The following pages are sequential pictures of this personality or this genius. We did not care about recording numbers or counting days. We did not write them to begin with the year of birth, end with the year of death, and proceed with the calendar month after month and year after year. But we wrote them as we write our biographies in general, in order to present a glimpse in them. After a glance, the features of the picture are completed after finishing looking at it, and the reader may follow it and do not miss the record of numbers or the counting of days, but rather becomes aware of it as he crosses it on his way, and dispenses with it after that. He will, or keep it both.
Abbas Mahmoud Al-Akkad