A review by Fatima Al Muhsin

It happens that old lovers do meet by coincidence on a lost pavement. And it happens that the meeting of old lovers may come as a daydream, something hard to materialize in reality. And it happens that old lovers may be forced by circumstances to stay in one place so as to face the past of their love story. But when all such these coincidences take place in a single book, the result may sound like a romantic novel and very much like a love song.

But Palestinian writer, Adel Bishtawi, had it all in mind when he wrote his first novel following the publication of six anthologies of novelettes and short stories. He engages his readers in conceiving a literary introduction with a touch of fantasy dressed in reality- an Arab widower approaching his fifties with no flowers in his vase and no logs in his fireplace, living in a lonely city like London; on the day before the new year, the widower walks down the streets of London, deeply engaged in memories of his deceased English wife; suddenly, a girl he had loved and lost in Damascus 20 years earlier, re-emerges in his life. He finds her lost, powerless and in need of a hero to pull her out of her troubles. He invites her to stay at his house where her daughter, who is like her, is to fall in love with his son, who is like him.

But what is important in "Traces of a Tattoo" is not the plot, nor the signals it gives in the form of an opinion or advice. Rather, it is the novel's horizontal level, or what the literary critics specifically call the verbal level where the dialogue plays an active role in creating atmospheres that are rich in transparent pictures offering something beyond the entertainment normally expected from the scenes of love. The novel presents itself to the reader gently and softly, offering an ambiance of cosiness and a captivating following of the characters' fates and emotions. It further explores the verbal medium and the capability of its dramatization power in detecting the self's tendencies and societal dimensions. The emotions, in their ebbing and flowing movements, softness and stiffness, are dominated by conflicts of the soul, and appear confined by four walls, several days and a romantic love story. But they are enriched by a variety of verbal techniques as they unfold; through dialogue in particular, the light but nonetheless effective differences between the moods of the generations and a modern world that has interlined its borders.

In conclusion, the novel appears a literary work which reveals the plight of the Arab woman- her limited choices in life, her will that gets broken in the circle of humiliation of every day life no matter how much education and intelligence she possessed, and no matter how frequently she proved herself more than a match to her male counterparts. Even her heart's right of choice seems governed by conditions and responsibilities that have been purposely created to suppress her joys. The writer did not need to remember the status of the woman in the Third World and in the Arab region to give credibility to the sufferings of his heroines. The proof is not what the father is looking for in his daughter's room (for proof what she had met a man in London), it is not in diagnosing the concept of guilt and sin, but in what he presented in terms of a proof for the sterility of the idea of love in the Arab region, as happiness cannot be replaced by theatrical acts where the sons take the role of the fathers in matters that are extremely private in nature.

Translated by Mohammad Khaled from the original text published by Al Khaleej Newspaper, Sharjah, United Arab Emirates.