Fiction
Dirt and Stars
by Ahmad Lufti
How do you imagine the Arabs before Islam? People who drink alcohol, milk goats, and fight each other for trivial reasons? Or perhaps you imagine them ignorant in an environment of darkness and sand? In this short story collection, Ahmad Lufti presents a fresh picture of the Arabian Peninsula before Islam, its legends and poets, its kings and its oral traditions. Inspired by the storytelling form of Scheherazade in “One Thousand and One Nights”—in which one narrator tells a story about another narrator, and another—as well as traditional Arab tales, Lufti’s stories explore and exalt Arab history and culture as well as larger themes of love, weakness, and power. Commentary from the Author: I am trying to reintroduce prose in Arab stories, as an attempt to praise authors whose books were highly underestimated. These works of art were deeply criticized for focusing on the pre-Islamic era or for adopting a classical rigid style. It is crucial to revive Arab stories, this pristine and rich field that would never fail to exist, even if all authors were to perish. This has proven of importance in modern stories, which are the reflection of the contemporary human. How can we refute modern stereotypes, if Arab literature is absent from today’s books?
