T I K I T I A N       I M P R I N T S

i s     t h e     t i t l e     o f     t h e     n o v e l    

 a u t h o r e d   b y     H a t e m     E l e i s h i    

&  p u b l i s h e d     b y     G o o s e     R i v e r     P r e s s    

i n     A u g u s t     2 0 0 7 

L i n k s

Goose River Press, the publisher of Tikitian Imprints
 

Amazon Reviews


Bookreview.com review


London Book Fair Catalog, April 2008
 

Discussion questions and author interview at bookreporter.com


Tikitian Imprints Group on Face Book
 

The Book Reviewer Club

Tikitian Imprints, the script
 

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O N    T H I S     P A G E

W H A T    I S    T I K I T I A N     I M P R I N T S

B O O K     B A C K     C O V E R

R E V I E W      B Y     D R .     R A S H A D     B A R S O U M 

R E V I E W    B Y    H U G H     F O X  

R E V I E W     B Y    B O O K R E V I E W . C O M

W H A T     I S     T I K I T I A N     I M P R I N T S

   Tikitian Imprints is an autobiography of Man. Its central theme is that humans, regardless of the time they existed and the place where they lived, basically remain the same person with the same worries and fears and the same set of inner conflicts and achieved compromises.

   Tikitian Imprints traces back and grabs, through the life story of our grand grandparents, a couple that lived thousands of years ago in Tikita, the origins of how we, modern humans, think, feel and act.

   It traces back the origins of human competition, struggle, envy, hypocrisy, love for exploration and knowledge and also the origins of social norms and codes of conduct. It goes back to the day the first human decided to work, not to obtain food and shelter, but to achieve social recognition and to acquire a peculiar type of safety that we, modern humans today, call self-esteem. 

   Also, it traces back how the index of what is ideal look and ideal action and behavior for men and women was formulated, how jealousy and possessiveness that mark man-woman relationships operate. Lastly, it traces back the early human sketches of the concept of a religion and of a Creator, the early stimulations of the innate human receptors for a Godly message and the paradoxical failure of many humans to live and act according to their faith in God after His message is at last delivered to them by His prophets.

B O O K     B A C K    C O V E R

Tikitian imprints is a story about origins. It’s the story of Habi and Sheeba in which we are transported thousands of years back in time to the Kenyan Tikitian valley accompany the very start of societal human existence on earth at a time when it had not yet been masked by the heaps of denials and defense mechanisms that modern humans so liberally shelter today. It’s a story about real reasons, real reasons that lie behind the good reasons that we give to others, and more importantly, to ourselves for what we think, what we say and what we do.

Do you ever wonder why…

…intimate friends can still feel envious of each other sometimes? Is it fair to blame anyone for how he/she feels after all?

…a male has more of a natural tendency to flirt while a female has more of a natural tendency to be a one-man-woman?

…people spend a lot of time smiling and complimenting each other which is not all genuine, yet still so universally required and expected?

Do you think…

…lovers give unconditionally or they only give with the expectation of the love and care that they get or will get in return?

…friends talk to each other to send and receive information or mostly to listen to themselves talk, knowing that someone who identifies with their chaotic head doings is listening?

Throughout our exciting psyche-exploring journey with Habi and Sheeba, we come to face many personal self-discoveries of our own. There are discoveries that you will want to deny, discoveries that will make you cry and discoveries that will make you laugh. Your discoveries will make an imprint on your life forever.

R e v i e w     b y   D r.    R a s h a d     B a r s o u m

  It took me a single weekend to finish reading this fascinating book, and also to realize that its “end” is only the beginning of endless echoes that vibrated my thinking, imagination and emotions.

 The author, Dr. Hatem Eleishi, has been my student in Kasr El-Aini Medical School, indeed one of the most brilliant. Beyond scholarly distinction and professional outstanding, Hatem has always been a great thinker, dreamer and liberal analyzer, which eventually added to his teaching an extremely attractive flavor and irresistible charisma.

 Over the span from creation to eternity, Hatem has put his very special perception of the evolution of human behavior from “default” to “customization” in order to adapt to the bylaws of civilization. In a monograph of only 168 pages, he intelligently describes the seamless process of transformation from loneliness and self protectiveness of the human prototypes Habi and Sheeba, living in a primitive valley, Tikitia, through the complex constraints and compromises required for mingling into a comprehensive community of phenotypic similars albeit being genetically, intellectually and socially different.

He puts all this in a story that combines action, drama, thrilling and intellectual entertainment of practical philosophical concepts in elegance and style.

It gives me a real pride to see this work so well put together by a physician, particularly being one of my admirable students.

R e v i e w    b y    H u g h    F o x

    Eleishi's Tikitian Imprints is fiction that reads like a blend of the Maya Popul  Vuh, Freud and St. Paul to the Corinthians: "Being limited at accurate perception, humans were thus limited at sure knowledge and being limited at knowledge they were thus limited at wisdom....They could not even understand the reasons why they were brought to that planet in the first place. They needed the Manual. They could not do it without the Manual, the Manual of the earth." (p.158).

    There is a plot, Habi and Sheeba transported back  to the Kenyan Tikitian valley in Africa to see how  man first started his existence on Planet Earth, but plot is nicely submerged in vision, and the book emerges  as a classic overview of human limitations faced with the immense reality of the world that surrounds him. I could see it become a kind of new bible for a whole new humanistic religion.

R e v i e w    b y   B o o k r e v i e w . c o m 

 

   In this thoughtful, if didactic treatise Tikitian Imprints, author Hatem H. Eleishi contemplates the human struggle between our innate impulses and the behavioral codes of human society, focusing on the moral implications of that struggle, and the real reasons why we behave in the ways we do. Central to his purpose is the desire to demonstrate to the reader that much of our ostensibly positive social behavior is based on compromises, a set of "give and take" social contracts, not pure moral purposes. In pursuit of these goals, Mr. Eleishi explores the turbulent feelings behind friendship, jealousy, social contracts, sex, and beyond sex--the relationships between men and women in society, and the responsibilities of each.

      To convey these lessons, the author employs a series of short portraits of individuals tormented by the internal conflicts between their innate inner feelings and societal demands, and the need to strike a moral balance in a confusing universe. Ultimately he focuses on a fable-like tale of a man who is miraculously (and perhaps mistakenly) placed, in Tikita, an area of ancient eastern Africa by an angel called Halabai. This man, Habi, is fully grown when he arrives on the planet, but he has no memory and his experience is a blank slate. He leads a primitive, Adam-like existence in this African landscape (complete with an Eve-like counterpart, Sheeba), until his valley is invaded by members of a sophisticated and numerous society, the Hikandans.

      Eventually Habi and Sheeba join the newly encountered Hikandans and make the difficult transition from their original isolated Eden into the socially complex if still primitive society of the Hikandans. In the process, the narrative begins to shift from an illustrative Eden-like fable to a series of Socratic dialogs (a little like those of Plato's Republic) in which some of Habi's Hikandan male friends serve as mentors, delivering complex answers to his questions about his inner feelings, the ramifications of those feelings, the behaviors they produce in his relationships with others, and the reasons for them as defined by nature and, ultimately, the creator.

      Although Tikitian Imprints addresses many subjects that have been explored for centuries by a host of writers, prophets and philosophers, Eleishi's particular focus is a quest to discover the moral truths that lie beneath the surface of "good" human behavior and make them transparent to the reader, revealing the compromises within. As Habi's mentor Auna observes: "To be pure is to recognize our impurities." Mr. Eleishi believes that achieving this understanding is vital if we are to come to terms with our mortality, ensure the future our children will inhabit, and understand the bounty of our creator. The author is aware that initially, not everyone will appreciate his point of view. Read more...

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