My Father’s Democracy: Evocation of Mash'al Tammo

(Zaman Al Wasl)- "My father was shot dead by unknown gunmen. In the hospital, before I closed my father’s eyes, I saw the image of the murderer and his rifle and I heard the voice of my father whispering in my ears ‘do not reconcile.’"

This excerpt is from the short story collection "My Father's Democracy" by Fayez Mash’al Tammo, a 40-year-old Syrian refugee lives in Germany. He is the son of Mash’al Tammo, the prominent Syrian Kurdish politician who was assassinated on October 7, 2011 by masked men who burst into an apartment and gunned him down.

The collection issued by the publishing house “Awraq” in Cairo contains three sections: "In The Presence of My Father", "In The Presence of The Homeland" and “A Suffering with No Narrative". Its narratives, as the critic Ibrahim Youssef puts it in his introduction to the book, leads to a challenging ease. Their interactive readers, on the one hand, feel their simplicity and transparency, and on the other, can sense that they are based on what is unusual and unduplicated, not to mention the element of surprise.

Youssef, a renowned poet and critic, added that the worlds of Fayez Al Tammo contain a clear spontaneity that comes from two main factors: the experience and the depth of knowledge and aesthetic. For that reason they have a distinction that evokes no one but to the storyteller himself. This shows the authenticity of the talent of the creator who writes his visions, pain, and dreams, without borrowing from others.

Youssef commented to Zaman al-Wasl that the texts of "My Father's Democracy" are very short stories, with some having features from poetry, written by the author in an exhaustive language, evoking in more than one text the image of his father, Mash’al Tammo, whom he dearly misses.

Our correspondent pointed out that Fayez Tammo is one of the outstanding writers of Very Short Stories with a simple, transparent and expressive language.

In his opinion on the "Very Short Story" and its place in recent years and under the circumstances of the war, Youssef pointed out that this literary art has risen since 2012, the year the emergence of narrative occurring with the revolution or written in its context, and in parallel with short poetry.

Zaman Al Wasl