Said Takieddine in "The Camphor Forest"

Said Takieddine is a writer with a message. And his message is clear through what he writes, despite the veils of his art that he usually casts over it. At times it is the message of merriment and love of life, which we make out in the like of "A Handful of Wind." At other times it is the message of love of the land and the homeland, celebrating the heroism of the peasant and the son of the mountain and describing his stubbornness, his ambition, and the goodness of his stock — the message that shows especially in the tales of "The Camphor Forest," as it shows in "Were It Not for the Lawyer" and some of his other stories.

Perhaps the clearest and strongest of his messages are the sweeping campaigns he directs against the people of miserliness, greed, gluttony, and avarice, whom "rivalry in riches distracted until they visited the graves" — and how many they are in our country! — those who live the life of the snail in its shell, who stint themselves and their servants and their horses and their dogs, who pile up money in strongboxes and grudge a single fils to public undertakings. One of them — his hand stiffens when he means to sign a draft intended as a large donation. Another tries to sell his son for money to a rich widow — he is Dr. Taher in "The Matter Is Settled." A third heaps up his fortune from the sweat of the peasants — he is the rich Bey in "Were It Not for the Lawyer." And a fourth barters his patriotism and his dignity for the camphor forest and lives in torment, prey to the pricks of conscience — he is the owner of the camphor forest, who inspired the writer with the title of his collection and drove him to catch the scent of camphor on every man of wealth he happens upon.

What we observe is that our writer takes care to establish social justice at the close of his stories and plays: the traitor gets his deserts or is overtaken by remorse, and the people of avarice and miserliness and greed come to the worst of ends. One of them winds up in prison, like the usurer Hamdan Bey in "The Shadow of the Voice"; another loses the business deal he struck; a third dies in sorrow, far from men. As for the hero of "A Handful of Wind," ever merry, generous and open-handed for all his poverty, riches come to him from where he least expects.

Yet the message of Said Takieddine is not confined to the subjects of pronounced local color that he treats. In his personal style too — fresh in its images, throbbing with strength and life — he brings us the message of liberation carried to the farthest point. In every line he traces there is a fresh meaning or an invented image. And every image he sets forth, every phrase he lets fly, is a beat of his spirit and a leap of his imagination. It is distinction enough for his stories and plays that they are an exhibition of the life of the Lebanese, in the mountain or on the coast, in the homeland or in the Mahjar — an exhibition of their faults and their virtues, of their talk and their traditions, of their comedies and their tragedies. And it is no exaggeration to say of his writing as a whole — stories, plays, and essays — what one of the ancients said of the poetry of Omar: "This is what the poets sought and missed"; or, in another word: "This is the literature we have been needing."

(1) A collection of tales running to 130 pages of medium format, published by Dar al-Ilm lil-Malayin.