The Road Not Taken: Isḥāq Mūsā al-Ḥusseini and His Chickens · 257literary genre but also as a cultural document, expressing a moment in
Middle Eastern history where, justifiably or not, mental roads still seemed
open, curiosity for the “Other”—with all its misunderstandings—per-
sisted, and people could still dream. If the political road today seems
to lead us all in an entirely different direction, to an entirely different
solution, the attitude and atmosphere that Memoirs of a Hen created is
something we urgently need nowadays.
Critical Perspectives
Whatever the ideological and political reactions to this work, there is
no doubt that Memoirs swept the readers—friends and foes alike—in a
beautiful flight of the imagination. Due to its popularity, the book came
out in three editions. According to ̔Abd al-Raḥmān Yāghī, a professor of
Arabic language at the University of Jordan and an authority on the mod-
ern intellectual history of Palestine, the book created quite a stir when it
was published. Yāghī mentions that it was an immediate success when
it came out in the Iqra ̓ series of the Dār al-Ma ̔ārif publishing house in
1943, whereby “in a poll conducted by the publisher... among Arab
readers, they chose it as their favorite book of all those published in this
series.”^8 Another scholar in the field, Dr. Taysīr al-Nāshif, adds that the
book earned its author a prize of 70 dinars for being elected as the read-
ers’ favorite book.^9 No wonder: the story had all the elements of a best-
seller. It combined surprising characters, an attention-grabbing plot, a
fable-like atmosphere, a philosophical dimension, and even an emotional
aspect. Among the story’s many layers, the wise hen also teaches us her
tenets of constructing and/or developing a successful and righteous hu-
man (and avian) character, molded in such a way that would allow one
to live together with others in peace and at the same time to achieve a
state of satisfaction, fulfillment, and happiness in his, her, or its own life.
She critiques and ridicules the giant creatures she meets outside her coop
(whom we understand to be human beings) for being greedy, vile, and
mean—creatures who understand only the language of power. She finds
such characteristics also among her fellow chickens and sets out to rectify
them. But in addition to the philosophical and ethical nature of Memoirs,
the story is full of adventure, suspense, fear, irony, and happiness, as well
as some of the most beautiful avian love passages, verging on poetry in