The Well of Deprivation

Description

Ihsan Abdel Quddous, like a physician observing the pulse of hearts and listening to the groans of souls, lets his imagination wander with the stories of his patients. And these stories are wondrous… for they are the stories of humanity when it sheds its clothes and removes the mask—the mask imposed upon it by society. In his collection of stories, “The Well of Deprivation,” Ihsan Abdel Quddous, as a psychiatrist, lays bare the human psyche and paints it with his words as it truly is: a dense, desolate forest, where terrifying trees stand—the tree of fear, the tree of selfishness, the tree of hatred, the tree of confusion, and so on. Beneath the trees, delicate flowers try in vain to reach the sunlight: the flower of love, the flower of motherhood, the flower of social cooperation. Ihsan Abdel Quddous’s task is to wander through this forest, with a dim lamp in hand, to discover its terrifying trees, its hills, and its volcanoes, careful not to tread upon any of these delicate flowers. Rather, he cherishes them with his pen and tends to them until… She grows and reaches for the sunlight.