A critical reading of the short story. “The Survived Sect” Author: Elham Issa (Syria) Critic: Jalila El Mezni (Tunisia) Translator: Awny Seif (Egypt)

A critical reading of the short story. “The Survived Sect”
Author: Elham Issa (Syria)
Critic: Jalila El Mezni (Tunisia)
Translator: Awny Seif (Egypt)
Title of critical reading and text analysis:
The pleasure of lying dualities (For Example, dualities of the catastrophe and grace)
Introduction:
The story of the “Survived Sect” of the important Syrian writer Issa is of the sort of the Very Short Story.
This story is governed by the binary of the catastrophe and the grace:
– The catastrophe of the ongoing conflict is between the truth and the vain, the Palestinians’ right to uphold their Land , in the contrary , the evil and Zionist rights to rape and occupy the land for more than 70 years.
– A blessing that turns the ordeal into a blessing that is the blessing of martyrdom and its reward from God.
The author chose the title of this story “The Survived Sect”. “The Survived sect is a term devised by modern scholars from the Holy Prophet’s talks.” My nation will be divided into seventy-three sects, all of them in fire but only one is not. “They define the surviving sect as the custodian of what the prophet and his companions’sayings. It is the group of the primary ancestor and the uniquely followed the Qur’an and the Holy Prophet’s talks among the rest of whom were ravaged by the personal desires and followed strange doctrines (1.)
“The surviving division is consist of the Prophet, the Sunni people and the group who believed in God and His Messengers and rested on God’s religion and followed the Prophet and his companions’. Approaching to Oneism of God, faithful to Him, obedience to His orders and leave their sins ,and they believe in His names and His holy qualities.” (2)
Thus who is the surviving sect which is chosen by the writer as the title of the short story?
We’ll get to know this surviving sect gradually as we analyze the story:
1- Manifestations of the plight of the Palestinian people:
The author began the story with a nominal phrase and continued to use it (rushing crowds, sizzling bullets, hooting tanks,wolves howling and they are scattering the cries).
Nominal sentence benefits stability, durability and continuity.
This stability is embodied by the masses and young people who rush to the wire borders.
Wire is a barbed wire that prevents young men from advancing.
The author “Ben Fatima Samia” says that the barbed wire defines “the nature of the French strategy of blockading and clamping down on the revolution to prevent it from being outward extended through a new project that highlights clearly the tension that the French authority was experiencing towards the liberation revolution, which made it recruit all its possibilities for its success…. Algeria is French “, Achieving its objective of eliminating the liberation revolution by changing its path towards retreat and failure, it was able to effectively achieve some of its objectives in that it prevents the movement of the Liberation Army and its hostilities were curtailed by a lack of weapons supply.
However, France’s success was little, in contrast to the will of the Algerian National Liberation Army, which was able to confront barbed wire, activate confrontation and support various battles that would not have continued without the availability of weapons. “(3)
The Palestinian resistance is like the Algerian resistance, the country of one and a half million martyrs, and despite all the stranglehold that France wielded by barbed wire, the Algerian liberation revolution was able to win and achieve independence.
Victory is also close to Palestine, despite these barbed wires, which have besieged all crossings to prevent food, medicine and fuel from entering the Gaza Strip.
The author continues to use nominal sentences indicative of continuing to briefly and unhappily force us to know, the whirring bullets of the ongoing Zionist enemy which dispel and disperse the ranks of the young men and even eliminate them with their customary wildness accompanying with sizzling bullets, hooting tanks,wolves howling are scattering the cries.
The writer borrowed “hooting” as an adjective to describe the sound of tanks.
The hooting is the voice of the raven. “Biologists in Australia have discovered that the sounds of ravens not only express danger or find food and others, which are signals of normal communication between these birds (ravens). During the study, the experts selected a group of Australian park raves and recorded more than 400 different sounds that not only demonstrate daily contact between these birds but also use their own sound group to find their partners (spouses) in life. “(4)
The author borrowed “Naiq”” in Arabic ” as a sound of tanks as they attacked the masses of resistance fighters because “Naiq” “hooting in English” was not only a bad omen for resistance but also a way of communicating between tanks to carry out terrorist and brutal operations against Palestinians.
The author also borrowed wolves and their loud voice to describe it as cunning and malicious enemy zionists.
“The voice of the wolf is called Howling .It is a loud and powerful voice made by the wolves to communicate with each other when they are at risk or when they wish to gather.” (5)
The author has used a diverse vocal lexicon that spreads between whizzes, hooting and howls that intersect in horror, fear and bad omens, as well as in the way of communicating among “fierce human animals.”
All these sharp and frightening voices scatter the cries of Palestinian victims and trampled on them to extinguish them, but the sounds of the bereaveds are louder and more painful and tragic. Are there a sadder mother than a mother who feels of the loss of her son?
The bereavement and grief of the bereaved are Intertexts with the Koranic text of the Holy Qor’an of Yusuf, verse 86. “He said,” But I complain and my grieve for God, and I know from God what you do not know. ”
The verse speaks about Jacob the Prophet, as bereaved , when he lost his son, Joseph, until he was torn apart by Jacob lost his eyesight because his weeping (Verse 84) And he said, “I regret Joseph and he blew his eyes out of grief.”
In the midst of this spectacle, which was characterized by hustle and bustle in all its kinds and sources, it became a more volatile scene in the movement accompanying this hustle and bustle by using the author’s actual sentences and some intransitive verbs to express events associated with time.
These various movements mixed with terrifying noise fuelled the fire of the crisis and whether more than the crisis of death (everyone flattens the ground… picking their breathes up by a bulldozer.)
The Palestinians define “bulldozer (9) as the beast that consumes their homes and roads within minutes. The bulldozer returns to the picture again ,20 years later, its complete destruction of Jenin camp, water pipes and electricity systems throughout the West Bank and in a narrow space and inside the camp.
The existence of this bulldozer means that the goal is to destroy, the destruction itself only.(6)
This mass destruction of the Gaza Strip by this bulldozer caused the author to come out with a paradox mixed with cynicism and bitterness, saying: “The Statue of liberty falls apart.”
It’s a miraculous irony. How is the fall straight for freedom?
History usually records the fall of authoritarianism as happened during the so-called Arab Spring Revolution and the fall of the tyranny fetish in order for people to enjoy freedom. This freedom, exemplified by the liberty Statue in the entrance to New York.
Thus, is the “fall of the Statue of freedom” a reversal of time to the Republic of Fear, which wreaks havoc on the Earth and a doom on human rights?
The usurped Zionist system has infiltrated in disregard of time to encroach in the strong Palestine ,Palestine of the Prophets, Palestine of Al-Aqsa Mosque, Palestine of Isra and Maraj (trial and deliberation in English).
This Zionist system replaces the Statue of freedom’s idea with the deaf of tyranny. Is the Palestinian people’s ability to pay this amount of blood to go back to injustice and tyranny and to take away their freedom to self-determination, which has been unknown for more than 70 years?
This is what made the important author Issa bitter and cynical:
– The bitterness of the brutal enemy’s rape of the freedom of a Palestinian people for decades.
– Taunting the restoration of history to itself by returning to injustice and tyranny.
The author does not hide her pain when she says: “The Statue of liberty fell on ground.”
The Statue of liberty “symbolizes a woman who has been freed from the constraints of authoritarianism.
In her right hand, this woman holds an old flame torch which symbolizes to freedom. Freedom is enlightened. Hence the official name of the statue, “Freedom Illuminates the World”, while in her left hand she carries a book inscribed in Latin letters “4 July 1776, which is the date of the Declaration of American Independence.
The poem inscribed on the Statue of Liberty is for the poetess is New York-born ” Emma Lazarus ” and says: “Come the tired, the poor and the masses are eager for the nests of liberty.”
The artist made loose chains at the foot of the statue to express”saving world without tyranny”.
He used a seven-column crown to express the world’s seven continents and seas as stated in
In Greek mythology, the statue shows who steps forward to express progress towards freedom.
Millions sing the name of this woman.who is she?
It’s the freedom as imagined by the French artist born in 1834 Frederick Auguste Bartoldi
which designed the famous liberty statue located at the entrance to New York City in the United States of America and which became a symbol of freedom in the world (the liberty statue should be in Egypt,in front of the Suez Canal. It has been rejected by Khadioui Ismail for financial reasons) (7).
So is it easy for the writer or the reader to acknowledge with the fall of the Statue of Freedom?
2- The manifestations of the grace that the Palestinian people await:
The daily plight of the Palestinian people of destruction and death is transformed into this short story to the Palestinian conviction to become in his mentality not only a blessing but a holy blessing
This binary (plight and grace) will thus become a lie in the Palestinian mentality, which recognizes that the ordeal he experiences daily is a blessing of God’s.
The author used a linguistic lexicon that embodies sacred meanings that make the victims welcome death in order to defend their land or their women.whom are violated by the Zionist enemy.
(All are on the ground/calling God is Great/limping to the sky/scattered bodies /congratulated by the higher paradise/surviving division).
The Palestinian people defend their right to self-determination, the fate of the Holy Land of Palestine, which is “the land of the prophets and their emissary on whose land our masters lived: Ibrahim, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, Lot, Solomon, Saleh, Zachary and Jesus. Many of Israel’s sons lived on this land.
It was also visited by the Messenger of Allah, The prophet Muhammad (prayer and peace be upon him) on the night of Al-Maarraj through verse (1) of the Holy Koran of Isra “God, who was gone with his prophet at night from the Holy Mosque to the Al-Aqsa Mosque, which I blessed it and blessed around it”.
The father of the Prophet Ibrahim who was named after him one of Palestine’s most important cities, Hebron. His shrines is there, also shrines of the prophets also abound in Palestine and commemorate their stability and passage.
In the land of Palestine, Al-Aqsa Mosque, the first direction of prayer for Muslims in their prayer, is the third Holy place after the Holy Mosque and the Prophet’s Mosque.
Palestine is the land of Israa and Ma ‘araj. Allah chose the Al-Aqsa Mosque as a journey destination of the Messenger of Allah “From the Holy Mosque to the Al-Aqsa Mosque” and from it was a holy journey to the heavens.So that Palestine is became holy by this journey.
By doing so, the Holy House became the gate from the Earth to heaven, and there in the Aqsa Mosque , God Almighty gathered his prophets as a sign of the continued the Oneism message of the prophets and the transmission of the Leadership and the message to the Islamic nation. “(8)
Palestine is a sacred land with its monuments and prophets, does not it deserve to die for it,in order to live free?
Palestine is an issue on which all these generations breastfed from their blood and made their blood circulation which without it the Palestinian will not live a life .Blood circulation or martyrdom which water the land of Palestine with the blood of this blood circulation to cultivate this land and cultivate and cultivate so that life can continue until victory.
Perhaps this is what caused the writer to turn to a miraculous irony in making The “scattered bodies” speak and paradoxically here are not taunts, but believing that the martyrs are alive there with their living God. This is a Intertextuality of verse 169 of the Holy Koran of Al-Amran. “Don’t think those who were killed for God are dead, but alive with their Lord.” In this verse, God tells the martyrs that they are killed in this house – I mean earth, They are alive in Heaven.
This religious reference by the important writer Issa made the scattered bodies speak and say “congratulate the Supreme Paradise” after she made the martyr “go to heaven” like Maraj( The holy Journey)of The Prophet Mohammed.
The highest paradise is the highest degree of heaven and the greatest of its ranks. The prophet said: “In heaven one hundred degrees between each two degrees as between heaven, earth and paradise the highest degree” (9).
How to get to The highest Paradise ?
It is stated in verse 69 of the Holy Koran of Sorah”The Women” that the winners of the Supreme Paradise are those who have the following: “Those who obey God and the prophets, and those who are blessed with Allah are Prophets, honest, martyrs, righteous and good companions.”
So can we now answer the above question “Who is this Survived Sect”?? This Survived Sect, chosen by the author as the title of her very short story .
It was this “Survived Sect” that the Prophet talked about and the Qor’an mentioned this “Survived Sect” that the writer made them win the “Supreme Paradise” in the tongue of scattered bodies to make these scattered bodies implicitly congratulate themselves, when they died for their land “Palestine”.
Thus, the Palestinian martyr does not consider his martyrdom an ordeal, but rather rises to the point of grace.
Hence, the bilateralism of adversity and grace prevails over adversity.
The author imbued her with this short story As one theorist puts it, the words “both realistic and religious references” are chosen to “starve the word and feed the meaning”. As it is said by Moroccan writer Abdallah Al-Mutaqi.
All I mentioned about the author’s employment is a form and content.The creative doctor of this story get the target.The Survived Sect is an aesthetic adoption that I can’t hide as a critic.
I enjoyed with my critical reading of this story. Many recipients may include their voices to my voice.
Summary:
This binary “Catastrophe and grace” in this Short Story”The Survived Sect” made me stand on the truth of the lies of some duos and the binary “ordeal and grace” model in this one “Survived Sect”.
When the negative pole (ordeal) turns in the binary to match the positive pole (grace) and the talk becomes only about grace: the blessing of the marytrdom that makes the martyr belong to the surviving division makes the martyr win the higher paradise…
It’s the fun of lying binaries in this very short story of “The Survived Sect.”
(By Jalila El Mezni)
The Creative Text:
Crowds rushing to the wires and young people…
A bullet sizzle dissipates the ranks of the rushers.
Squeezing tanks and wolves are scattering
screams.
The sounds of the bereaved are more loud
Everyone’s on the floor.
Calling God Is Great- their last breathes are picked up by a bulldozer.
The Statue of liberty falls apart.
As his skinny body penetrates by treacherous bullet…
He is going to the heavens…
Scattered bodies said:
Congratulated The highest Paradise .
References:
(1) Wikipedia “Survived Sect”
(2) Survived Sect – Ibn Baz
(3) Barbed wire: Writer Ben Fatima Samia – barbed wire policy.
(4) The World Channel “Great Information on Sounds of Ravens”
(5) Abdwab website.
Writer Basil Rizkallah (Mud Memory) ultra (6) Palestine
(8) Walid Badran B. B. C /26 June 2021
(9) Today’s News Portal: Dr. Ahmad Karima: Palestine The Land of Prophets and The Gate of Earth to Heaven: 11 October 2023.