The Rock of Tanios

“However, when I happen to see in a dream the nature of my childhood, another rock appears before my eyes, looming like a venerable seat, hollow as if worn out at the rear, with its high, straight backrest draped on both sides like an elbow. It is the only rock that bears, I believe, the name of the man of the Rock of Tanios. I have always contemplated that stone throne and have not dared to touch it. Not out of fear of danger; in the village, rocks were our favorite pastime, but rather out of superstition and a covenant my grandfather had taken from me, months before his death. All the rocks except that one… I knew that Tanios was one of the many colloquial names for Antoine… I owe it to Gabriel that my belief was established at a very early stage that Tanios was a flesh-and-blood being, regardless of his being a myth. Then I obtained the evidence later… as luck had favored me, and I finally obtained original manuscripts… two manuscripts of two people who knew Tanios closely, and a third… its owner is a cleric… When that green-covered book fell into my hands… I began to leaf through that monster with the tips of my fingers, out of the corner of my eye, and suddenly those lines appeared before my eyes… around November 4, 1840, the date of the mysterious disappearance of Tanios al-Kishk… even though he had everything one could wish for in life. I had untied the knot of his past and smoothed out the difficulties that hindered the path of tomorrow… It is inconceivable that he left the village of his own free will. Everyone is certain that some curse is linked to the rock that bears his name, and immediately the first pages were no longer a mystery to me, and I began to look at the manuscript differently, as if it were a guide, a companion, or perhaps a mount. And my journey could begin.” When the mystery ignited Amin Maalouf’s imagination, his pen became energized and unleashed, embarking on an exciting narrative journey through the cities of time and history, capturing a narrator and seizing an event from them, conveying it to his imagination, brimming with creativity that encompasses style, language, meanings, and letters that soar in the sky of narrative creativity, indicating that there is always room on the horizon for human offerings, always renewed and creative.