Of memories and articles

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Ahmad Al-Sarraf
Ahmad Al-Sarraf
After long years of hesitation, I decided to respond, with pleasure, to the wishes of so many beloved readers and write part of my memories in a book containing a number of my published articles.

I used to think the issue is relatively easy and will merely mean sitting down in front of a desk and writing whatever comes to my mind — thoughts and memories — and then refer to the Al-Qabas newspaper archive, to select a number of articles, and then cut and paste these memoirs and compile a book.

But I was hundred percent wrong. I found myself over several months mired in a sea of thousands of articles, which have sprouted suddenly, eyes and mouths open, asking me not to ignore them.

The truth is the job is not easy because most of the above articles which I have written are a reflection of my life’s experiences, rather than articles of political criticism or attacking the government, or lack of satisfaction with the performance of a minister, or talk about the gag here or a mistake there.

And therefore it was important and made the deletion difficult. This was the biggest and time-consuming effort more than you can think of.

Eventually, I found myself obligated to limit what I shall publish in the form of articles from January 1990 to the next fifteen years, and that required a focus on reading and re-reading, more than 3,500 articles, to choose only 10 percent of them for publication and postpone the rest for another day.

In the first selection process, after a lengthy review, I found out that the book will be bulky and contain more than 1,000 pages, and this is unacceptable, of course and hence the more exhausting process began. That was to get rid of some articles and make the size of the book acceptable.

Each omitting process becomes more difficult, and therefore the best thing is that the process of selecting has ended successfully and the book will be available at the Kuwait Book Fair in Mishref from tomorrow onwards.

Because of our human nature and my belief that anything offered free is not respected or has little or no significance, just like the free medicine, water and electricity that nobody cares and are wasted simply because they are for free I decided not to distribute the book free.

However, part of the proceeds from the sale of the book will be divided between the Ruqaia Abdulwahab Al-Qatami Orphanage for the cancer patients and Bait Abdullah.

I am not talking about large sums of money but the good intention is the most important matter in such situations.

I will be there on Wednesday, Nov 16 at the Mishref Fair Ground, at the Zat Al-Salasel Publishing House pavilion from 5:00 pm to 8:00 pm to sign copies of the book. I wish to have a good response to my invitation.

e-mail: [email protected]

By Ahmad Al-Sarraf

This news has been read 6869 times!

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