File 42

Author's name: Abdul Majeed Sabata

To me, there's no difference between a writer and a chess player. Both are waging a fierce mental battle against their opponent, on a board whose small size could encompass the entire world! And because the calculations of profit and loss in chess and writing are relative and not subject to any logic, I found myself forced to raise the white flag instead of continuing to fight in a battle that all circumstances conspired to lead me to lose, even if I took refuge for a while in a ridiculous phrase that all defeated people resort to: tactical withdrawal. But I'm not a politician who lies to his audience to hide the truth; I'm a writer who lies to reveal the truth to his readers! There's no escape here from signing the document of acknowledgment of it, even if it is an explicit admission of surrender. I am unable to complete the novel project I began writing on Monday, April 1, 2019. This means—if I were to take off my writer's robe and put on the civil engineer's robe, which I discarded years ago because it didn't fit my size—the collapse of a building whose foundations I did everything in my power to strengthen and to respect the timetable for its progress. The building collapsed, leaving only one victim under its rubble: me!