and left her to the pains and sorrows and continued his life as usual! In the context, she quickly called on Ahlam Mosteghanemi to help her: “Love him as a woman loves and forget him as men forget.” “Nour” does not deserve sympathy and “Jamal” does not deserve respect, despite the state of nobility and chivalry that has recently overtaken him.

I leave it to the readers to correct my position or to sympathize with me in this opinion.

(8)

“Ghada Abdel Aziz” used various techniques in writing the novel.. She chose one narrator’s voice, “Nour”, to tell the story and faint characters that did not affect or disturb the narrator’s voice, allowing her heroine to have overlapping times as she crossed her childhood into the spaces of her love. She resorted to the “flashback” technique at the beginning of the novel, but she quickly left it, in order to lead the reader easily to follow the events of the novel.

It is certain that Ghada, as she ascends the threshold of her first novel “If Only You Knew”, needs to improve her experience in writing long novels, enrich her characters and make them more present and influential in the events of the novel, and then she needs to leave her gratuitous feminine sympathy, as there is no room in the novel for “gender” biases without sufficient justifications.

Ghada has a distinctive narrative spirit and the ability to capture details and build cohesive characters, addition to drawing a “story” that was characterized by some boldness without vulgarity. Congratulations.. “If Only You Knew” is worthy of reading and celebration.

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# This article was published in the book “Rowking on Flowery Shores” by the author of the above article.