The Rituals of Signs and Transformations

Description

This text is one of the works from the second phase of the creative Saadallah Wannous’s career. Written on his sickbed, it reflects the spirit of an artist whose illness had drained his lifeblood, yet whose soul was elevated, penetrating the depths of the human psyche to explore its nature and uncover its hidden essence. These are the transformations that befall all human beings, leading them back to their true selves, long concealed by the mask of hypocrisy and the cloak of pretense.

A person lives a life that everyone sees, but within, there is another image that may equal this outward appearance, but often contradicts it. What if the situation were to change, and the inner self became the outer self? Not through the influence of a drug, as in Stevenson’s novel “Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde,” but as a result of an incident that shakes the city of Damascus: the arrest of the head of the Ashraf (descendants of the Prophet) while committing adultery with a prostitute. At that moment, the Mufti, despite their enmity, sympathizes with him and devises a scheme with the head’s wife. He swaps her with the prostitute in prison, so that it is as if he was arrested with his wife. This traps the police chief, and the situation is reversed: he becomes the prisoner, and his captive is free. The head of the Ashraf then divorces his wife, as she stipulated for participating in the rescue plot. She abandons a life of chastity for the world of prostitutes, calling herself Almasa (Diamond), and men become infatuated with her. She causes a revolution in Aleppo. As for the head of the Ashraf, he becomes a Sufi mystic, walking in rags, yearning for union with the Divine. And the Mufti becomes in love with Almasa, struggling against his own desires. Sometimes, he collapses at her feet, and during this time, one of the henchmen, influenced by the pervasive wave of moral decay, becomes homosexual. Then, everything ends with Almasa’s murder at the hands of her brother. Before her death, she declares that Almasa is not merely a woman whose blood, if spilled by her killer, would destroy her, but rather the human condition itself, which has always existed and will remain, an experience that reveals the true nature of a person if they encounter it and come into contact with it.