Dalma statue

Author's name: Reem Al-Kamali

A new and revised edition of the novel “The Statue of Dalma (The Becoming of a Wink)” which won the Sharjah Creativity Award 2018. (Nurta), the handsome young man with creative abilities, succeeds in his studies of divination, then returns to his island (Dalma), to think about sculpting a large statue of (Becoming), the goddess of the Gulf and the giver of copper and Crimea, with which he will grant (Dalma) a lofty position in the middle of the sea. However, the religious rebellion within him that he did not announce, in his greed for a position in the temple and a noble status after poverty, did not allow him to release his inner disobedience except in his practice of sculpture, by changing the gaze of (Becoming), from the “gaze of the distance” as in the gazes of the carved goddesses, to the “direct gaze of man.” His goal is to humanize the thought of the god, and thus he continues to commit violations in a hidden manner, even by placing the seal of his name engraved on the body of the statue. A novel that takes the reader to the world of the Gulf and its coasts before religions, from the end of the Sumerian era. To the beginnings of the Akkadian period, whose first empire was formed by (Sargon of Akkad) from southern Iraq, passing through the Gulf, exiting the strait, and arriving at the coastal Tyre of Magan. How did Nurta deal with the statue on his island, in the face of the violent attack of the Akkadian soldiers? With a highly literary language, Reem Al-Kamali proceeds with her contemplative and intellectual texts to describe the prophetic, clever, talented and rebellious hero on his path, with his internal changes and contradictions in his confrontations with those around him and with (becoming) the carved goddess that he does not want to leave.