We, the Arabian Stories team, have been so looking forward to breaking this news that, in order to rein back our impatience, some of us have actually gotten around to learning how to do handstands and backflips, which are skills on the acquisition of which we had given up, after years of prioritizing our respectability at school, which came at the expense of vexing our gym teachers, which we did guilt-ridden, and thus tried, at the very least, to do creatively, by coming to them every day with a new excuse, each a tad more bizarre than the one presented the day before, a courtesy on our part that did, on the upside, contribute handsomely to the development of our fevered imaginations.
Back to what matters: the announcement. The winners of the “Two Thousand Nights and Awakening” literary contest are our genius wordsmiths,
in first place, Mr. Kamel Aisawy, author of At the Tea Vendor’s,
and in second place, Mr. Ali Al Tuma, author of Chaouen, 1936.
Congratulations to both of them on behalf of the whole Arabian Stories team! Stories like theirs are what inspire us to keep dreaming of a world where spoons and other unyielding bodies do end up bending, and we can feel in charge, if we are so inclined.