اخبار السعودية – وطن نيوز
عاجل اخبار السعودية – اخبار اليوم السعودية
W6nnews.com ==== وطن === تاريخ النشر – 2026-04-10 00:02:00
The storyteller Muhammad Ali Quds is considered lucky. In time, place, and literary person, he is the son of a Meccan family. His grandfather was one of the scholars of the Grand Mosque in Mecca, and his father was the owner of a wealthy library. He gained the trust of the pioneers of writers, so he wrote the story. He was the secretary of the Jeddah Literary Board of Directors, and the rapporteur for it, during the time of the writer Muhammad Hassan Awad. He also continued as secretary during the time of Major Abdel Fattah Abu Madin. He prepared cultural programs for radio and television, and for years he has been the figure of the Text Forum in its twenty-second session. In honor of a generosity that spanned more than half a century, here is the text of our conversation with him..• Congratulations on choosing an honored personality in the text reading forum.. What were your feelings when you learned of the news of the honor?•• Thank you, this is God’s grace. It is beautiful for a person to be surrounded by the loyalty and love of those he worked with, as he departs at the end of his journey, and I honestly say that I was surprised to receive the news of my choosing the honored personality in this year’s forum, as I have always participated in choosing the personalities who The club honored her in the past decades, and I never thought that I would be among the honorees.• What does being born in Mecca mean to an intellectual?•• You can imagine someone whose birth was near the Sacred House of God, and who grew up in pure spaciousness, especially since I am from a house of knowledge, and the grandfather was one of the scholars of the Sacred Mosque, and among those who were famous for serving the guests of the Most Merciful. The smell of pure soil and the stories of events and characters whose details I conveyed in my stories and dramatic works are still in my memory, inspired by the genius of the place.• Did I set out to write under the inspiration of a prophecy, foresight, or guidance? How was the beginning with writing, and the relationship with culture?•• My love for creative writing is an old love, and I invested in it my early inclinations since my school years, when I joined the school journalism and radio group, and my talent was discovered by the Arabic language teacher, who is an Azhar from Egypt, at the beginning of my middle school and he was very impressed with my style. During that period, I published my first article in Al-Madina newspaper in the year 1385 AH, and my first story entitled “The Qatayef Seller” was published in the radio magazine in the year 1387 AH. My relationship with journalism was early, and my serious cooperation was with “Okaz” newspaper during the era of editor-in-chief of the distinguished journalist Abdullah Khayyat and the literary journalist Abdullah Al-Jifri, may God have mercy on them. My first story in “Okaz” newspaper in 1389 AH was entitled “Uncle Hamza Al-Assa.” The person responsible for the literary page was Dr. Ali Omar Jaber, may God have mercy on him. My attachment to reading in the past, through my father’s library, which included books published by Sheikh Muhammad Surur al-Sabban, including, I remember, The Exhibition, The Poets of Hijaz, Inspired by the Desert, My Aunt Kadarjan’s Stories, My Days by Major Ahmed al-Sibai, The Stories of Anat al-Saqiya, and the collection of Suzan’s Poetry by the poet Ambassador Hassan al-Qurashi. It was truly my window that tempted me to read and to be keen on acquiring books and reading newspapers and magazines. • What about establishing the Shallat al-Ans magazine? What is the secret of your adherence to the world of writing despite paying the early price? •• The publication of this magazine, of which three issues were published, was a story, motivated by the obsession with journalistic work, and it was printed on a photocopier, and it was written in its title that it was the first youth magazine. I did not consider that its publication without permission would expose me to accountability and pay a heavy price for me and my work team. What drew attention to it was what Professor Abdullah Jafri wrote on the last page of “Okaz” newspaper and his praise of my boldness, drawing attention to it. My punishment was to stop writing for a year. The strange thing is that Professor Abdullah Khayyat gave me the opportunity to write during the period of punishment, so I used to publish my articles in “Okaz” under the name “Muhammad Ali Reda,” and on the literary page of “Okaz” you find many of the articles that I published under that signature. • When was your first meeting with the symbols of literature, Muhammad Hassan Awad, Hamza Shehata, Ahmed Al-Sibai? What about the most prominent things that took place in those meetings? •• In my recently published book, “In the Company of a Dreaming Genius/My Days with Al-Awwad,” I mentioned the whole story about the beginning of my acquaintance with Professor Al-Awwad and the Literary Club, and that was in the year 1395 AH, and I had the honor of attending the historic meeting of Jeddah’s writers to elect the club’s first board of directors, and it was attended by 22 writers and media figures at Kilo Ten Casino, Samrat Elite Forum. I joined the club in 1397 AH as secretary to Professor Al-Awwad, and in the following year a new board of directors was formed headed by Professor Al-Awwad and as members, Mahmoud Arif, Hassan Al-Qurashi, Dr. Hassan Nassif, and Shakib Al-Amawi, and I am the secretary and rapporteur of the council.• Why did many writers stay away from joining the Jeddah Literary Board of Directors? •• One of the reasons why many writers stayed away from joining the board of directors was to avoid clashes and disagreements with Professor Al-Awwad, despite his attempts to communicate with them. He took their approval to join him, and I mention among them the professors Muhammad Hassan Faqi, Muhammad Ali Maghribi, and Muhammad Hussein Zidan.• Have you experienced any competition and conflict between writers?•• In the first years of establishing the club, Professor Al-Awwad was in dispute and in literary battles with a number of writers, including: Abdulaziz Al-Rabi’, Abdul-Quddus Al-Ansari, and Muhammad Hussein Zidan, in the dispute over the leadership of Shawqi’s poetry and the criticism of some poetry collections. The only ones who disagreed with him and remained in contact with him and had a good relationship with him were the poets Muhammad Ali al-Senussi and Hassan al-Qurashi, may God have mercy on them.• What do you comment on those who see your role as an extension of the roles of the Hijaz writers?•• I am considered from the generation after the “Qantara generation,” as Dr. Mansour al-Hazmi called it, and it is the generation of professors Abdullah al-Jifri, Issam Khoqir, Abdul Hamid Anqawi, Muhammad Malibari, Luqman Yunus and others, and it is the generation The generation that came after the pioneering adults, as for the generation of the seventies, is the generation of Muhammad Alwan, Hussein Ali Hussein, Khairiya Al-Saqqaf, Fahd Al-Khelaiwi, Jubair Al-Millihan, and Abdulaziz Al-Mishri, and I am one of them. But I was closest to the pioneers and post-pioneers; Therefore, I was chosen as secretary of the Jeddah Literary Club. Why did you turn to short stories? How did readers and critics receive your collection of short stories, “A Weak Point?”? My first collection of short stories, “A Weak Point,” was published in the circumstances of the Lebanon War in the early 1980s, with poor printing and harsh conditions. Its birth was indeed stumbling. I was not satisfied with it even though it included the first texts of the stories I had published in newspapers and magazines in the Kingdom, and it was not distributed well, which prevented it from reaching the largest number of recipients and critics. It was truly a weak point in my beginnings.• Even though your specialty is business administration and your work is In civil aviation, yet you did not neglect literary and radio production?• I entered the Aviation Institute with enthusiasm with my friends, and we were at a difficult crossroads that every young man faces in his life as he approaches the gates of his university studies, at a time when my literary dreams of writing in the world of narratives were struggling with me, and they are dreams that do not end, whether for love or passion, and it was when the officials in the Aviation Authority achieved for me what would satisfy this passion, so I assumed the editorship of the aviation magazine, and I was responsible for the media affairs and publishing in it.• Did you not experience suffering? Are you envious of those who place thorns and rocks in the roads? How did I overcome the harm?•• There is no doubt about this, but after relying on God, I embodied the saying, “Be with God and do not care,” and I was able to overcome many conflicts and crises. I had the skill to read faces, which I learned from my method of capturing the characters of my stories by interacting with people in public places. So I had to deal with others by knowing the keys to their personalities that would enable me to read their intentions and what they were thinking.• Your relationship with thought seems close. Where did the story of your first publication Flashes in Thought begin? Were you not afraid that you would break into a thorny space during the time of the pioneers? •• My first book, “Flashes in Thought,” included my first radio talks and my articles in the literary pages that had fame and radiance at the beginning of the AH nineties, in the newspapers “Okaz,” Al-Madina, Al-Nadwa, and Al-Riyadh. If we put it in a position of comparison with the two books that were published later, “Contemporary Between Vision and Words” and “Dialogue of Thorny Questions,” we would find in them a great deal of difference in terms of vision and more conscious and far-reaching reading in exploring the depths of meanings and connotations.• What do you preserve from the throes of establishing a literary Jeddah?•• I indicated in a previous answer that I was fortunate to participate in the first literary elections to take place in the Kingdom, in which the writers of Jeddah gathered, headed by Prince Abdullah. Al-Faisal and the two people who called for it, and they were the ones who obtained official permission to establish the first literary club in the Kingdom, Professors Muhammad Hassan Awad and Aziz Dhia. After the election of the first council, I was also lucky, as I was the second member of the General Assembly.• How do you describe the literary and cultural movement in that period?•• It was an unusual movement, especially in the eighties AD. The first years of establishing the club during the time of Professor Awwad were not full of conflicts, as it was a period of establishing and introducing cultural entities. And various literary platforms, and I consider that period to be the calm before the storm, as in the second period, it was headed by Abdel Fattah Abu Medin, and the conflict was ongoing and intense between the two groups of supporters of modernity and their traditional opponents. It is a struggle that was moving from the club’s pulpit to the literary pages and the literature supplement in the newspapers. There were also two teams, one with renewal and the other with rooting, and I confirm that in that period from the club’s pulpit the face of culture changed.• How did you succeed in defusing the distress of the reluctance to honor the poet Muhammad Al-Thabeti for winning the Creativity Award? •• What happened in “The Night That Al-Thabeti’s Blood Was Wasted”? The club had prepared a night to honor the poet Al-Thabeti – may God have mercy on him – after the victory of his collection “Terrain,” which the club issued with the Creativity Award, and that afternoon some extremists in the mosques near the club were inciting to attack the club and prevent it from honoring an immoral poet. They were all of those who came bearing evil for themselves and those in charge of the club. We gathered quickly, including the club’s president, Abu Madin, and the members, Abdul Mohsen Al-Qahtani, Saeed Al-Sarihi, and me. The decision was made to quietly replace the honorary plaque with another plaque for a lecture by Dr. Mustafa Nassef, who had an upcoming lecture. He fell into the hands of the extremists and they began to leave the hall in disappointment, at the same time that the poet Al-Thubaiti was smuggled out of the back doors of the club.• How do you see the extent of gratitude for Muhammad Hassan Awad as a pioneer of innovation in the Kingdom? Was working with the late Abdel Fattah Abu Madin enjoyable or miserable? •• I was often asked how I was able to deal and work with Professor Al-Awwad, as many people avoided working with him, especially since he was famous for imposing his opinion, and it was difficult for him to accept the opinion of others. I knew the keys to his personality, may God have mercy on him, and the personality of Professor Abu Madin after him, and he was more strict and decisive, and the key to Al-Awwad’s personality is to listen to him well and not oppose him at the time, and then you can convince him with another trick that does not diminish his value, but rather Conviction increases with his correct opinion. As for Professor Abu Medin, he is a practical man. If you see that he does not accept your opinion, refer to him the opinions of others whom he trusts and tends to deal with and take their advice.• What new are you working on today, or preparing to publish?•• After my book “In the Company of a Dreaming Genius/Days with Al-Awad,” I am working on finishing my upcoming new book, “What Came in the Conversations Behind the Scenes,” from the papers of my memoirs in the Literary Club. I am also preparing the collection “Seasons of Descent to the Roots,” selected from my six collections of short stories.
