On September 23, Abdel Hamid al-Sarraj died, naturally. I cannot say peacefully for not much has been written about the cause of his death posthumously, and when he was alive, he chose not to talk much. By coincidence, al-Sarraj was in my thoughts few weeks before his death. I had been watching the Al Jazeera series "Shahed ala al-Asr" (Witness of History) when the name al-Sarraj (1925-2013) popped up.

 

When the September 16th issue of the New Yorker arrived, I started flipping the pages until I saw "By Fire," a work of fiction, by Tahar Ben Jelloun, a noted Morroccan writer. I must admit that I do not avidly read fiction, even though I edit a magazine that publishes works of fiction along with non-fiction content such as art, film and book reviews.