Description
The author of this book, when he looks back and casts his gaze and insight far from his present, feels as though the sixty years of his life that have passed are truly like a river—a river whose source stretches back to the mid-1930s, where it connects with tributaries from even greater distances. These tributaries carry smiles, impressions, and explanations that have merged, in one way or another, into its own course, which sometimes widens and sometimes narrows, its waters sometimes overflowing and sometimes drying up, as it carves its path through twists, turns, and loops. Then, after a quarter of a century, it begins to divide into two parallel currents, intertwined and separate at the same time: one imbued with political experience, the other with cultural concerns and anxieties. And these currents continue to enrich themselves, competing in complementarity, or perhaps, complementing each other in competition.
This project of excavations, which the author refers to in the title of his book, aspires to be fully realized in three parts. The first of these, which we are now turning, covers—or rather, “exposes” (for archaeological excavation is an act of exposure)—the period before the split into the two aforementioned currents: childhood, adolescence, and early youth. The material the author deals with in this section consists entirely of actual events; there is no story, no imagination, no “creation,” no “invention.” Yet, like all “materials,” they speak only of their temporal existence, possessing only their existential identity. Everything else is an interpretation through which the author attempts to extract meaning from what once had meaning, and to give a kind of meaning to what presented itself as meaningless. In conclusion, the author’s interpretation is presented within a narrative text that displays personal memories, draws upon a specific cultural reservoir, and employs imagery, allusion, suggestion, and symbolism, alongside any spontaneous flow and innate creativity.
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