Once Upon a Time

"An old woman's stories, written by her unlettered lips in the notebook of my memory: I grew up with them and through them. I hesitated for a long time before dressing those words in formal language, because the spoken dialect is inseparable from the tale.

Then I decided to give them a fitting Arabic written form, releasing them from the cage of my heart and memory into the language's open spaces. I am not so much writing these stories as setting them free. I share something of my grandmother with you, sorry only that words cannot carry her voice, which still rings in my ears like a bell stirred by the winds of longing."