The Black Thread

The Black Thread by Jamal Al-Qaisi… This book includes a novel by the renowned Jordanian novelist Jamal Al-Qaisi titled “The Black Thread.” In this novel, Al-Qaisi is preoccupied with the very simple daily reality of his country’s social history before modernity entered it. He examines this reality through a historical-social approach. Through his portrayal of the novel’s protagonist, Abu Suleiman, the author seeks to express the dominance of religious and metaphysical beliefs over the minds and thoughts of people during that period, the effects of which persist to the present day in some Arab societies. The novelist continues to follow the journey of his novel’s heroes to show us through them the nature of that primitive and naive society. He says about them: “The ingredients for their success are simple and naive, and nothing but firm determination and a beloved dream drives them to achieve their goal; which is to extract the gold hidden in the cave of Abu Suleiman – Youssef’s father – adjacent to their large house that his father built before his death, after fifty years of magic, love charms, incantations to protect against envy and the evil eye, and fortune-telling…” In this novel, Al-Qaisi does not limit himself to the limits of realistic revelation and historical and social contradictions only, but rather works to delve into political and fundamental analyses of the temporal process, the evolution of life and its cycles, its twists and turns, and the eternity of its basic elements. In the second part of the novel, the novelist takes us to investigate the causes of the conflict and the flow of post-modern ideologies and their impact on the structure of our Arab societies and the role these ideas played in stirring stagnant ideas in the depths of the novel’s characters in their search for a better life. Wasil, one of the novel’s characters who represents the current reality, asks: “Is there a change coming? It’s as if I’m on the brink of despair, on the verge of the end of my life story, as if the essence, foundation, and core of the story have ended and passed, and nothing remains but the husks and shells. In an age of revolutions in science and knowledge, the dominance of the image, and the invasion of borders and minds, faith has been shaken and convictions have been shaken, and even the bonds of social security have been torn apart, and the individualism and isolation of the self have emerged. Intimate ties have perished, sweet bonds have vanished, and here I am living…” I echo the past, and I witness the ugliness and absurdity of the present. (…) I still hold fast to my old belief that I am the young Wasil, who preserved his essential authenticity and only got rid of what harmed his humanity and wounded his convictions. “The Black Thread” is an enjoyable and purposeful novel, with multiple images and stations, through which the novelist conveys his own critical dilemma and his radical analysis of pre-modern culture. He succeeds in depicting the stages of development of the cognitive mentality of the Arab person as an important part of a deeper system in the evolutionary path of humanity more broadly and broadly.