The Syrian poet, journalist, and traveler Hani Nadim, following in the footsteps of Ibn Battuta, Sharif Idreesi, and Ibn Jubayr al-Andalusi, has compiled 20 years of travel narratives in his recent book titled “Ibn al-Nadim’s Catalog: Algorithm of Sequential Faces and Places” published by Dar Kenan for Studies and Publishing.
The main title “Ibn al-Nadim’s Catalog” directly refers to the first Arabic author in book indexing, the historian and writer from Baghdad, Ibn al-Nadim Muhammad ibn Ishaq al-Mu’tazili (d. 384 AH), who compiled all the books and articles published in Arabic during his time. The subtitle of the book, “Algorithm of Sequential Faces and Places,” highlights the difference between the two books; while the former focuses on book indexing, the latter focuses on indexing places and the human artifacts they have embraced, forming the collective imagination of the world as a whole.
Within the pages of his book extending to 570 pages of medium format, Nadim brings together narratives and myths from dozens of cities around the world, portraying the societies, Arab and non-Arab, their customs, traditions, and dedicating indexes to their cafes, industries, and arts. He delves into the poetry of their alleys, rivers, and museums with a style that combines narrative, poetry, and essays, using a rich and accessible language simultaneously.
Nadim resembles hunters of their first homes (the Syrian city of Nebek), chasing their prey of miracles of nations wherever they are found, from the history of Belgian comics art, to the myths of coffee discovery in Ethiopia, resistance through Rai music in Algeria, to the prominent status of the matador and the sport of bullfighting in Spanish society. The reader embarks on a journey through the cultural history of peoples from “all of Europe, half of Asia, a quarter of Africa, and two of the Americas” visited by the traveler.
Traveler’s Passion
“I invoked a prayer that I am not sure whether my grandmother taught it to me at the time or I was inspired by it. I do not know its reason or where I heard it, but it became my amulet, charm, quest, and lifelong pursuit: O God, show me your lands and introduce me to your servants.”
These were the words recited by the child Nadim one night as he stood on the balcony of his home in Nebek city, watching the summer stars that he thought were angels gathering wishes to carry to the Creator.
Nadim did not wait to grow up to hold a passport allowing him to travel to his desired cities. He stole his brother’s passport and headed to an airline company to purchase a ticket. However, the booking clerk recognized that the passport did not belong to Nadim and accused him of fraud, leading the author to mention, “If the clerk was not aware of my family, he would have called the police that day, and I would have been jailed.”
Later, God answered the child’s prayer. Nadim grew up, leaving his town and country behind, seeking his livelihood, pursuing a vivid dream in a continuous journey to nearby and distant lands, embodying a unique model of love for wandering and traveling.
Margin Not Text
As Nadim is a sensitive poet, a cultured person “who lives through history and dies” and a journalist whose livelihood is linked to his broad knowledge and awareness, he starts his book from a solid ground with a clear orientation towards its language, land, and cultural heritage.
This is reflected in the perspective from which the traveler views the various phenomena he documents in his journeys, inclining towards “the margin” and its culture, the arts that bear the narratives of the oppressed, even in the cities he visits he prefers the margins. In the book’s introduction, he states, “I have dug from the margins and back alleys of the countries what I dug and placed them in introductions and texts.”
The margin in Nadim’s book transforms into an introduction and a text, shedding light -in part- on the state of the Arab collective self and its marginal position in the post-independence era or “post-colonialism,” suffering from crises in its struggle sometimes and dialoguing sometimes with the other cultural and civilizational entity, presenting a contradictory and divided image torn between its stance towards the other bearing the colonial legacy and the interaction with it as a bearer of a civilizational achievement that cannot be ignored.
The trajectory of Rai music in Algeria embodies this controversial interaction between self and other, with Nadim utilizing his trip to Oran, Algeria, to trace the origins and evolution of Rai music from being a local music in the 18th century to achieving global recognition in the 1990s.
Rai music was “the language of the marginalized in a colonial society, starting with the resistance against colonization and the hardship of life.” However, with the departure of the French from Algeria (July 5, 1962), Rai musicians like Khaled el-Masakri and Safi Boutella introduced Western musical styles to the authentic Maghrebi tunes of Rai. It was only a few years later that Rai music dominated globally, competing in sales with albums of the famous American singer Michael Jackson.
In this vein, Nadim’s compass points towards “the margin not the text, explanations not texts, metaphor and reference not direct meaning and immediacy” challenging a world where the focus on centers and their interests is increasing.
Journey through the Labyrinths of Imagination
The author is drawn more towards the myths of peoples, their narratives, and their ancient sites and music than anything else, making his journeys seem like an attempt to encompass the phrases and elements of the collective imagination of each nation among the countries he has visited over 20 years.
When he arrives in Spain, he elaborates on the history of bullfighting, the matador celebrated with memorials in public squares as an expression of his status in the hearts of the Spaniards, followed by an index including the most important bullfighters in the history of this sport.
If he reaches Paris, he visits its cafes, narrates the history of their establishment, lists the prominent figures who sat at their tables, and how these cafes contributed to shaping the present of the most famous city in the world, later creating an index titled “Extraction of Insight in Summarizing Parisian Cafes”.
With a similar style and agile narration of his trips to world capitals, Nadim sets the stage for numerous subsequent indexes featuring cafes in Beirut, Cairo, Damascus, Amman, Morocco, and the Old Continent, as cafes are “the seed of a society that soon produces each other, evolving from the genes of their interests and the core of their ambitions,” forming a mirror of the identity and imagination of the city’s residents.
Moving from these special places like cafes, Nadim transitions to the open urban spaces to explore the aesthetics of cities and towns, chasing the sources of poetry in them, then delving into the myths of nations and the dominant stories shaping their imaginations, from the Sweden Vikings, passing through horror tales in Germany, to the wolf tales in his town “Nebek”.
The writer dedicates indexes to what each country he visited is famous for, compiling lists of the most renowned fashion designers for Italy, notable comic artists for Belgium, singing maestros for Turkey, painters for the Netherlands, and so on, providing the reader with insights into various cultural or artistic phenomena presented by the author in his journeys.
Descriptive Travel Literature
The book “Ibn al-Nadim’s Catalog: Algorithm of Sequential Faces and Places” falls under “Descriptive Travel Literature,” where the traveler describes the cultural and civilizational landmarks of the countries he writes about, alongside his personal impressions of these landmarks and peoples, employing a narrative style to enrich the reader with valuable information inspired by experience and reality, distinguishing it from other literary genres.
In our book, the traveler constantly moves from the general to the specific, from the common to the particular, ensuring pleasure, knowledge, and a good read for the reader, avoiding presenting dry narrative material.
It is clear from the beginning that Nadim was not interested in producing a book with distinct and defined formal characteristics, so the news, stories, and narratives are fragmented and discontinuous, starting from the Syrian Qalamoun Mountains then suddenly shifting to Paris then Marrakech and Rome, and other cities without a specific time or geographical criterion determining this transition, as the author begins a tale only to swiftly leap to another, diving into it with research and details, then quickly jumping to a third unconcerned with seeking a logical connection between them.
The author charges his work with many quotations from songs he loved or heard, deriving from them the expressive material often presented in the form of memoirs intertwined with tales of wandering, and perhaps being a poet, journalist, and writer of documentary films simultaneously helped him in combining narration, poetry, and articles in a refined literary language.
During his professional career, Nadim occupied several positions, the most prominent of which were: the head of the cultural department at the Saudi Heritage Foundation (1998-2000), creative text director at the Grey Agency for Documentary Films (2005-2009), having a number of documentary films and poetry collections to his credit.
