A review by shanth
Friendly Fire by Alaa Al Aswany

5.0

There is something very powerful in the way Aswany says more by what he leaves unsaid, like what transpires between the new resident and the despotic chief of the hospital in Kitchen Boy, or how he leaves us hanging at the end of Waiting for a Leader waiting for el-Nahhas. In a lot of ways the way he describes violence, especially that directed against women, in his stories is reminiscent of Manto in its very neutral matter of fact language. This absense of judgement and condemnation from the author, this silence on the unspeakable violence that goes on, hits harder than the most scathing condemnation could. He is not all gloom though. In Izzat Amin Iskander a disabled boy rides a cycle for the first time, falls down, and asks, smiling, “Did you see me ride the bike?”. There is something extremely beautiful in those two pages which restores our faith in the human spirit the way only a master writer can.