Authoritarianism is no longer merely a local issue in a Third World dictatorship, but rather a global trait regaining its harshest features, as if all theories of freedom were buried and their traces forgotten. Even though Sumer Shuhada—in his newly published novel The Tale of Mr. Screw (Hikayat Al-Sayyid Al-Burghi), released by Dar Al-Adab—draws inspiration from the Syrian context he lived through, the text eschews defining a specific setting. It leaves the characters unbound by the shackles of proper names, living out their bitter, Kafkaesque human existence without major shocks or revolutionary upheavals.
اضافة اعلان
We find ourselves in nameless, addressless locations. The novel's protagonist works at an institution referred to as the "Reformatory"—implying a mission of reformation—while it is, in reality, an intelligence apparatus belonging to a "regime" whose identity and orientation remain unspecified. Thus, free from temporal and spatial markers, the story draws us into a literary game liberated from geographic constraints and considerations, keeping us within a nebulous space where events unfold. The novel, which explores the web of tricks used to circumvent oppression and manipulate an authoritarian power, employs those very same tricks on both the reader and the regime.
The government employee in the "Reformatory's" document department was never obsessed with questioning his mission as he reviewed the texts he was assigned to censor. However, when an article by Mamdouh Haddad crosses his desk, doubt consumes him regarding whether the article is even fit for publication. He feels provoked reading that employees like him are "merely a screw in a machine that crushes human consciousness." The machine here symbolizes the regime, and the censoring employee is nothing more than a screw in a massive apparatus alongside countless others—screws that collectively keep the machine running without grasping the true essence of their function. Rattled by this comparison, he is reminded once again that his job has "poisoned his life." Yet he accepted it, turned a blind eye, and suppressed his pain because the position "increases his children's future employment prospects."
The text of Mamdouh Haddad's article gradually opens the door of self-discovery for Mr. Screw, upending his life and sending him on a quest to find Mamdouh: Who is he? How does he think? Does he have other writings? By sheer coincidence, his daughter turns out to be an admirer of this author, keeping a copy of his novel Night Fragrance (Atr Al-Layl) in her library—a book he will read during a family getaway to the countryside.
Within Night Fragrance, the employee searches for the background, intentions, and affiliations of the author, Mamdouh, repeatedly postponing the submission of the required report on the suspended article to his superiors.
Parallel to the employee's escalating psychological disturbance while reading Mamdouh Haddad's novel—which manifests in his relationship with his family—he questions his role, his life, and his purpose. As he progresses in his reading, line becomes blurred for us, as it does for the employee himself, over whether Mamdouh is a mirror image of him and a mere pseudonym, or a real author.
For twenty years, "Mr. Screw" submitted his reports without hesitation. This time, however, he feels confronted by a writer testing his intellect and path. If Mamdouh's article provoked and incited him to read his novel, the novel itself—with its themes of personal pain, dead ends, and memory loss under the weight of a repressive regime—triggers deep psychological tremors and painful self-examinations. He reads the novel, which turns his soul upside down during his rural trip with his family, yet censorship never truly releases its grip on him; even when absent, it remains ingrained within him. Looking out from his mountain hotel window at the fields stretching before him, he envisions a camera monitoring him like an eye that never sleeps. He imagines drafting a report on the novelist, describing him as a "debased writer who instrumentalizes literature"—no, rather "a threat to literature"—before backing down. This writer had brought him face to face with his true self, back to those early restless nights when he started his job twenty years ago, when anxiety kept him awake. Back then, a colleague had advised him to love his work and try to "view the machine as a matter of sentiment... for once one acknowledges the machine, it accompanies them like a recurring old love." Mr. Screw's alienation reaches such a point that he feels most at peace when standing directly in front of the surveillance camera at the Reformatory—perhaps because there, he is far removed from any suspicion that might attach to him. Outside his workplace, however, his inner demons whisper thoughts that terrify him with the fear of exposure, intensified by a haunting sensation that cameras are tracking him wherever he goes, exacerbating his constant, pent-up fear.
In the midst of his internal battle with Mamdouh's novel—which contains details mirroring his own life to the point of identity—he hears an approaching sound outside his office door at the "Reformatory." Panicking, he rushes to lock the door, bracing it with his body, and glances frantically around the room, believing the regime has read his thoughts. "The regime is coming, and it will crush me with its iron gears; I have delayed a critical reading," he thinks. He then says to himself: "I have come closer to actually believing that I am my own enemy, and the regime has succeeded in instilling this perception within me."
As Mr. Screw begins reading Night Fragrance, he initially perceives Mamdouh as an adversary. Yet, page after page, he arrives at key realizations—most notably that Mamdouh was unable to own his life and "failed to admit that human beings are too insignificant to forge their own destinies." In the novel, he reads of Mamdouh's inability to confront the regime and its intelligence apparatuses, which have become woven into the fabric of society rather than remaining alien to it.
He senses a striking parallel between his personal life and the author's existence. With his seasoned investigative instinct and experience, he realizes he is reading an emotional autobiography of Mamdouh Haddad, rather than a mere work of fiction; it is saturated with raw emotion and passion. As he reads further, he identifies increasingly with the author. The only difference is that he integrated into the regime, whereas Mamdouh opposed and confronted it; yet both reached the same outcome: crushed and swallowed by the machine.
Mr. Screw's alienation reaches such a point that he feels most at peace when standing directly in front of the surveillance camera at the Reformatory.
Upon finishing his first reading, he feels as though a new sensation has pierced through him, or as if the text carved itself deeply into his inner self, triggering existential questions.
We find ourselves in the presence of a novel within a novel. Alongside Mr. Screw, we read Mamdouh Haddad's story through the eyes of the censor, simultaneously experiencing his psychological reactions to the text and his perception of it. As the pages turn, his self-doubts deepen, leading to a painful re-evaluation of his life—not only regarding his subservience to the regime, but also his ambiguous relationship with his wife. As he notes: "I kept looking at her as I would at a garden next to the house, wafting with the scent of night fragrance. And I kept myself from breaching the walls of that garden, or intruding upon its flowers." There is a sense of mere coexistence in the lives of a couple who were supposed to have merged; yet life does not flow smoothly when the soul is anxious and trembling, burying its fears, suffering injustice in silence, and committing sins under duress.
Thus, in the midst of preparing the report, "the issue that began pressing on him most was the question of freedom." Meanwhile, the phrase he keeps repeating—hoping it might reach listening ears—is "I am innocent." Yet he lacks the capacity to control his own destiny. How can freedom coexist with bondage?
The novel maintains a calm outer pace while remaining turbulent within the depths of the soul, leading to an ending where the employee finally makes a choice—selecting what he believes to be his freedom over remaining a tiny part in a demonic machine. But did the employee find the peace he sought? The tone of the text does not suggest so; rather, we come to understand that Mamdouh Haddad—who remains a veiled character—was merely a literary device or an artistic necessity for the employee's self-examination. As for the novel Night Fragrance, with its style that spellbound its reader, it served the role of a psychological surgeon, or a revealer and analyst of a psyche eroded and fractured by oppression—pointing to the role of literature as a healing remedy for tyranny.
