In recent years, the name of Habib Saruri (born 1956), a prose writer, poet and publicist of Yemeni origin, who has been permanently residing in France since 1976, has become widely known in Yemeni reading circles. The reason for the popularity of the writer was not so much his literary skill, which is still being formed, but rather his characteristic "Western" frankness in topics of politics, religion and the sensual aspect of love, which in recent decades has consistently ensured the success of works by other Arab authors.

Saruri's first novel, The Ruined Queen, which he wrote in French and later translated into Arabic, was devoted to the life of South Yemen in the first half of the 1970s, when the country began to build socialism [Abdulrab, 1998; Saruri, 1999]. This essentially autobiographical novel is based on the author's memories of his own youth, which was spent in Aden. The independence of the writer, who is a French citizen, from Yemeni censorship allowed him to present a picture of the socio-political life of those years in a frank, sharply satirical form, which immediately attracted the attention of Yemeni readers who were not used to such creative courage. It is in this novel, perhaps for the first time in Yemeni literature, that a new perspective appears on the phenomenon of mass emigration from Yemen - one of the main themes of the work of several generations of Yemeni writers. Saruri sees emigration not as an eternal Yemeni curse, as his predecessors believed, but as a simple and sure way to find happiness in life. This idea of Saruri, which is repeated in his subsequent works, is formed both by the writer's idea of Yemen as a kind of evil empire, where human happiness is impossible under any circumstances, and by his own prosperous position in France, where he holds the position of a professor at one of the universities.

The inability of a person to find personal happiness in Yemen, as it follows from the works of Saruri, is due to the general socio-political and cultural backwardness of the country, one of the manifestations of which is archaic sexual morality, which determines the disenfranchised position of women in society and the family. The writer blames the country's extreme backwardness on the current political regime, which was formed as a result of the unification of the northern and southern parts of Yemen into a single state in 1990. As for archaic sexual morality, Saruri criticizes it from the standpoint of a "Western" view of individual freedom, which is not typical of the Yemeni literary tradition, which reflects the religious tradition. If, for example, the relationship between two lovers in Yemeni prose has always been depicted almost as a platonic feeling, and the manifestation of carnal desire served as a standard characteristic of the negative hero, then in Saruri's works the main character always craves sex, enjoys it, reflects on its physiology, while remaining a decent person.

The theme of the backwardness of the country as a whole and archaic sexual morality in particular became the leitmotif of the short stories in the collection "Excited Whispers in the Realm of the Dead", serving as the main theme of the book.-

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It was used as material for Saruri's second novel "Damlan", where many thoughts, plot moves, and images of individual characters migrated from these stories (Saruri, 2000; Saruri, 2004).

The novel "Damlan", in which the author tried to invest, if not to say" squeeze", almost all of his life experience, adding fairy-tale and fantastic storylines, it was precisely because of this" oversaturation " that it turned out to be devoid of plot and compositional integrity. It is significant in this respect that the first and second parts of the novel were published in separate editions in 2003, apparently when the author did not yet have a clear idea of what the sequel would be.

In the first part of the novel, entitled "Dagbus Street", the main character Wijdan, who spent a decade as a recluse in his home in Sheikh Osman, a suburb of Aden, travels to the fantastic country of Damlan, located in the Himalayas and representing, according to the author's plan, a parody copy of Yemen. The fact that Damlan is a parody copy of Yemen is confirmed by its name, which is consonant with many Yemeni place names, but has negative connotations in Arabic, and the name of its capital - Tanaka, which means a certain fairyland in Yemeni folklore and has already been used by Yemeni short story writer Arwa Abdo Usman to refer to Yemen [Usman, 2001], as Saruri points out in the novel itself. Wijdan's account of his journey ends with his arrival in Tanaka, followed by his recollections of his youth spent in Sheikh Osman in the late 1960s and early 1970s, including his first unhappy love affair. Here Saruri, with his characteristic wit, recreates the same realities that he already described in The Ruined Queen.

The second part of the novel, entitled "Saint-Malo", is a memoir of Wijdan about his studies in France, written by the author on the basis of his own impressions of his student years. These memories, vivid, lively and witty, end with a somewhat far-fetched story about the failures in the hero's personal life, which force him to return to Yemen.

In the third part of the novel, titled "Sardine Jar," Wijdan recounts his misadventures in today's Yemen, culminating in his seclusion "like a sardine in a jar" at his parents ' home in Sheikh Osman. Vijdan then completes the story of his journey to the country of Damlan, where he witnessed a coup d'etat carried out by women fighting for their rights, after which he wakes up and realizes that his journey to Damlan was just a dream.

In this rather loose plot, however, two main ideas of the novel are clearly visible: the monstrous backwardness of modern Yemen and the plight of the Yemeni woman. In fact, these two themes, to which the author, with his usual frankness and wit, returns again and again throughout the story, and gave the novel the sharpness that ensured its popularity among Yemeni readers.

The tragic fates of Yemeni women, such as Susan, Wijdan's first lover, look even more tragic against the background of the author's description of the freedom enjoyed by French women. "Getting a beauty in these parts," says Wijdan, " is so difficult that sometimes it is simply impossible. You can't buy a girl here for a marriage ransom, or for elephants hung with gold; she absolutely doesn't need you to buy her food and clothes and pay for her hotel room during the holidays; your mother won't go to her mother to ask for a girl's hand in marriage by paying money for her; without saying not to mention that the girl here is not accustomed from childhood to submission and submission to the man" [Saruri, 2004, p. 175]. In fact, by the freedom of a woman, Saruri first of all understands the freedom to express love feelings, which is impossible in Yemen, just as love itself is ultimately impossible in Yemen. "All of us," says Vijdan, " are representatives of this miserable society, which knows neither proper food, nor clean water, nor education, nor laws, nor modern technology, nor medicine, nor power,

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in addition to tribal power, neither progress, nor a normal decent life, nor well-being, nor any elementary things necessary for human life are deprived, first of all, of love" (Saruri, 2004, p.101). The writer considers women's disenfranchisement to be almost the main reason for the backwardness of Yemen, and, apparently, this is why the fantastic storyline of "Damlan" ends with a women's revolution. "O my God," says Vijdan, " how I adore a woman! I consider it the only hope and the only salvation from this gloomy, oppressive, dreary life that is destined for our people. I sincerely believe that this sickly stunted society will rise to its feet only when the hour of the women's revolution strikes and the era of women's rule begins "[Saruri, 2004, p. 64].

As for the general situation in the present unified Yemen, it was much more criticized in the novel than in the novel "The Ruined Queen" the situation in socialist South Yemen. Saruri even cites some statistics, such as the infant mortality rate, to show how bad things are in the country. He blames the Yemeni military-tribal regime for this. There is no doubt that this regime, which is mostly of Northern Yemeni origin and is therefore "alien" to the Aden, is what the author hints at in the next passage: "I never kicked him out of my apartment," Vijdan says of his cheeky friend Jaafar. "How in this respect I am like a distant city called Aden, which always opens its doors to a stranger who knows at a glance how good-natured and gentle the city is. He is so good-natured and gentle that a stranger immediately sits on his neck" (Saruri, 2004, p. 154).

The socialist regime with which Saruri associated the prospect of social progress in Yemen in his youth clearly seems to the writer to be a lesser evil than the rule of semi-literate tribal sheikhs who rely solely on the military strength of their clans. The writer even uses a funny play on Arabic words, saying that under socialism, the country had a policy of "tasvir" (from the word "saura" - revolution), i.e. "revolutionizing", and now it also has a policy of "tasvir" (but from the word "saur" - bull), i.e. "freezing" [Saruri, 2004, pp. 58-59].

The personification of the new power in the novel is the aforementioned Jaafar, an ignorant and lazy country boy who began his life as a servant and turned into a powerful sheikh by the will of fate. The obvious "puppet" character of Ja'afar in the novel is not at all a flaw of the author, since it is precisely this puppet type, whose inner world is limited only by the desire to achieve a given set of material goods, that is very characteristic of the traditional tribal society of Yemen. So the following seemingly parodic description of Ja'afar as a young man can't really be called a parody: "Jaafar was very lazy, he was not interested in knowledge and education, and he used his mind only to make up very funny stories and jokingly discuss acquaintances. The dream of his life, as he has told me a thousand times, was to become a powerful and very rich sheikh, to marry according to the law of God four girls, "one younger than the other," as he said, to have a huge palace filled with servants and retinues, to sleep long in the morning so that the servants would serve him breakfast right in the then go to bed, then swim in your magnificent marble pool, then sit down to a sumptuous meal of broth-laced lamb ribs, meaty beef shoulder blades, and veal rump goulash, and then, in the company of important sheikhs and other rich people, chew khat1 on your own sofa, which was covered with rich carpets that by evening would have turned into a rich carpet. covered with a thick layer of plucked kata twigs, the cost of each of which would be equal to his current monthly salary received from his grandmother Selma " [Saruri, 2004, p. 79]. Such people, the author tells the reader, rule Yemen today.

Cat 1 (Catha edulis) is a plant of tonic or light narcotic action, the use of which in Yemen is a kind of social habit, a collective way of spending leisure time.

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Saruri does not absolve the Yemeni intelligentsia of responsibility for everything that happens in Yemen. "This minister," says Vidjdan of his service in the army during the socialist years, " used to repeat in his speeches some wonderful maxims like this:"When I see the grave of a soldier, I kneel down to kiss it, and when I see the grave of an intellectual, I urinate on it.".. When I remember his words with bitterness today, I realize that this brave soldier was at least sincere. After all, the military and tribal sheikhs in power today, whose cultural level is no higher than that of the minister and whose attitude towards the intelligentsia is no more respectful, prefer to urinate on some living intellectuals, forcing them to applaud their rule every day, extol themselves in poetic odes, distribute awards and medals on their behalf, serve as a civilized facade, hiding the backwardness and savagery of the ruling regime " [Saruri, 2004, pp. 86-87].

The conformism of the Yemeni intelligentsia, which Saruri calls "Yemeni chameleons," is also discussed in the following passage: "When I was eighteen years old," says Vidjdan, "I, like most of my friends and acquaintances, joined the youth, political and revolutionary work, as we then called it, which took place to the sound of the anthem" the line of an era is the collapse of the imperialist camp and the victory of the socialist camp, headed by the Soviet Union"and under the motto "wipe out petrodollar monarchies and transfer all the wealth to the peoples." Of course, I could not have imagined then that the main reciters of all these slogans from among our leaders would turn today into the main singers for all these petrodollar kings and princes" [Saruri, 2004, p.60].

About modern Arab rulers in general, the writer speaks a couple of times in the novel very unfavorably, for example: "I hate climbing mountains," says Wijdan, "just as cats hate swimming, and just as most Arab kings, rulers, and leaders hate reading, even though they are all officially considered writers, poets, and philosophers" (Saruri, 2004, p.15).

Saruri's third novel, The Bird of Destruction, was a real indictment of both the Yemeni regime and the archaic traditions that govern Yemen (Saruri, 2005). The plot of the novel this time turned out to be more slender, although you can also notice some plot "stretches"in it. The main character Nashwan, a Yemeni who works as a teacher at a French university, falls in love with Ilham, a Yemeni student studying there in France, and after a while they get married. In the very first days of marriage, Nashwan discovers that his wife is indifferent to intimate relationships and is not able to experience an orgasm. In describing this situation in detail, the author invades a completely unfamiliar area of Yemeni prose and seems to challenge the established literary and cultural tradition. Dissatisfaction with intimate life and the failure of the couple's attempts to produce a child constantly torment the hero, who assumes that the root of the problem goes back to the past Ilham. After ten years of their marriage, Ilham suddenly disappears, and Nashwan goes in search of his wife in Yemen, where he faces the realities of modern Yemeni life: monstrous lawlessness of the authorities, poverty of the population, child prostitution, etc. In the end, the hero goes on the trail of his wife and learns that as a child, she and her sister were raped by their father, the sheikh of one of the Northern Yemeni tribes. Here, the author himself somewhat spoils his creative idea: the story about the rape of minors looks like the culmination of his arguments about the disenfranchisement of a Yemeni woman due to archaic traditions, but this terrible fact itself is not a consequence of tradition at all, but of a mental deviation that occurs in any, even the most civilized society.

One way or another, the writer's arguments about the situation of women in Yemen also represent a clearly "Western" view, which is not typical of most Yemenis. For example, the hero of the novel tends to associate his purely intimate problems with Yemeni cultural traditions: "The reason for Ilham's aversion to intimate relationships, or the fact that he is not interested in sexual relations, is that he is not interested in sexual relations."-

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I thought it was her coldness, the tightness that reigns in Yemeni society in general and especially in the sexual sphere, the tradition of prohibitions that a Yemeni, and especially a Yemeni woman, absorbs from childhood along with her mother's milk. I read all of Nawal al-Saadawi's books on this subject, 2 and I also remembered Arthur Rimbaud's opinion about our country, which he called "hell for women". I also remembered the words of Karl Marx, who wrote that the level of social progress in any society is determined by how free a woman is in it. In other words, the thermometer that shows the degree of well-being of a woman, the development of her personality, her freedom and happiness, simultaneously shows the degree of social progress" [Saruri, 2005, p. 55].

The novel's hero's rejection of the female hijab, which is typical of the Aden youth of the 1970s, is also very close to the "Western" perception of this phenomenon: "Flocks of women are wrapped in black robes and thick veils that allow only their eyes to see. Looking at these robes and veils, you feel anger, fear and pain. Some veils cover the face completely, along with the eyes, so that the woman runs the risk of crashing into the first lamppost or getting hit by a passing car. In this terrible summer humid heat, you are ready to tear off your cotton T-shirt and even your own skin - so unbearable is this natural hot juicer, where the temperature reaches forty degrees in the shade, and the humidity exceeds ninety percent. And these women are wrapped from head to toe in robes, veils, face masks and thick black gloves - like polar explorers. Who made them endure this suffering? What sadistic fatwa3 forced them to lead such an inhumane lifestyle? Give off that haunting smell, which is a disgusting mix of decaying sweat, sour incense, and cheap perfume? You are filled with a sense of bitter disappointment: in your youth, you constantly dreamed of a "women's revolution" necessary to save this poor, exhausted, helpless country, and now these women are accepting slavery and humiliation, unknown even in the time of primitive man! In a fit of irritation and rejection, I just want to say: damn them! Anyone who accepts such humiliation is worthy of it! Then the irritation gradually subsides, the anger softens. You suddenly realize that when you left this city, the women here mostly went in open clothes, the girls went to school with the guys. And now that you're back, they're wrapped up in all that black stuff. What a misfortune! It is ironic to recall that someone once spoke of " the irreversibility of progress." He should have been told about the irreversibility of the abomination and the irreversibility of the tragedy!" [Saruri, 2005, pp. 142-143].

Saruri was, apparently, the first writer to openly encroach on the" sacred cow " of Yemeni official rhetoric - the unification of the country. "You could certainly feel infinite joy for your Yemen, which has finally united," says Nashwan, " but in reality you don't have much love for this union, which is not a union of civil society with its inherent order, legality, cultural achievements, freedom and progress, but a union of tribal arbitrariness, wearing the kaftan of state power, combining the exhaustion of the population, corruption, barbarism, violence, kata and antediluvian robes " [Saruri, 2005, p. 139]. The very title of the novel is a metaphor for the state of affairs that has developed in Yemen after unification, as is clear from the following passage: "Yemen, where you arrive on July 17, 2000, is extremely sad, infinitely destitute. It is easy to see a bird of destruction the size of Yemen itself soaring in its skies from Al-Ghaida in the east of Hadhramaut to the Sanaa Mountains and the Tihama coast in the west. This bird is everywhere, it covers the entire sky. She masterfully paints a picture of devastation on every inch of Yemeni land, adding new patterns to it every day with diligence and care. This is a rare bird that hates and destroys all good things. Its main task is to

2 Nawal al-Saadawi is a physician and publicist, known in Egypt as a fighter for women's sexual freedom.

3 Fatwa - the judgment of an authoritative religious person made on a particular issue.

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It is the eradication of all that is civilized, all that is beautiful, all that is free, all that is pure" (Saruri, 2005, p. 140).

In the context of Yemen's blatant cultural, social and economic backwardness, the writer finds the activities of Muslim preachers outrageous: "Four microphones located at a great distance from each other in the central part of the block and connected by long wires to the minaret of a neighboring mosque broadcast prayers and sermons to the whole city. A preacher teaches people in broad daylight. What is he talking about? About hunger? No. About poverty? Also no. That the common man is being robbed and humiliated? About the corruption that has permeated this country from top to bottom? About endless interruptions in water and electricity supply? No! About sex tourism and child prostitution? No! About the world's worst health and education systems? About the lowest socio-economic development indicators in the world? No! What, then, is he talking about in his sermon? About the lipstick! Imagine that! About how to beat your wife properly if she puts on lipstick! He advises using a whip. And it is recommended to strike only on the area of the body located between the neck and feet. He does not recommend hitting the face with a whip. What an amazing humanity!"[Saruri, 2005, p. 162]. In the description of Nashwan's life in France, there is this passage: "Alice was not offended by my words, because she (like all citizens of France, where for almost a century neither the state nor educational institutions recognize any religion, including Christian) did not hear anything about hellfire or simply forgot about this concept, even if and I've heard about him in some conversation outside of school " [Saruri, 2005, p. 102]. Comparing the two passages above, it is easy to understand the author's attitude to the religious radicalization of Yemeni society and, possibly, to religiosity in general. In Yemen, where the preacher preaches his sermons to the whole city, it is impossible to live, and in France, where no one cares about the existence of hell and heaven, everything is done for the good of man.

Evaluating the work of Habib Saruri in the context of the development of Yemeni fiction, we can say the following. Although the writer has already published three novels, his authorial style still corresponds more to that of a satirical publicist than a novelist. This is evidenced by his irresistible desire-often even to the detriment of the plot - to present scientific and popular science information, sensational facts of its kind, obvious socio-political bias, sharp, satirical language. As a rule, Saruri is interested in the fate and inner world of the characters just as much as they can express a critical attitude to Yemeni and, in a broader sense, Arab reality. However, it is precisely this semi-publicistic, documentary-satirical style that has ensured the writer's popularity against the background of a mass of vague "introspective" works by other Yemeni authors, about which Saruri himself speaks very negatively in his last novel [Saruri, 2005, pp. 163-164]. In addition, the writer's" Western "view of Yemen's problems known to him" from within " met with fervent support among certain circles of the Yemeni intelligentsia, who have a similar view, but are not able to express it openly. Thus, the work of Habib Saruri filled the gap that was noticeable for many readers before him in the Yemeni national prose.

list of literature

Saruri Habib Abdurrabb. Al-Malika al-magdura (The Ruined Queen). Sanaa, 1999.

Saruri Habib Abdurrabb. Hamasat harra min mamlakat al-mauta (Excited whispers in the realm of the dead). Sanaa, 2000.

Saruri Habib Abdurrabb. Damlan. Sanaa, 2004.

Saruri Habib Abdurrabb. Tair al-harab (Bird of Destruction). Sanaa, 2005.

Usman Arwa Abdo. Yahdus fi Tanaka bilad an-namis (What happens in Tanaka, the mosquito country). Sharjah, 2001.

Abdulrab Habib. La reine etripee. P., 1998.

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