It is customary for any writer's first production to obtain a "passport" for the reader... a word from a famous pen at the beginning of the book... or brief sentences on the back cover, or a wide advertising campaign in which the writer, the publisher, and friends of both parties participate, in which they recount how the stories were created, and how the wounded pen bled them, and how... and how... I believe that a book must present itself, and if it fails to achieve even a part of its writer's ambition, then the writer must accept that simply, just as he accepted - time and time again - to tear up stories to rewrite them... or write others... and thus "Death of Bed No. 12", I push it to pave its way, if it can find its way to the beginning, by itself, without "intercession", without "mediation", and without a "passport." Ghassan Kanafani, 1961