Whoever has not read the stories of (Mary's Plant) by the storyteller Nouf Al-Samarqandi has lost like someone who found a treasure but did not take any of it. If a passerby stopped him, saying to him: There was a treasure on your way, so where is your share of it?

Then he will bite his fingers in regret.

I found this regret within myself, and in order not to be alone with that state of regret, I distributed several copies to a group of friends, and set a date to discuss the stories, as we are a group of lovers of captivating texts.

During the discussion about the collection, words of admiration and praise were scattered, and our surprise was that the collection (Mary's Plant) was not widespread among those preoccupied with narratives.

Before this discussion, admiration, and surprise, we had regular sessions to determine a creative work that would be our main topic at the next meeting. One of the main members suggested reading a collection of short stories entitled (Mary's Plant) by a writer named Nouf Al-Samarqandi. His suggestion was more like flattery, endorsing the short story work by saying:

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You will find stories

O you who are worthy of the concept of storytelling.

Ready to bet on the quality of the stories, we reluctantly accepted his suggestion, as we had three suggestions to read: Milan Condria's novel (The Joke), Isabel Allende's novel (The Fat Porcelain Lady), and Mahmoud Darwish's poetry collection (In Praise of the High Shadow). With the agreement to his suggestion, and so that no one would apologize for not having the collection, he promised to deliver the collection of stories to each one of us, in any way possible, whether by copies (he would buy them for us) or a PDF copy, and send it to each of our emails.

His insistence was coupled with that wager that we would find a wonderful work of fiction.

..

I returned to my library, remembering that I had acquired this collection from the Jeddah Book Fair but hadn't yet read it. To prove my memory was correct, I began rummaging through the bookcases in my library (the short story collections section). While examining them, I noticed our colleague's insistence on reading this collection. So, what did I find in it?

The stories, in order to insist with that gentle insistence, and because I trust his reading, and his inclination towards creative beauty, I excused his insistence, for we have become accustomed to exchanging the aesthetics of creativity that has not been revealed. There are dozens of short stories and novels that have been published and no attention has been paid to them, so they have been buried inside our offices until one of us reads a creative beauty and insists on exchanging it with us.

My desk is imposing, even though it occupies the middle wall of my office, where I like to spend long periods of time. My fingers fell on a book titled (Mary's Plant), its cover predominantly gray, adorned with a painting of a beautiful girl. The author's name and the book's classification (short story collection) were printed on it. Several lines from the collection's texts were taken and distributed across half of the cover, and on its right side... My mouth softened into a broad smile when I remembered my friend Shawq, who is fascinated by form. She is an obedient student of formalists, as her critical view begins from the very first pages of the book. She is keen to give the cover the highest priority of attention, to the point that once she read the novel (The Asylum) by Dr. Ghazi Al-Qusaibi, and the novel's cover was a picture of Dr. Ghazi wearing a blue suit, his mouth wide in a broad smile. That picture led her to a formalist critical reading of the novel, and I asked her: And you were one of those who laughed when you read it...

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If the picture of Dr. Ghazi was wearing a thobe, ghutra and agal, would your criticism of the novel be more accurate?

She did not receive my question with open arms, but rather with a frown, and perhaps she cut off the word (stupid) before clarifying it with the explicit word.

I laughed now as I explained the cover of the novel (Mary's Plant).

Honestly, I found this wonderful collection capable of captivating you from the very first story, compelling you to continue reading. So what prompted me to write the introduction to the second edition of the collection "Mary's Plant"?

There are multiple reasons, perhaps the most important of which is the principle of spreading creative beauty, although I refuse to write introductions to books, as I believe that the introduction forcibly deprives the main author of his reader if the introduction begins to reveal the pleasures of the story by narrating details. The beauty of texts is based on the reader's pleasure, that pleasure that creates wonder, which the storyteller establishes without the reader's knowledge, to surprise him with the moment of confusion in his feelings, and leave him wondering: What did this storyteller do to take this gasp from me? And the storyteller Nouf Al-Samarqandi here takes the gasp from you in all the texts of the collection.. And I will promise the readers that I will not play the role of revealing what the storyteller does to weave a story in order to seep into your feelings until she plucks from you a gasp of admiration.

No matter how much the presenter claims to be preparing the reader, he will only be that pretender. A text that is unable to distinguish itself will not be distinguished by any introduction from any writer who begins the beginning of creativity with any introduction whatsoever.

I admit from the outset that the stories surpass any presentation, and therefore I ask the reader to overlook what I write here, and to pay attention to the beauty of the newly created stories in this collection.

The short story writer Nouf surprised me by creating fictional worlds unlike any I had previously encountered. Her narratives unfold in a labyrinth of twists and turns, each subverting the previous one, not to shatter it, but to establish a scene entirely different from what it began to build. The author did not follow the guidance of theorists of the short story, nor did she adhere to the dictates of those appointed to illuminate the paths of storytelling. She chose not to carry Maupassant's "Necklace," nor chase after Chekhov's "Bullet," nor slip from Gogol's "Overcoat."

To appear, having avoided the (splash) of Youssef Idris, and gotten rid of Borges' umbrella, she wanted to be herself without the narrative robes that haunt her with the accusation that you wanted a dress other than your own, she wanted to be herself, striving to have her own imprint.

She deliberately reduced the human narrative experience by perfecting its steps in every rough or smooth land, and because the artist does not need to shout when he opens the outlets of his narrative existence, I found that the storyteller Nouf Al-Samarqandi flows joyfully in harmonious turns without shouting, like a hippopotamus when it shines and turns to steal your eyes with the brilliance of its glow, so with every narrative gasp her lung expands to tire of the breezes of the human soul in the storytelling and narration in its lower and upper layers.

There are texts in which the writer deliberately reverses the text on itself, and this is a narrative behavior in which she excelled, so that the text turns into a successive dialectic (construction and negation, negation and construction) which is the dialectic of ideas in Hegel, and not the dialectic of matter in Marx…

This is how the story or its idea can work in a non-disruptive parallel (with and against), and the parallel is phased, as the events quickly become intertwined, forming a compound from which several elements are generated, each of which works to generate its events with a distinctive variety for each branch of those events, leading to the dialectic of the text with reality. This characteristic was formed in the stories: (Intentions that split the dry earth, Mary's plant, and Kohl), so the formation of the curves of the story did not lose the coherence of the event and its techniques, even if there is a reversal of the text on itself, not as disintegration, but rather as a dramatic escalation of the event and bringing it to a high climax, with care to unravel the conversations so that the moment of enlightenment has an illumination that leads to the creation of an accumulation of artistic wonder: (Do not forget the food of the pigeons, and small spites, a shelter in the heart of the water), even though wonder was established from the beginning in the texts of the collection.

The meaning of the text, according to the storyteller Nouf Al-Samarqandi, is distributed according to the reader’s taste. This happens without soliciting sympathy for the text or directly conveying the hidden meaning between the word and the waves of the story’s event, in linking the storyteller’s skill with the intelligence of the reader who appreciates what he reads.

This happens through the blending of reality with the idea of ​​the story, so that the two elements move like oars working in harmony so that the event does not lag behind the idea.

In the dynamics of storytelling, the author maintains her right to steer the ship, even if it creates chaos. This is a deliberate chaos that does not take the reader off the ship, as the wide expanse of the river enables the author to open windows to enjoy that chaos.

This approach represents the chaos of life, where what happens are chaotic actions that are coordinated in a system that accepts chaos. Although that chaos and the imbalance of events with each other represent the rotation of events in every point on earth, events happen everywhere in the same form, with time and place being the only variables. The event that you read within the text in your hands has a similar occurrence in another place and at the same time. This does not mean dropping the temporality of the narrative, but rather confirming its blending with the reality of life, and the difference between the two realities

It is the spark of the reader's mind.

The story has gentle touches that attract from the first contact that occurs between the text and the reader’s eagerness to discover the nature of what he is reading, with an enticing beginning to ascend the degrees of the text until it reaches the wide corridors. The reader’s mind begins to wander among the curves of the storyteller, and if he relaxes, the storyteller is drawn to him, where she bends the narrative to spaces of escalating events unexpectedly, so you find in the reader’s imagination the insistence to differ from what he expected (a story if the picture could speak). Then, when the reader reaches the moments of enlightenment and reveals it, the storyteller stops at what satisfies him with additional eagerness, and this is a narrative intelligence in which the storyteller does not give up her narrative tricks coming in other texts of the short story collection.

Integrating dialogue into the narrative so that it becomes a narrative unit that can advance the text without any narration at all, or drying up the narration to assign the task to dialogue in establishing the pillar of the story. Then the dialogue becomes a narrative value (I adore Noon), even if the storyteller deceives the reader by finding a secret that resides in the dialogue, it is one of the narrative methods during the story.

When you delve into the psyches of (the story of Fanshesta), it confirms the absence of the self or its contamination by what it finds of false temptations. The texts of the collection go to the narrative self in most of the stories, starting with mobilizing the narrative scene with strangeness and stimulating the reader’s mentality (Shelter in the Heart of the Water), and (The Cemetery Hotel), and the experience of starting from the middle of the story, and from its end, and in this way it turns the story into a circular concept (Small Spiteful Things), and (Wounds are Retribution).

In the story “Mary’s Plant,” which the author chose as the title for her collection, she used a linguistic style and a gradual approach to storytelling without revealing the thoughts of the heroine or the supporting characters. Even the internal monologue kept concealing her thoughts until it reached its peak, so that the end would reveal everything that was in the corridors of the heroine’s psyche. This is a narrative style that intensifies the mystery to shine at the end of the story, although it is not a reprehensible mystery, but rather a beloved mystery that has keys to unraveling the symbols of the mystery that the story follows.

In some stories, the setting feels outside the city with its noise, branches, and discordant sounds, and leans towards the village or countryside, where the language is as clear as a note coming from a sweetly played stringed instrument.

In each story, you can arrive at several interpretations. For example, the story "N" immediately evokes the letter "N" in the reader's mind. Is it the Qurayshi deity, the letter "N" swallowed by the whale, or is it a reference to the author's name beginning with this letter? If your imagination continues, you will add "(and what they write)," which is a reference to all writers and chroniclers. Therefore, each narrative text has multiple impressions. The author may draw you into searching for the essence behind the words and letters, or she may intentionally rely on the reader's experiences, inviting them to contribute their own experiences to the story so that they become one with the written narrative. This is a narrative technique that involves the reader in adding their own creative touch, or perhaps it is simply one of the established narrative devices

Reading and writing are done in parallel.

Nouf, the storyteller, plays the game of hunting with the imagination of fantastical narration as a way to stimulate the reader's imagination.

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She did not forget her grandmother's advice to her: When the sun rises, follow the seed of light to where it rises (Story: Intentions Split the Dry Earth). And because of the hunter's patience, she weaves with her linguistic patience the garment of the story between the sign of the rain falling and pouring down on the seeds of intentions. From there the narrative language spread out poetically, and events branched out that emerged from those planted intentions that turned into existence from the heroine's name when the voice of an old sheikh who was not present for her prostration rises up, throwing the name of Baraka upon her, meaning that all the scenes were generated from a being who has the blessing and the white intentions.

Nouf Al-Samarqandi's writing has traversed the authentic form of the short story. This is a collection that the reader can attest to upon finishing it. It is one of those short story collections that has been unjustly overlooked, as it was published during a period of rapid literary output, resulting in a deluge of stories that went unexamined by critics. But the critics' blindness, and the writer of such captivating narratives, will not despair. The narrative spirit is confident that the writer will achieve her artistic and creative goals and gain wider recognition. While this is a welcome sign for Nouf Al-Samarqandi and a sign of anticipation for her writing, our eagerness extends to her novel, "My Master Kamel," which is promised to be published soon.