Maryoud…..a novel by taeb salih

I was selling my books to a friend, because am always on a travel and cannot take my books with me, he bought most of them with low prices, about 20 to 70 cent (of US dollar), but when I offered him the novel (Maryoud) he asked me: what it is about?

I found myself speechless while my gaze faded away and my lower jaw dropped down, my friend stop gazing in my face and started to reexamine the books he already bought, I took (maryoud) in my hand and start to examine the cover, the inside, wanted to read a thing but I decided that I will not buy it now, I told my friend to wait for one to 2 days so that I can tell him about this novel and then he can decide to buy it or not…

I read this novel fastly, jumping throught pages and going back again, reading it from different directions, it is a story not going into one line, it is a circle, with no beginning and no ending, where death of (Maryoum) sounds a lovely happening, and her burry sounds like an implantation of a palm.

This novel starts with the main character who you can guess is an old man start to remember his childhood in his village which he is revisiting now, he see things had changed, but still got the same flavor, and the sons and daughters looking like their grandfathers and grandmothers and acting like them whithout really knowing that….

There is another death in the novel and that was the death of (Bilal) who used to call for prayer from the mosque everyday till his teacher died then he stopped one year, then one day, the same date of his teacher’s death, he called with his beautiful sound for prayer early in the morning and all the village woke up happy and start praying with him, then he turned smiling to the people and told them that he will die now and want them to carry him at their shoulders and burry him near his teacher, his death was as sweet as the taste of huney as the novel said.

Then the main character of the novel (maryoud) start to hear the saound of (maryoum) coming from the sky and he asked her that he want to go with her, she told him that he must stay now, but promis that they will meet…

After all this what should I tell my friend bout this novel? He don’t like novels anyway. I don’t know what he will think about it. I loved this novel to a degree that when I was reading I felt like tears was gathering in my eye, not to the degree that my friend could feel, my friend, who was supposed to buy this novel, did not felt the change of brightness and little redness that occurred in my eyes, so, I think I better found someone else with more emotional intelligence to give him/her this novel as a present.