The neighborhood that was

Tahir Al-Zahrani, Saudi novelist and storyteller. Born in Jeddah in 1978. He has published seven novels and three short story collections. "In Tahir Al-Zahrani's stories, there is a great deal of the spirit of old Jeddah and its characters, including the mischievousness, kindness, and playfulness of the neighborhood kid. Added to this is a critical, complaining philosophy that oozes from his stories, which do not exhaust the reader but are read quickly, yet are not forgotten quickly." Hussain Bafqih. "They are stories concerned with people, and if I wanted to describe them directly, I would say they wander among humans, get very close to them, and write about them with love and empathy... Perhaps one of the most beautiful features of these stories is that they are unpretentious and natural. This is helped by a simple and transparent language filled with charming intimacy and spontaneity." Salah Al-Qurashi. "Very few write in this bold and honest language. Tahir wrote these stories in a magnificent literary language without makeup, the language of the environment he grew up in." Al-Hussein Moafa.