Arabic / Lebanon
Hikaya tarwiha al-ḫūyūt
(Hikaya tarwiha al-khyut)
(A story told by threads)
Muḥaidalī, Nabīha
(Mheidly, Nabiha)
(text)
Zar-ad-Dīn, Hisān
(Zahreddine, Hassan)
(illus.)
Bairūt (Beirut): Dār al-Ḥadāʾiq (Al-Hadaek), 2018. – [26] p.
ISBN 978-614-439-155-6
Picture book | Storytelling | Thread | String
Reading age: 8+
White Ravens issue: 2020
A wide variety of threads interweave their stories in this book: One comes from a silkworm and was worked into a silk scarf. Another describes its marvellous spider web. A cotton thread is tucked into a farmer’s coat, while a linen thread belongs to a string that’s wound about a letter. A “thread of light” describes what it’s like to be a thin beam between light and dark, sunrise and sunset. After all have taken turns to tell their stories, the “thread of thought” says: “I have assembled all of you here. Now I will ask a writer to sew a beautiful story out of you that will travel from generation to generation”. Nabiha Mheidly’s original, poetic story about threads and the art of telling a story by interweaving narratives is a masterpiece both in terms of its form as well as its language. Hassan Zahreddine created enchanting and very aesthetic illustrations to accompany the text, using different printing techniques (etching, drypoint, and aquatint). They nicely reveal the delicate, filigreed structures of the inconspicuous protagonists. [AH]