The structure of my novel resembled this process more than anything else. In my dream, my master was the spectator, and I was the mosaic artist.
“But I see only writing on the pieces,” he said, a little bewildered. “Where are the colours?”
“Each of these pieces tells a story, and when you have read them they show you their own secret colours. And as soon as you have read all the stories you will see the picture,” I replied proudly, and woke up with a happy laugh
Mosaic is the form for a story like this, I thought, a story with a thousand and one pieces in it, doing justice to life in Arabia with all its flaws. And like a mosaic, the further from the observer the picture appears, the smoother and more harmonious it will be.
I began setting out the stories, piece by piece, and as I was telling the first story I suddenly had my narrative voice. After that my work on the novel was not a problem any more, and called only for time.
In all these years I have been able to publish separate stories from the periphery of the book, so long as they did not give away the main action of the novel. “The Colour of Words” is the title of a volume in which Root Leeb painted watercolours illustrating a selection from my works. Some of the texts included there are Ch. 96, The Scooter, Ch. 104, Grandfather’s Glasses, and Ch. 113, Grandfather’s Salt, in the “Book of Laughter I”.
In the long gestation of this novel, I have had support from many people. They helped me in a number of different ways with the extensive work that had to be done. They provided me with materials, banned reports and tapes from inside prisons, they smuggled books and interviews out of Syria, they got access to archives for me, gave me detailed information about the army, history, religions, language, the work of the secret service, and psychiatry.
They and I sometimes faced unfortunate reversals of fortune. One incident will serve to illustrate those setbacks. Early in the 1990s I had commissioned a good friend to go to the archives of a certain Arab journal and copy me its issues of the fifties and sixties. I needed exact pictures of the everyday life of that period. At the time this was the only way to do such research, since the Internet in its present form was not yet up and running.
I paid a lot of money, and was put off with promises for four years. But at last, one cold February evening in 1996, I went to Frankfurt airport to collect three large cartons — and discovered on opening them that instead of the archive copies, I had been sent the waste from a printing press, all completely worthless, even including oil-stained paper that had been used to clean the presses. Today I can laugh about it, since by tortuous ways I did at last get access to the extensive archives of a journal, but that night I was close to exploding with rage.
Despite such setbacks, I may say now that during my life I have been fortunate enough to meet many people who gave me selfless support. Without their help this novel would have been impossible. If I were to mention them all I would need a long appendix, and individuals would be lost in the proliferation of names. So I will forbear to enumerate them, but I salute them all gratefully for the support they gave me. I hope very much that I have made the best I could out of the information they provided.
One more thing: the event that shook me so much in 1962 and acted as catalyst to my story for so many years dwindled as the novel took shape more clearly. In the present version the story occupies only a single page, Ch. 13, Scruples, in the “Book of Love II”.
And now I write the sentence towards which I have been working for decades.
This is the last piece in the mosaic of my story. It is at the bottom left-hand corner of the design, and is numbered 304.
So now I am going to go and drink an espresso in celebration of the day. From tomorrow, I will think only of Damascus when I wake up in the morning.
Rafik Schami