About the play: The great writer Tawfiq al-Hakim makes no secret of his admiration for donkeys and their world. He evades censorship by speaking through donkeys. In this play, he imagines himself sitting at his desk, deep in thought, when a donkey enters and introduces itself as al-Hakim’s old donkey. Indeed, al-Hakim had stopped writing about donkeys; his last work was the novel “The Donkey of al-Hakim” in 1940, but this play comes a quarter of a century later, in 1975. The donkey complains to al-Hakim that he always ignores and despises him, but this doesn’t negate his existence and thoughtfulness. “I think, therefore I am,” the donkey says. He asks permission to sit and tells al-Hakim, “I will share with you some of what I know about you and other donkeys.” He then adds, “And other thinkers and writers.” The donkey discusses with al-Hakim the meanings and allusions of One Thousand and One Nights, about which al-Hakim wrote Scheherazade. This play was published in [year missing]. 1934 AD… and the donkey, of course, understands and remembers despite the passage of time. The donkey argues here that the ending of One Thousand and One Nights differs from the ending of Tawfiq al-Hakim’s play. One Thousand and One Nights presented the story’s conclusion, with Scheherazade and Shahryar living happily ever after and having sons and daughters. However, al-Hakim concludes Scheherazade’s play with Shahryar abandoning his wife, leaving his palace, and wandering aimlessly in the wilderness. The donkey presents a new idea about the wilderness and another ending for Shahryar. Tawfiq al-Hakim’s play “The Donkeys” contains four scenes: The Donkey Thinks, The Donkey Composes, The Donkey Market, and Grain Rations. If the donkey thinks, then the donkey must compose. But in the donkey market, two unemployed men distract a farmer who bought a donkey. The second unemployed man unties the donkey’s knot and puts the rope around its neck. In doing so, he has found work, because the donkey works and eats, and he is ready to work and eat but finds no opportunity. So he takes the donkey’s opportunity and decides to relieve the farmer by becoming a donkey himself. He says the reason is that… The donkey, whose father called him that more than once, and God answered the father\u2019s prayer and the son became a donkey\u2026 but at the hands of the good peasant who is one of God\u2019s righteous men, he became a human again\u2026 The play is a critique of bad social conditions in Egypt that were the result of what was called socialism. In the introduction to his book, Tawfiq al-Hakim argues that the pulse of life in the nation must continue to function, for life without awareness is meaningless. Just as awareness before the July Revolution enabled the nation to examine democracy and identify its flaws, so too, as long as the pulse of life continues, it is imperative to examine socialism and its flaws. If the citizen accepted the trial of distorted democracy, why not accept the trial of sham socialism? If the July Revolution of 1952 condemned distorted democracy for leading to the defeat in the 1948 war, why not condemn the distorted socialism that led to the defeat in 1967? The consequences and losses of these two defeats are vastly different. Al-Hakim is a wise thinker; he does not criticize democracy or socialism itself, but rather the shortcomings of their implementation.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
This is a collection of short texts and plays with a satirical, symbolic style, using the world of donkeys to express social, political, and intellectual issues in a clever manner that combines criticism, reflection, and humor.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":27694,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":[],"product_cat":[903,940,919,921],"product_tag":[2728,1359,1132,1122],"class_list":["post-27696","product","type-product","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","product_cat-satirical-literature","product_cat-arabic-literature","product_cat-literary-plays","product_cat-literary-texts","product_tag-literature","product_tag-philosophy","product_tag-stories","product_tag-wisdom","pa_book-author-tawfiq-al-hakim","first","onbackorder","sale","shipping-taxable","purchasable","product-type-simple"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/awraqonline.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/product\/27696","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/awraqonline.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/product"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/awraqonline.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/product"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/awraqonline.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=27696"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/awraqonline.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/27694"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/awraqonline.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=27696"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"product_cat","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/awraqonline.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/product_cat?post=27696"},{"taxonomy":"product_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/awraqonline.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/product_tag?post=27696"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}