Throughout his career, whether long or short, a journalist writes about people’s lives, their news, and the events they go through and are experiencing. He rarely pays attention or cares to write his biography, which in any case is often unimportant. Of course, there is that rare type of journalist who turns everything he sees, experiences, or tells into a work of fiction.
Many of these have emerged in world literature, perhaps the most famous of whom is Bolivian Gabriel Garcia Marquez. Among the Arabs, Ihsan Abdel Quddus, Yahya Ghanem, the Lebanese Laila Baalbaki, and the Damascene Colette Khoury are famous. However, the vast majority of journalists remained within the framework of journalism itself, without caring about going beyond the bureaucratic life that often consumes an entire life. A number of Arab journalists had professional experiences in Gulf journalism that began from nothing in the early sixties. No knowledge of printing presses or journalistic work in any of its fields. Therefore, reliance was placed on immigrants, including Palestinians, Lebanese, and Syrians, who had come a long way in the profession.
Like any other immigrant, the Arab journalist lived a certain experience in his new society, a multi-faceted human experience. Some failure, some bitterness, a lot of success, a lot of stability from integration, and a little bit of all of them.
Colleague Taj al-Din Abdul Haq gives his new novel about journalistic life in the Gulf, especially in Abu Dhabi, where he has worked and lived for nearly half a century. He gives it an interesting title: “The Wind Before It Blows.” The Palestinian-origin colleague goes into the details of the novel as if he were continuing a piece of news in the daily newspaper. Nothing matters in the scale of importance. Like an editor who is passionate about the craft of photography, he plays with clear spontaneity the role of a painter who transforms events into colors.
Many chapters in “The Wind Before It Blows” remind me of the years I worked in Kuwaiti newspapers. First, “Public Opinion” in the early sixties, and in “Al-Anbaa” in the early eighties, for a total of four years. In that rich experience, I was able to associate with some adults, such as the great poet Muhammad Al-Maghout, Talal Salman, Muhammad Khaled Qatma, and Yahya Hamza. In Al-Anbaa, I also had the honor of being editor-in-chief, accompanied by Mustafa Amin, Yahya Ghanem, and Kamel Zuhairi, who used to make fun of me when he introduced me in his way, “This is my editor-in-chief.” However, Kamel did not mind at the end of the month my signature on his salary.
During the Al-Anbaa experience, I tried to include as many well-known people as possible. There were sometimes many passages that were devoid of the full adverb Zuhairi. In a profession full of envy, jealousy and terrifying psychological complexes, there were many petty conspiracies, slander and fear for the job of the weak. But all of this was not worthy, in my opinion, of a work of fiction like the one that Aziz Taj al-Din did.
