“The purity of white clay” … a historical biography of the...

          Khaled Al-Youssef tells his story in mirrors of literature, places and friends            
           
The Saudi researcher Khalid Al-Youssef culminated in his work for years in collecting, monitoring, documenting and classifying Saudi literature, by writing a cultural biography that extends from the sixties until today, through a detailed narration of his biography, and a monitoring of cultural and social transformations, characterized by depth in exploring the depths of culture and literature and their relationship with society.
The book, which will be issued soon, will be titled “The Purity of White Clay: A Cultural Biography,” and deals with the biography of its author in the stages of reading and writing, the world of writers, libraries and information, and influential figures in his life.
Khaled Al-Youssef, a specialist in libraries, has been working for about 15 years on classifying the tracks of Saudi literature through a "biographical historical study by a pleometric", dealing with prose, poetry and literary studies, with a special dictionary for literary creativity in Saudi Arabia, and he has many literary publications in the story and novel and submitted to the library Arabic has more than 45 authors. 

Vatan biography
Narration of cultural notes began by publishing episodes on his Facebook page, and then evolved to become with the days “the biography of a homeland, the biography of men and personalities, the biography of sites and places and joyful and happy events… A biography of successive tender and successes, and an enlightening thought looking forward to unlimited giving ». This biography has spanned over a period of sixty years since the writer’s birth in the Dukhna neighborhood of Riyadh in 1960 “in which files, papers, archives and the entire archive were excavated, and it is an honest biography that expresses everything related to culture, to writers and libraries, to reading, writing, research and publishing.” It also dealt with many personalities that had a great impact on his life, and the book included an appendix which is another narration that translates the biographies of these flags in a focused and useful brief, and their number exceeded the five hundred and thirty characters.
Khaled Al-Youssef says, “My joyful hope is that the researcher, writer and reader will find a reference book for the history of the nation’s culture, a book in which all the information that those looking for in the course of the literary and cultural movement are searching for, about the active figures in a period of time in which the cultural act was established with a sincere spirit of the homeland.”
When he talks about the place and time of his birth in the Dukhna neighborhood in the capital, Riyadh, he brings the reader to the image of the muddy neighborhood that is overflowing with established traditions and which will remain a major engine in the writer’s paths no matter how much he tries to break free of them, and as he says, “Your birth is in the first heart of Riyadh: Dukhna neighborhood, this means You were born in the bosom of history, geography, and authentic society, in the heart of the families and ancient homes of Riyadh? .. Dukhna neighborhood is the muddy neighborhood consisting of dozens of houses, mosques and palms.
On the cultural influence of the characters on his career, he mentioned that for the first time he recognized an impressive influence in his life from outside the family and the local community. He is a teacher of expression or creation, who “had a great role in building and creating a taste for imagination, storytelling, reading and reading.” This was in the third grade Elementary, and the teacher was Muhammad Al-Subaheen, saying, “He instilled – this teacher – in me a love of reading, writing and learning since the first day I met him, and I saw how he speaks and sends his blades to my mind to instill knowledge in him … and he often flew us in his lesson with stories and stories not Limits to its beauty, the magic of its sequence, and the attractiveness of its delivery, which was reflected on me later to search for these stories.

Riyadh Scientific Institute
As a teenager, Khaled Al-Youssef studied at the Riyadh Scientific Institute. This brought about an “extraordinary shift in his life; Scientific and educational; As I moved from the curricula of the Ministry of Education in elementary school to the mothers ’books in various sciences with the beginning of the middle school, culturally I saw what I had never seen before, in it the morning radio before classes, and the morn after the second session for up to half an hour, and I saw activity in the press on the walls of the institute And I saw a theatrical activity! I felt that at this stage I started a new formation on me.
During his studies at the Institute, the author notices prominent names of religious and literary figures who fell in his studies at the institute, among them, for example, Dr. Sheikh Abdul Rahman Al-Sudais, who currently holds the presidency of the Two Holy Mosques, in addition to the imamate and rhetoric in the Grand Mosque in Mecca, and the preacher Dr. Ayed Al-Qarni.
At that stage, the institute was being tied by very conservative currents and by less conservative currents. Regarding the writer, he found himself repeatedly in the midst of this tension, telling that when he joined the Press Association, where it was publishing a daily newspaper that was arranged by a single student every day, the enthusiasm took him with distinction. “I once published a rhyming poem by Jamil bin Muammar: Jamil Buthaina, and after one hour she was pulled from her place and handed over to the supervisor, and a severe reproach came to me, so I thank God that I did not hear the desires and requests of a number of students to present a strong flirtatious poem by Nizar Qabbani. … And once I dared and published a caricature that had previously been published in a local newspaper, and in the same way it was withdrawn and handed over to the supervisor! He asked me and warned me severely, and told me: Do not forget that you are in the Riyadh Scientific Institute.

Desired and forbidden
The author’s first view of art was from the window of plastic art, where he discovered that he had an inherent talent in drawing and shaping. He picked it up from the minute details of the old lanes in which he grew up. “I discovered something new after a while in our new home in the Sabala neighborhood, I discovered that the features of perfect drawing And the beauty began to be evident in the lines and touches of my hand.
As for cinema, it was facing resistance at all levels, and yet it found its way to dozens of young people in the heart of Riyadh, like other regions of Saudi Arabia in the seventies, about this stage Khaled Al-Youssef notes in his new book, how young people used to watch movies in enclosures and isolated places From the eyes, and through the projector on the walls … “I was saturated by watching many movies in my grandfather’s house, as my uncle shows them to us when we visit them on Friday nights, and he owns a movie projector, and the roof of their wide house turns into a weekly showroom “We – my mother, my three brothers – my aunt, her children, my grandfather and my grandmother, we were waiting eagerly for tonight, especially as he was keen to bring the latest Egyptian and Lebanese films.”
But it is impossible for the situation to persist. Someone who looks at the cinema came in Bashir, and it happened that the author and his cousins ​​met secretly to watch those films, as the boys gathered to rent a cinema projector with four modern Egyptian films, from the cinema shops in the Al Murabba neighborhood. «We agreed that it will be done. The show is after dinner in the house of my cousin Muhammad, in which there is no one of his family, as they travel to our city Al-Zulfi every summer, and we equipped the walls with white sheets, and the place was prepared and an external speakerphone was installed; In order not to be a scandal with the neighbors, and we all sat across from the screen and the speaker among us, but we forgot something important, that my cousin’s house is adjacent to the mosque, and the Fajr prayer is performed on the roofs of the mosque in the summer, and as soon as the muezzin went up to the roof of the mosque, he saw the moving pictures on the walls. He was shocked and his madness: The house of Ben Youssef in it is a jinn that they move! ”The boys received various punishments for what they did. The funny thing is that the punishment of one of them was to immediately marry one of his relatives! Regarding the role of militant groups and their abusive authority, Al-Youssef relates that on one of the student trips while he was studying at the institute, he used a small tape recorder and ran a tape in a quiet voice for Umm Kulthum, but the tour supervisor discovered it and reprimanded him. ”He concluded his speech that he would not take any position or decision against us if we applied his requests Indeed, we have heard and implemented his orders. But then we learned that the one who was watching us (someone) was from these groups! ”

Corridors of press and publishing
Al-Youssef became acquainted with the publishing world in the Saudi press in the seventies, when he published his short stories and poems in the newspapers Al-Riyadh and Al-Jazeera. The year 1979 witnessed the birth of a literary storyteller, as he published his first story entitled “The Illusion of Rain”, and its publication came after experimental texts in writing the short story. His first collection of short stories was published, under the title “Excerpts from the Hadith of Violet,” about which he says, “I was able to establish my feet in the world of Saudi and Arab short stories. Hence my nomination to represent the Saudi short story in the first literary youth festival in the Arab Gulf states, which was held in Dubai in 1985, and my friend Abdulaziz Al-Saqabi was with me in the same field.

Cultural figures
Among the many personalities who passed through the memory of Saudi literature through the narration of Khaled Al-Youssef, Abdul-Karim Al-Juhaiman, (1912-2011), one of the pioneers of the Saudi press, and one of his most prominent works is “Our Popular Myths”, in three parts, the author mentions that during his studies in middle school He used to work in the summer in the court in Riyadh and it happened that a man came asking him for a check, and asked him about his name, to find out that he was Abdul Karim al-Juhayman, the writer of stories, tales and myths, and upon handing over the instrument he asked him: Are you Professor Abdul Karim al-Juhaiman, the author of the book of popular myths? He said: Yes, “I quickly approached him to kiss his head, and he was surprised by what I did and with my information about him. He thanked me and when he left he asked to know my name.”
This happened in the summer of 1395 AH / 1975 CE, and he adds, “Tomorrow I was surprised that he returned before the noon prayer, saying: O my son, I have returned for you, and I offer you these gifts from my books! It was my greatest gift! And the greatest situation I can never forget. ” The literary, cultural, and journalistic personalities and others who influenced the life of Khaled Al-Youssef inside and outside Saudi Arabia, he says, “and because their number is so large, I cannot count them.” However, this book remains an important addition to reading the Saudi cultural scene with a comprehensive historical and analytical monitoring.