Закария Тамер: Голос сирийской прозы

Syrian writer

Zakaria Tamer (زكريا تامر; born January 2, 1931), also spelled Zakariya Tamir, is a Syrian short story writer. He is one of the most widely read and translated short story writers of modern Syrian literature, as well as one of the foremost authors of children’s stories in Arabic. He also worked as a freelance journalist, writing satirical columns in Arabic newspapers. His volumes of short stories are often reminiscent of folktales and renowned for their relative simplicity on the one hand and the complexity of their many potential references on the other. They may have a sharp edge and are often a surrealistic protest against political or social oppression and exploitation. Most of Zakaria Tamer’s stories deal with people’s inhumanity towards each other, the oppression of the poor by the rich and of the weak by the strong. The political and social problems of his own country, Syria, and of the Arab world, are reflected in the satirical style typical of his writing. His first stories were published in 1957. Since then he has published eleven collections of short stories, two collections of satirical articles and numerous children’s books. His works have been translated into several languages, with three collections in English, Tigers on the Tenth Day, Breaking Knees and Sour Grapes. For his works, Tamer was awarded several Arab and international literary prizes.

Zakaria Tamer was born in 1931 in the Al Basha district of Damascus. He was forced to leave school in 1944, at the age of thirteen in order to help provide for his family. He was apprenticed to a blacksmith as a locksmith in a factory in the Al Basha district of Damascus. At the same time, as an autodidact, he spent many hours reading various books, he became interested in politics and was encouraged by contact with intellectuals to continue his education at night school. He read voraciously and was provoked by his reading, as he later said in an interview, "to create a voice which [he] hadn't been able to find [there]". His intention was to represent in his writing the very poor majority of men and women in Syria, with their joyless and restricted existence. He began his literary career in 1957, when he published some stories in Syrian journals. His first manuscript was noticed by Yusuf al Khal, the poet, critic and editor of the magazine Shi'r ("Poetry") which at the time was acting as midwife to the birth of modern Arabic poetry. The talent that lay behind the poetical prose of these stories, was so unlike anything being written in Arabic at the time, that Al Khal decided to publish it, this became his first collection of short stories, which was entitled The Neighing of the White Steed. The collection brought him considerable attention and repute amount readers and critics.

Following his literary success, which was reflected in the good reception of his first collection, he left his job as a blacksmith and embarked on a new career, as government official, as well as editor of several journals, including the cultural periodicals Al Mawqif al Adabi, and Al Marifah, and the children’s magazine Usamah. He was instrumental in the establishment of the Syrian Writers Union in Syria 1968. He was elected member of the executive bureau responsible for the publishing and print, and was vice president of the Union for four years. In 1980 he was dismissed from editing the periodical al Marifah, published by the Syrian Ministry of Culture, as a result of the publication of extracts from Abd al Rahman al kawakibi’s (1849–1902) book, Tabai al istibadad (“The Characteristics of Despotism, 1900), in which the author denounced tyranny and called for freedom. As a result of his dismissal, Tamer decided to travel to London, leaving his home country of Syria.

From 1981 1982 he took charge of Al Dustoor magazine as managing editor, he went on to be culture editor of Al Tadhamon magazine (1983–1988) and then became managing editor of Al Naqid magazine (1988–1993), and culture editor at Riyadh Al Rayes Publishing House. He also wrote for various newspapers and periodicals published in London, including Al Quds Al Arabi. In January 2012, Zakaria Tamer decided to venture into Facebook, creating a page titled المهماز (Al Mihmaz) “The Spur”. The page contains daily articles detailing his continuing literary journey with its political and cultural dimensions. Most recently the focus has been on the Syrian uprising. In 2023, his collection of stories Sour Grapes was published in English twenty years after the original Arabic publication.

A common theme in his writing has been that the strongest of us can gradually be broken and tamed by those who wield the whip of power. Those who rule, Zakaria Tamer tells us in many a story, while devoid of all the noble qualities that should be theirs, possess the intuitive awareness of how to use the carrot and the stick. Muhammad al Maghut, a well known Arab critic, once contrasted him with Charles Darwin: one showing how humans developed from monkeys, the other showing how humans could be manipulated into becoming monkeys. Another favorite theme, as seen in such stories as "The Stale Loaf" and the "Room with Two Beds", is the sexual frustration of the young in the Arab world and the toll that is exacted particularly from the women when sexual taboos are breached, or are thought to have been breached. Though humor is not one of the ingredients of these stories, the writer does allow himself an occasional sardonic grin at the forms of injustice to which man is subjected by his rulers, his fellow men and the circumstances of lives enclosed in routine of ill rewarded work and unfulfillment. Zakaria Tamer's world is Orwellian though unmistakably Arab. The secret police, with their physical brutalities, feature in many of the stories, as for instance in the dark humored "A summary of What Happened to Mohammed al Mahmoudi", where a harmless old man finds that even in death he is not immune from their attention. The directness and absence of embroidery with which Zakaria Tamer writes is a powerful weapon in giving distinctive form to the basic themes to which he returns again and again.

Until 2005, Tamer has published eleven collections of stories, two collections of satirical articles and dozens of children's books.