Author's Introduction:

The Time of al-Fayturi and His Place: People Are Born as Strangers

The Time of al-Fayturi and His Place: People Are Born as Strangers

While preparing the draft of this book, I could not find a better quote to describe what I encountered while researching and studying the poet and diplomat  Muhammad al-Fayturi than Montesquieu's quote in his famous book The Spirit of the Laws: "The subject is in its nature extremely extensive. To reach the truth, I have chosen to examine rather the general spirit of laws, rather than trying to follow the details of every particular law. This causes me sometimes to digress and to wander on one side or the other, so as to better see things in their proper light."

So when I set out to chronicle this man's life, I was faced with a complex dilemma: should I write about al-Fayturi as an age experience or a life experience? Age experience is easy to measure and easy to observe, but life experience has many different paths, and each path can only lead to more confusion and ambiguity. 

The experience of life - the life of any human being - with all its tensions and intensities, is a product of the events and incidents that the individual has gone through, with all their depth and impact. It is the inner struggle of the human being: This is why the study of the history of writers, poets and artists is so complicated, and I cannot find a better description of it than that of al-Fayturi when he said:

Art is a divine spark from the skies

People are mere puppets in an artist's guise

Leave artists to their own bright world

For it's a gallery of colours unfurled

Yes! One of the conclusions of looking at the sky is to realise that we cannot reach it; poetry is a sky that appears to us but remains distant from us. 

The logic of creative people and the logic of their thinking is a very complex field of study that requires reading its history differently. A method that does not consider the histories of these people as dead texts, attracted by whims and blown by the winds of fickle moods. While the experience of age is a number, the experience of life is a thought. Poets and artists need a methodology that views their life experience as a living organism that can only be understood through careful and thoughtful interpretation. 

Al-Fayturi did not want to belong to any one place or identity. His political and intellectual fluctuations created confusion about how to write and read his poetry without falling into misinterpretation or flattening what was profound in his experience. The man's political stances have been another area of endless debate; those who love him see him as a hero to be honoured and revered for his stances in support of human freedom and against injustice and oppression. As for his haters, they see him as a poet of the authorities and a flatterer of tyrants. 

Al-Fayturi said: "They always ask me why you don't write your autobiography, and I tell them: First of all, I feel that I am still learning and that my poetic and life experience is not yet complete, and those who write their autobiographies feel that they are leaving life. One of the few autobiographies that I admire is that of Pablo Neruda; that is how autobiographical writing, in this poetic form, is or is not. There is also Abdel Rahman Badawi, who wrote his autobiography within his reality, I want to write a combination of the two: I have met presidents, politicians and great creative figures, and this has made my experience very rich, and writing it requires effort and time. I believe that if I have the opportunity to sit down and write, I will write a lot and important things".

The man himself, with all his literary and poetic talents, took it upon himself to write his life story, and I do not claim to be writing a biography. 

This book is an attempt to understand al-Fayturi, but not to interpret or even explain him. This man is an embodied reflection of his ambiguous age. His story is a summation of his time, with all its joys and sorrows.

 The age of al-Fayturi is the age of revolutions and the suppression of uprisings. It is the age of freedom-seekers who have specialised in the practice of repression. It is the age of mysticism and dialectics, the age of contradictions between man and his beliefs, and the contradiction between slogans and practices. It is a time of clash, reconciliation, contradiction, contradiction and synergy between Intelligentsia and politicians. It is a time of bloody laughter and joyful mourning.

In my opinion, it is not possible to understand the poet and his time without understanding the social, political and cultural contexts that surrounded him. All his poems, political decisions and individual choices are the result of his interaction with his environment. We need to see the historical events that the man lived through as possibilities rather than definitive texts. 

It is easy to observe events and happenings by recording the history of their occurrence, but it is not possible to observe the psychological interactions of a human being; therefore, everything I present here about al-Fayturi is a possibility and an attempt at understanding. What I present in this book is only a humble attempt to look into the history of al-Fayturi, the Poet and the politician. What you see before you is the result of this reflection and investigation. 

I have to admit that I have not been able to separate myself and my political beliefs from what I am presenting to you in this book, because it is very difficult to separate one's self - when writing - from the self of another person, especially when it is something that touches the mind and the heart, such as poetry and literature. 

Despite the impossibility of a complete separation, I have found that the best that can be achieved is to try to untangle the confusion between information, analysis and opinion. I have used many sources and attributed quotes and information to their sources, and what remains are personal opinions for which I take full responsibility. 

This book is the result of an interaction between my ideas and my psychological and political background with the ideas of al-Fayturi and the complex worlds beyond, and I cannot claim to have been able to fully grasp them and see all the details of their entanglements. This complexity, which is steeped in complexity, and which reaches the point of inability to explain and elucidate, is too difficult and too complex to be simplified. 

Al-Fayturi is like a sea that can be reached, but it is difficult to know the edges of its shores and impossible to ascertain the depths of its interior. To claim to know all the details of the life of al-Fayturi, with all its intricacies and entanglements, would be an empty claim and a misleading simplification of a complex subject. What you find before you in this book is the result of my limited vision and the depth to which I have been able to plunge into this Fayturian sea. 

There is almost unanimous agreement on many of the events and occurrences that took place, but how many try to interpret what is before them changes depending on the angle and intentions of the viewer. This change in the interpretation of historical events is not only a dilemma for the reader who may not know how to write histories and biographies but also a problem for the greatest historians. Consequences and causes on which there is almost unanimous agreement can change, as the British historian Arnold Toynbee changed his mind several times in the history of civilisations and on certain historical events and incidents. This interpretive dilemma has certainly confronted me personally during the preparation of this manuscript, as the drafts of this book have changed considerably during its writing.

In researching the life and times of al-Fayturi, I have relied on analysing the historical and political events and social conditions surrounding the man and his poetic and journalistic career, as well as the events surrounding his family, even many years before his birth. This narrative covers a vast area, spanning three continents and more than a century. 

This book has required a great deal of research into hundreds of sources and references, and the recording of this result has required a great deal of deleting and altering of what I have written, due to the conflicting information and sources on which I have relied. Therefore, this research requires some patience on the part of the reader to investigate and compare, as well as to think and find the connection between many people's names, places, stories and events. May the readers have patience for this long and complex narrative, intertwined with the events and characters of this complex human being: Muhammad al-Fayturi. 

History is not a descriptive state; it is more akin to analysis and understanding of causes; it is a part of philosophy. Arnold Toynbee developed a philosophy of history which explains the rise, development and decline of civilisations as a combination of two factors: challenge and response. History is much more complex than being limited to "defining the times of men and their conditions in them, and the events of the time in terms of specificity and timing". 

History seeks the truth as it is, not the truth as it should be or as we would like it to be. Writing about al-Fayturi is an attempt to reach the truth of this poet, journalist and diplomat, who is considered one of the cultural icons of his generation of poets, and indeed of the cultural community as a whole. 

The German historian Ernst Bernheim laid the foundations of metaphysics to present and verify historical facts, and he wanted history to serve as a buffer between true science and pseudo-science. According to him, true science is the knowledge of causes, and only when this condition is fulfilled can history rise to the level of science: Knowledge of Cause. 

This book is an attempt to know cause and effect, and an attempt to verify some of the historical narratives and facts that created the legend of al-Fayturi, the man who made everyone talk about him, both alive and dead. 

As much as al-Fayturi was a unique and exceptional figure, this uniqueness also made him a figure suitable for understanding many personalities, times and circumstances; the saying ""And you have the idea of yourself as a small orb, and inside you is the whole world." applies to al-Fayturi. 

On the other hand, the life of al-Fayturi - as an individual - is so complex that it can represent the life of any human being; here al-Fayturi comes out of the status of exception to enter the status of ordinary, which has made many people see their faces in him, and from his life they have been able to understand their lives, and I am one of those people. Writing about him is nothing more than writing about myself and others with unknown names and faces whose story al-Fayturi represented and became the name of their cause. 

I have fulfilled the requirements of the book, but the issues related to my desire to make the book perfect and flawless have doubled my work, and the more these requirements are fulfilled, the more difficult my work becomes. The demands and questions relating to the nature of the work of this written work have not diminished; they have increased.

As I wrote the question of documentation was in my mind and before my eyes, and the scarcity of sources on the one hand, and their contradictory nature on the other, loomed behind it. What made my task more difficult was how I chose to enumerate the circumstances surrounding al-Fayturi, rather than focusing solely on him. 

My vision and belief that this is the best way to understand al-Fayturi has created a difficult environment for documentation, but it is as difficult as searching for pearls from the bottom of the sea, whose beauty can be contemplated from the shore, but trying to understand its potential requires immersion. 

This immersion in the world of al-Fayturi has not always been joyful; it has also led me to a deep abyss of tragedy. It was not until I started working on this manuscript, which I hope will correct many of the inaccuracies, deliberate or otherwise, in the biography of the man, that I realised the extent of some of the documentation that has been written about al-Fayturi. My documentary work became concerned with correcting some of the documentary work that preceded me. 

I was pained by the cynicism of some of those who wrote about al-Fayturi, especially after his death; the man could not disbelieve what was written about him, and in his grave, he was unable to come out and shout about what he saw of the tragedies and sorrows he sees. 

Some writers have taken al-Fayturi as a target for trolling and targeting for petty political purposes, representing the corpse of the man and distorting the aims and purposes of his poetry. This pain that I have found in some of what has been written about al-Fayturi is only a small part of the absence of a biographical practice in our culture, and when there are documentary books, they plunge into chaos, confusion and turmoil, and bear no small share of the responsibility for the psychological instability, intellectual confusion and political disintegration that is widespread in our region, which is doomed to misery and sorrow. 

The date of al-Fayturi's birth was disputed by many, even by the man himself. Critics have had conflicting opinions in reading and interpreting the man's poetic career. People have argued over his political stances, prejudices and choices, and finally disagreed over the fact of his death. What they all agree on, however, is al-Fayturi's place and position in the list of immortal figures in history. 

al-Fayturi lived a stranger in this world and died a stranger. Al-Fayturi's father foretold his son's strangeness when he read the palm of his hand and said: "You will live far from your homeland, and you will be happy, and you will have many enemies, but they will not harm you; your star will spread, and I do not know what you will do in the future. Your star will spread, and I do not know what you will be in the future: I do not know what you will be in the future: a judge, a clergyman, or something else". 

The father's prophecy came true, and his son Muhammad al-Fayturi lived abroad and rose to prominence. He feuded with some powerful men and reconciled with others, but the son was familiar with exile and there was nothing strange about it, for "people are born as strangers".

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The original title of the book: الفيتوري: المسار والمسار

Author: Talal Nayer (Arabic: طلال الناير)

Language: Arabic

Publisher: Willows House

Year of Publication: 2022

ISBN 9789778215496