In this debut collection of short stories, the online storyteller and YouTuber Mariana Barsoum – a 2000 graduate of the Sadat Academy who works with children in need – embarks on a deep dive into the psychological complications of a range of characters and how difficult experiences inform people’s lives in ways that need not be too damaging. Barsoum entered the world of storytelling through joining a childcare UN programme (SCREAM) in which she learned to use narrative to help children in difficult circumstances. But the turning point took place when her mother, to whom she was very close, fell ill in 2016. It was then that she started expressing herself in the form of coherent, well constructed narratives, which she first made available as audio stories through YouTube, soliciting the help of professional voiceover artists.
The project, named Al-Sandara – or “The Attic” – included 15 stories, some of which appear in this collection while others will appear in another collection. Private World collects the stories that have a strong psychological component, with which topics as childhood trauma and growing pains. Barsoum draws as much on her own life as the experiences of children to which her work has exposed her. In “Ray-Ban”, for example, a young woman’s shock following her close friend’s deception brings up the idea of vision beyond sight – being able to see people for who they are, not just as they present themselves to us – while “Hay Stack” deals with the emotional value we attach to objects, whether it is real and to what extent. Here as elsewhere Barsoum excels in the use of metaphor, with humans being compared to buildings in “Architect”, for example: as time passes we are exposed to all kinds of wear and tear; we are inhabited, soiled and cleansed; and we take on value through persisting through time.
Barsoum says her choice of title reflects the fact that we live in our private bubbles, unexposed to the world at large, yet even so we share our humanity.
* A version of this article appears in print in the 10 August, 2023 edition of Al-Ahram Weekly.
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