Engineering spirits

Author's name: Salim Barakat Publisher: Dar Al-Mada for Publishing and Distribution Year of publication: 2019 Literary classification: Novel Brief about the book: Engineering spirits by Salim Barakat... Are we visible? Purely a problem, for here we are wandering in alleys without anyone ever noticing us. Those alleys were empty, some of them filled with people rushing, from time to time. And the more we advanced into them, the more they revealed to us that they lead to roads or paths, and in the low houses, which flourish with courtyards filled with wrecked cars and rubber tires. Some of these yards extend to Beirut, where their courtyards flourish with some trees and less dilapidated machines. These, in turn, lead to high and towering alleys, above which stand thickets of metal television antennas. We went much further, as we believe, until we were stopped by passersby witnessing the scene unfolding before them. Two men with masks, holding iron bars, which they heat with a fountain of blue flames. They insisted on parts of the gate, piece by piece. They stop everyone entering to give them a key. It is clear that they deliberately closed the building's entrance with a metal gate, perhaps in pursuit of security, because they kept signaling whenever they handed someone their key, stretching their arms apart, looking up and down, as if measuring the entrance inch by inch, and warning of the evil to come if beams were not fixed here and there. During all this, they hurried inside, taking cover behind the wall next to the stairs, whenever they heard a sound resembling a drum in a hollow, rough cave, then they would return cautiously to their work, raising their pant legs from the knee upward, with an automatic movement that preserves the flexibility of their legs if they are scratched. A Syrian poet and novelist, Kurdish, strongly built, unique, and distinct in describing criticism of his works. It must be said that he has enriched Arabic narrative with imagination, making language in the formulation of his themes a flesh on the structure of narration and storytelling, inseparable from its body, as if language is not merely a medium for storytelling but the story itself, inseparable from the context of building the tale. He is also credited in poetry as the father of his own style, from the poem, reclaiming its qualities as a freedom of expression at its utmost potential. He does not conform to any pattern or school. Stubborn in shaping his phrase without fear of risk, and all his books, in poetry and novel, are a concise encyclopedia.