The Silence and the Roar (17 page)

I had always wanted to explore certain dimensions of dictatorship: the orchestration of such roaring marches and how people are coerced into the streets to chant for the leader under the direction of bullhorns. The leader seeking to cover himself with a roaring halo is not a nice thing to
see. Naturally he would only ever do that as a means of covering up and suppressing any other sound.

With this roar he also aims to cover up the violent crimes he unleashes against his rivals in the underground dungeons of the security apparatus, those places located far out of sight but which everyone knows about.

I believe that love and peace are the right way to confront tyranny. Thus I wrote this novel about the dictator whose opponents cannot find any other way to stand up to him but through love and laughter. It is with love that the hero of the story acquires the strength to stand up and confront silence; with laughter that he tears off the frightening halo with which the dictator has surrounded himself, and then subsequently dares to confront his minions.

There is another kind of roar that this author never thought the leader would ever be capable of using: the roar of artillery, tanks and fighter jets that have already opened fire on Syrian cities. The leader is leveling cities and using lethal force against his own people in order to hold on to power. We must ask, alongside the characters in this novel: What kind of Surrealism is this?

As I present my novel to the English reader, my heart is agonizingly heavy about what is happening in Syria, my homeland.

N
IHAD
S
IREES
         
Cairo, August 2012