Acapella

By: May Telmissany

"Acapella" is a text that challenges all narrative assumptions familiar to the reader. The reader must first understand that the word "acapella" belongs to the world of musical sounds, meaning individual singing without instrumental accompaniment. It is as if individuality declares itself from the very beginning, leaving the reader alone to confront the text, possessing nothing but their own self and the diaries of Aida, which she rewrites, or rather, types on the computer.
Mahi and Aida are two contradictory friends who are nevertheless essential to each other. Aida embodies a lighthearted being with all her contradictions, sadness, joy, opportunism, ambiguity, the pleasure of being with her, and the simultaneous desire to distance oneself from her. Mahi, on the other hand, comes from a world that embodies strict bourgeois values based on right and wrong, the imposed and the unacceptable. In this constant friction between the two friends, Aida reveals her delight in exposing Mahi's bourgeois nature, while Mahi oscillates between submission to her small, disciplined world and crossing over to the other side, where a truer and more expansive world awaits. Dr. Shirin Abu Al-Naja