No longer than maximum three pages, each story are humanly insightful, revealing a traditional social fabric through very unique characters. While reading those stories, I felt like staying on a chair in the front of a home while watching different people moving back and forth, carrying on their more or less heavy stories on their shoulders. The tone is often set as a personal account, a first person testimony of loss, betrayal, sadness but also of solidarity.
´How miserable the dreams of the penniless!´
Social messages are strong and the display of the Palestinian social disparities and dislocation is a recurrent topic in the stories. The social fabric is revealed through those small microcosme, worlds within worlds within worlds.
Most characters are women, under the power of tradition or chosing to fight for their love instead. They have secrets and do built their own net of trust against or despite the society´s dismayal for them.
One of my favorite pleasure of reading Samira Azzam stories was to follow the steps building up the story. The tension builds up in the most unexpected way, although the method is always the same and at a certain extent predictable. The ways in which the story fills in brings on the surprise and in the end, the reading pleasure of each of her stories.
The translation of the short stories by Samira Azzam, a translator, radio host and short stories writer whose life was cut too short by a heart attack before she could finish her first novel, is an important milestone featuring Palestinian authors.
Rating: 4 stars
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