The Arabic novel mourned the Arab novelist Haider Haider (the leopard), who passed away this morning (Friday), in his hometown of “Husayn al-Bahr” near the city of Tartous, and near the western slopes of the Lattakia mountains.
The author of “A Feast for Seaweed”, who passed away at the age of 87, was keen to document his literary biography in his work “Light and Exile” published by Dar Ward. .
Haidar, who was born in the village of Husayn al-Bahr in the city of Tartous in 1936, received his primary education in his hometown, and continued his preparatory education in the city of Tartous in 1951. He then continued his studies and graduated from the Institute of Educational Teachers in the city of Aleppo in 1954. His literary inclinations emerged early in his life. From Damascus, he began publishing stories in daily and monthly periodicals. His first attempt at fiction, titled “Madara,” was published in a local magazine in the city of Aleppo. The chaos and turmoil of the fifties of the last century in Syria left their imprint on the personality of the writer, for all the conflicts, coups, and confusion of life that the country suffered during that period. Political, in addition to the military defeat in Palestine and the beginning of the emergence of the Zionist entity, prompted him to join the unionist Arab movement and his involvement in it with his fellow students. In 1968, he published his first collection of short stories, “Tales of the Emigrant Seagull.” In the same year, he began preparing for the formation of the Arab Writers Union at the level of writers and the preparatory body.
In the seventies of the last century, he left Syria to work as a seconded teacher in Algeria during the Arabization campaign adopted by Algerian education, so he worked there as a teacher of the Arabic language and almost all subjects in the Arabic language, and returned to Damascus, and from there to Beirut, which left the deepest impact on himself, and he worked in one of the publishing houses A proofreader and proofreader, Haidar published his first novel, “The Desolate Time,” about his experience in Damascus during seven years, and his involvement in the cultural and political climate. It was published by Dar Al-Awda in Lebanon in 1973, then the short story collection “The Flood” was published by him from the Palestinian Writers Union in 1975 from Baghdad, and in 1982 it was reprinted with ripples in Beirut by the Arab Institute for Studies and Publishing. At the beginning of the Lebanese war, Haidar joined the Palestinian resistance in The Unified Palestinian Media Framework and the Palestinian Writers Union in Beirut.
His novel “A Feast for Seaweed” is the most famous, given the objections and criticism of the Islamists that surrounded it, which contributed to the increase in its sales, although it was banned from being published in several Arab countries. While his fictional work “The Cheetah” turned into a film presented by the late Syrian director Nabil Al-Maleh in 1972, to be classified later as one of the immortal cinematic films in the world, in addition to being one of the most important films in the history of Syrian cinema.
His works have been published, including: Tales of the Migrant Seagulls, Desolate Time, Ripples (two stories), Mirrors of Fire, Closing Chapter, Leaves of Exile, Twilight of the Gods, Gypsy Suns, Caribou, Seduction, Purple Field, Elegy of the Heavenly Boy, and Elegies of Days.
