On Friday, Prince Claus Fund organizers announced the winners of the 2013 awards. The “Principal Prince Claus Award went to Egypt’s “poet of the people,” Ahmed Fouad Negm:

Image from Prince Claus website.

According to the news release, Negm is honored:

…for creating true poetry in vernacular Arabic that communicates deeply with people; for his independence, unwavering integrity, courage and rigorous commitment to the struggle for freedom and justice; for speaking truth to power, refusing to be silenced and inspiring more than three generations in the Arab-speaking world; for the aesthetic and political force of his work highlighting the basic need for culture and humour in harsh and difficult circumstances; and for his significant impact on Arabic poetry bringing recognition to the rich literary potential of the colloquial language.

Negm, who is 84 this year, is a poet of unparalleled stature in Egypt: A 2011 movie, “Al Fagoumy,” explored Negm’s life; a 2012 feature on Al Jazeera did the same. (It’s on YouTube for some.) There are countless recordings of Negm reading his poetry live and, later, on TV. Negm is particularly well-known for his work with Egyptian composer Sheikh Imam.

Promotional material on Alwan for the Arts once stated that, “if the Internationale were to have been written in Arabic, its author would likely have been Ahmed Fouad Negm.”

Negm has been little-translated into English, perhaps because it is so tied to the Egyptian context, but some individual bloggers have made attempts to bring his work across languages. Walaa Quisay translated his “What’s Wrong With Our President?,” “Who Are They And Who Are We?” along with many others. There’s also a new Kindle book (March 2013) by Mohamed F. El-Hewie that promises analysis and translation of Negm’s work.

Negm has been consistently opposed to the Muslim Brotherhood, comparing them with Israeli settlers of late, while praising al-Sisi, calling him a “second Nasser.”

Negm will receive his award in Amsterdam from Prince Constantijn while the other ten laureates will receive theirs from their respective countries’ Dutch ambassador.

Other Prince Claus recipients include Chileann writer Alejandro Zambra and Pakistani visual artist Naiza Khan.

But all 11 laureates are scheduled to travel for the ceremony: “For the first time ever, all 11 laureates will be present at the ceremony in Amsterdam,” the news release states, which will be held on December 11, coincidentally the birthday of Egyptian novelist Naguib Mahfouz.

After I played telephone (or as the French apparently call it, téléphone arabe) with Richard Jacquemond’s “The Yacoubian Building and Its Sisters: Reflections on Readership and Written Culture in Modern Egypt,” Jacquemond kindly sent me a copy of his chapter, from  Popular Culture in the Middle East and North Africa, so I wouldn’t comment on comments about comments about it. The essay was full of interesting observations:

As  Jacquemond was talking “bestsellers,” he discussed the much-discussed divide between “highbrow” and “lowbrow” Arabic readerships. By prevailing wisdom, highbrow readers solely crack the pages of tomes by Yusuf Idris, Mohamed al-Bisatie, Taha Hussein, Sonallah Ibrahim, Ibrahim Aslan, and the like, whereas lowbrow fans in their legions exclusively feast on Ihsan ‘Abd al-Quddus, Ahmed Khaled Tawfiq, Omar Taher, Ghada Abdel Aal, Ahmed Mourad, and Alaa al-Aswani. But, Jacquemond notes:

…a closer observation of the mass reading practices in Egypt reveals that this divide is much more blurred than what the dominant representation would have us believe. The same individuals, families, and social milieus have, much more often than believed, diverse reading practices.

Indeed: Why shouldn’t I like both Yusuf Idris and Ghada Abdal Aal; Sonallah Ibrahim and Ahmed Mourad? I do, and I’m sure I’m not alone.

Jacquemond gathers his data from 4shared downloads, as well as from converations with Cairo bookshop- and bookfair-goers. On 4shared, he finds (1) Mustafa Mahmoud topping the Egyptian-writer download charts, followed by (2) Anis Mansour (who also has more than 100,000 followers on a Twitter tribute account), (3) M. ‘Abbas al-’Aqqad, (4) would-be Nobel Prize for Literature winner Tawfiq al-Hakim, (5) the actual Egyptian winner, Naguib Mahfouz, (6) preacher Muhammad al-Ghazali, (7) “dean of Arabic letters” Taha Hussein, (8) journalist M. Hasnanayn Haykal, (9) preacher M. Mutawalli al-Sha’rawi, (10) novelist Yusuf al-Siba’i, and (11) pop novelist Ihsan ‘Abd al-Quddus. A mixed list, for sure.

Jacquemond doesn’t entirely rely on 4shared, as al-Aswany — the popular author who headlines his essay — doesn’t make a particularly strong showing on 4shared, coming in a good deal below Gamal al-Ghitani, Nawal al-Saadawi, and Sonallah Ibrahim. Also, as Jacquemond notes, these numbers are for books that have been downloaded worldwide, not just in Egypt.

If you were to throw non-Egyptian authors onto the list, Algerian novelist Ahlam Mostaghanemi would come right between (3) al-’Aqqad and (4) al-Hakim. But, aside from authors like Mostaghanemi, Nizar Qabbani, and Mahmoud Darwish — and, yes, Paulo Coehlo — Jacquemond further observes that the Arab book market “is still immune to the major trends prevailing in Western markets, as can be attested by the weak showing [in 4shared downloads] of international bestsellers such as the novels of Dan Brown or Harry Potter, and of highly popular genres such as Japanese manga, heroic fantasy, or detective novels.”

I think this varies by market, and that you’ll find more manga penetration in the Emirates, for instance, but it’s nonetheless an interesting observation that, particularly in Egypt, readerships “overwhelmingly” favor “specific genres of writing such as ‘Islamic’ literature, satirical literature, but also the kind of light and socially committed fiction represented by Yusuf al-Siba’i and Ihsan ‘Abd al-Quddus [a generation ago]…and by ‘Ala al-Aswani, Khalid al-Khamisi” and other authors today.

Jacquemond doesn’t mention some other best-sellers that I would’ve thrown in, such as 1/4 gram (could fit under the rubric of “committed fiction”) or Bilal Fadl’s A Chagrined Laugh (satirical literature). But he further draws lines from the 10th century to today, with many of the popular books having their roots in classical maqama, which, Jacquemond writes, “contains all the essential ingredients of both satirical literature and realistic fiction in their Egyptian manifestations.”

Indeed, Khaled al-Khamissi has said several times that he consciously followed in the maqama tradition, which, whether it was conscious or no, is easy to see in his first fictional work, Taxi. The maqama is also vividly echoed in I Want to Get Married! 

I’d also note that both these works had a mixed reception in English. With Taxi, reviewers weren’t quite sure what to make of the structure and the drivers’ similar-sounding voices; with I Want to Get Married!, English-language readers and reviewers didn’t seem at all sure whether they were reading fiction or fact, and why — if it was realism-based — things were so “far-fetched.”

But Jacquemond is less interested in literary pedigree or the books’ reception in translation, and more interested in why these new books were successful in Arabic and the literary debates they’ve sparked. He suggests that most of the “popular” (middlebrow) authors draw on previous forms and are not concerned with aesthetic innovation, “which is precisely what made it possible for these writers to reach large audiences.” Fair enough. Although, by 4shared standards, al-Hakim and Mahfouz are also quite popular, so there must be other factors as well.

Jacquemond also attributes Youssef Ziedan’s popularity to the controversy Azazeel stirred up, although the sort of controversy matters. You could link Ziedan’s writings to the popular interest in Islamic literature, in that Azazeel, and even moreso Ziedan’s nonfiction Arab Theology, have been seen as books that promote Islam over Christianity.

Jacquemond concludes with observations about how contemporary Egyptian writers are not being grouped into a “generation,” as other Egyptian authors have in the past. He suggests that the old opposition of Establishment writers vs. the Avant Garde, which previously produced these “generations,” is becoming irrelevant, and that now there are two large rocks squeezing creative writers: the Establishment and the Market, with the independent author, who is interested in the aesthetics of creation, yet further marginalized.

As for what recipe makes an Egyptian best seller (or best pirated download, as the case may be), there is certainly something to explore in the intersection of Mostaghanemi, Paulo Coehlo, satirical writing, religious writing, and socially committed fiction. It makes one curious to see what Egyptian poet Issam Abu Zaid had to say in his 2012 collection How Do You Make a Book That Sells?

Best-selling Egyptian novelist Ahmed Mourad was recently at Italy’s Mantua Book Festival. Cristina Dozio wrote about it for Editoriaraba; the blog’s editor, Chiara Comito, graciously translated the post for ArabLit: 

By Cristina Dozio

From the event, via Mouad’s Facebook fan page. 

The last day of the seventeenth edition of the Mantua Book Festival saw the presence of young Egyptian writer Ahmed Mourad, introduced by Arabist and literary translator Elisabetta Bartuli, of the Cà Foscari University of Venice.

Born in 1978, Ahmed Mourad is the author of three best-selling novels, two of which, Vertigo and Polvere di Diamante (Diamond Dust) were translated into Italian by Barbara Teresi and published by Marsilio publishing house. [Note: Only Vertigo has come into English, trans. Robin Moger.]

Mourad and his books attracted many people to the event held in the beautiful city of Mantua, once ruled by the Gonzaga noble family.

Speaking in a quiet and pleasant tone, Mourad does not really look like the classical and experienced thriller writer that he is. One could say that, despite his age, he is one of the pioneers of this genre in Arabic, as the genre suffers from a lack of pure detective stories, namely those books where the detective hunts the criminal. Mourad said that he chose to write thrillers because he felt that this genre was the closest to the Egyptians’ daily lives. By reading crime news in the newspapers, or going through crime cases, the Egyptians have developed practical minds and a detective-like intuition. This is also the reason why, in Mourad’s books, the common people, and not the police, solve the cases.

Talking about the police, Mourad stated that among the “sparks” that brought about what he called “the first revolution” were the injustices perpetrated by the police. That same force who, during the last year when the Muslim Brotherhood was in charge, made the same mistake by allying with and supporting MB’s pervasive power. However, according to Mourad, today Egypt is witnessing a new phase where the people joined forces with the Army and the police.

Speaking about Mourad’s books Vertigo and Polvere di Diamante, the reader might notice a difference: In the latter, the writer shows a greater maturity and there is also a more outspoken complaint/denunciation of the country’s problems. While Vertigo‘s main character Ahmad resembles his namesake author Mourad (at his first try as a writer, Mourad preferred to write about a reality he knew well) who can be defined as a “pure-hearted rebel,” Taha reacts to injustices in a more brutal manner.

This same evolution — which is also evident if one compares the main female characters, Ghada and Sara — goes in parallel with the change Egypt went through. Mourad’s second book was released in Cairo only a year before the 2011 protests, and one can “smell” in it the society’s anxiety to change things, the author said.

Ahmed Mourad is not only a writer, but also a photographer, a screenwriter and a graphic designer: This versatility, shared with many other artists of his generation, is linked to the cultural excitement witnessed by Egypt for at least a decade, during which the Mubarak-led regime loosened its grip over the country and the virtual and real activism gained some space.

Mourad was very enthusiastic about having the chance to write in such a rich and lively  moment of Egypt’s history, a moment in which the readers require writers to record and testify to history in their works. “With the written word, Egypt will be born again,” Mourad affirmed in Mantua, and in saying so acknowledged the contribution to the changes in Egypt made by the intellectuals of his generation. He also added that he would like to experiment other artistic means — like playing an instrument if only he knew how! — to further contribute to his country.

Bartuli and Mourad also discussed the role of the written texts in society: Do they have a real impact on it? The writer gave to the public a couple of examples: In Dubai there are unlimited possibilites for a book to get published and promoted but, at the same time, there is a lack of writers – said he with a smile. As for Europe, when he was touring the UK to promote the English translation of Vertigo, he got the impression that people there read a lot, while in Italy, he added, people might read as little as in Egypt. However, seeing the number of young people volunteering at the festival, he said to be very optimistic about the future…of both countries.

Although the Egyptian political situation is a hot topic nowadays, the audience did not ask many questions on this subject and preferred to focus on the literary aspect of the dialogue with Mourad. However, the people gathered in the gorgeous Teatro Bibiena were very curious to know more about Mourad’s past as Mubarak’s official photographer.  They asked if he had ever went through a conflict of interest between his former job and the harsh reality outside that “golden cage.”

The young author replied that it is just a matter of professional ethics: only by being detached can a photographer freeze those instants that will become fundamental moments in a country’s collective history. He also said that he had given Mubarak some free copies of his books — apparently the former ra’ees did not get their message!

The event took place in the magnificent Teatro Bibiena, the same location where a couple of years ago Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish and Italian actor Franco Lombardi performed Darwish’s famous poem “Mural” in Arabic and Italian. The same show was organized in many other cities including Siena, where this video was recorded live.

This first appeared on Editoriaraba.

Last week, Mohga Hassib attended one of AUC’s Center for Translation Studies lectures. Dr. Tahia Abdel Nasser talked about “Translations of Nasser: Between the Pulic and the Private“:  

By Mohga Hassib

Forty years ago — on September 24, 1973 — Tahia Abdel Nasser, the late president’s wife, decided to change the various discourses circulating after the era of Gamal Abdel Nasser by writing her memoir.

On September 24, 2013, Professor Tahia Abdel Nasser, the late president’s granddaughter, stood before us to present the translation of her grandmother’s memoir as well as a volume of interviews with Gamal Abdel Nasser, which are available in Arabic and have been translated into English, in a public lecture at The American University in Cairo (AUC) titled: “Translations of Nasser: Between the Public and the Private.”

Being the editor of both translated texts: Nasser: My Husband and Nasser and the Press, Professor Nasser examines the role of translation and the global understanding of Egypt through focusing on the translation of these two works. When the memoir was first published in Arabic, in January 2011, it contributed to the late president’s image, but only in the local narrative. The other text was also published in Arabic in 2012, which compiles his interviews and press releases in the local and global contexts. The intent of the release of both works in translation is to offer a lens into the private and public life of the late president and to add to the historical narrative of Egypt post-1952.

Professor Nasser highlighted the importance of the publication of this memoir, and the book on the late president’s life in the press, especially these days, as the translations contribute to the discourses of post-1952 Egypt. These translations, she said, will help in shedding light on the dominant narrative that juxtaposes the January 25, 2011 revolution with the 1952 revolution.

Professor Nasser also discussed some of the challenges that faced her in the translation of the creative memoir. In her case, the process of translating a memoir which belongs to her family is difficult because she is close to the text, and her life is intertwined with it.

“Translating a memoir is a work that depends on different perspectives,” said Nasser. She focused on the project and the content of the translation. “The memoir and the press [book] are central to an understanding of Nasser in the private and public world … the translation contributes to understanding a historical moment in Egypt. It challenges us to re-examine post-1952 Egypt.”

The memoir was written primarily at the encouragement of Tahia’s youngest son, Abdel Hakim, who wanted to know about his father. She wanted her grandchildren to know about him as well.

“Tahia draws the reader into the experience she recalls,” Professor Nasser said. The memoir “troubles the border between memory and history … Few would challenge the difficulty of writing a memoir, especially one concerned with political events.”

The memoir recounts two stages in Tahia’s life. Professor Nasser discussed the way in which Tahia’s memoir mentions details of her life with her husband and marriage, as well as important insight into the twentieth-century’s public moments. Tahia focused on her marriage before and after 1952.

“Few spoke of his life intimately; we sought to translate the life of a man who changed the Arab world … The family sought it because it provides a view into his  private life,” said Nasser about the memoir. The texts are an effort to make a private family archive public in the hope of providing a different representation of events, some of which are critical moments in the history of Egypt. This will allow scholars to revisit certain historical events in Egypt and reexamine what has been previously written.

Professor Nasser further elaborated on the translation project, saying that it is both a creative work and a recreation of that work with a responsibility to the original. Her challenge was in maintaining a narrative of two national contexts, and a private versus a global context.

“It demands that the reader reexamine a context by being in both contexts at once,” Nasser said.

Professor Nasser noted that the memoir is not just about Gamal Abdel Nasser, but it is a reflection of the private world of a strong woman who endured a lot of painful and pleasant moments in history, both made private and public. The book contains a number of family pictures and some of the most notable pictures in history.

Professor Nasser, who values creativity, discussed the difficulty of maintaining the voice of Tahia, the narrator, and thus remaining faithful to the intimacy of the text. Nasser is both a part of yet far from this vast universe presented through her grandmother’s memory and experience, which was one of the challenges that faced her in presenting the imagination and context of the story.

Professor Nasser comes from a generation that was only left with fragments of the post-1952 Egypt. This posed a challenge in remaining concise and truthful to the second work, Nasser and the Press. The second work includes several interviews and statements that were not translated before. Some were conducted by foreign journalists and others in local newspapers, drawn from the al-Ahram archive. “

“The importance of the four-volume work rests in its collection of knowledge,” said Nasser. The two volumes offer insight into Egypt during 1954-60 with a focus on colonialism and independence. The work also includes statements about important developments in Egypt’s history. “This is a national project,” Nasser said; an encyclopedic project that documents a particular period.

The second text project focuses on the translation of Gamal Abdel Nasser outside the Arab world and explains important historical events, and presents his thought.

“The translation allows readers to reexamine the press in local and global readings — texts and contexts,” said Nasser. The volume highlights the work in its original context through maintaining the emphasis on President Nasser’s voice.

Professor Nasser is the first speaker in this year’s translation series which was launched by the Centre for Translation studies at AUC in December 2009.  Other speakers scheduled to appear this year include Nora Amin (“An Enemy of the People: A Muslim Political Drama of Ibsen”) and Mojeb Said al-Zahrani (“The Limits of Translation”).

Mohga Hassib is an English and Comparative Literature graduate student at American University in Cairo. She has been president of the university’s literature club since fall 2011.

The “Museum of Words” has announced the winners of this year’s international flash-fiction competition, which accepts stories in Spanish, English, Arabic, and Hebrew. Young Egyptian novelist Tareq Imam (@tareqimam1) won the Arabic category with his short-short “An Eye”:

From the International Prize for Arabic Fiction.

Imam — also sometimes Tarek Emam — published his first collection of short stories in 1995, when he was just 18. Since then, he has published several more short-story collections and novels; his most recent was My Father’s Shrine, out this summer from Dar Al-Ain.

Imam has previously received awards from the Sawiris Foundation and State Incentive awards; he was also selected for an International Prize for Arabic Fiction nadwa.

A translator’s name is not given on the release (for what is a very, very rough translation), but:

An Eye

Once, I found an eye thrown out in one of the streets, a real one. Even when I leaned and grabbed it gently I touched its tears. I was still able to see the eye certainly different from the sincere eyes scattered on the sidewalks of Cairo. I took it, carefully as not to burst it, looking for someone to give it to. I was looking at it sideways, and saw it contemplating the defeated city, faceless looking with it, without a neighbour who accompanied it to see with it. At the end – my palm got tired, attentive and charged with it – I squeezed it violently, until I felt the world was darkened before it. On this day especially, I met many people who lost everything except their eyes, and only at home, I remembered that one day, I lost an eye.

I hope Imam’s lovely story was not judged entirely on this translation’s basis. The original:

عين

     ذات مرة، وجدت عيناً ملقاة في أحد الشوارع، حقيقية.. حتى أنني عندما انحنيت والتقطتها برفق تلمستُ دموعَها.

    كانت ما تزال قادرة على النظر.. عين تختلف بالتأكيد عن تلك العيون المصفاة المتناثرة على أرصفة القاهرة.

    ظللت أحملها بحرص كي لا أفقأها، باحثاً عن شخصٍ أهديها له.

     كنت أسترق النظر إليها، فأراها تتأمل المدينة مهزومة، دون وجه يرى بها، دون جارةٍ تشاركها النظر.

    في النهاية ـ وكانت كفي الحريصة المثقلة بها أتعبتني ـ اعتصرتُها بعنف، حتى شعرت بالدنيا تظلم أمامها.

    في ذلك اليوم بالذات، قابلتُ أشخاصاً  كثيرين فقدوا كل شئ، إلا عيونهم، وفقط في البيت، تذكرت أنني ذات يوم، فقدت عيناً.

“An Eye” and other winners were selected from 36 finalists, which were previously selected from among the 22,571 stories received from 119 countries. The finalists were selected by a “technical jury” composed of 20 professors and literature teachers, according to the news release.

Note that I previously said the story was 143 words, but, duh, that’s the organizers’ English translation. The original story was a precise 100.

Today is the birthday of Tawfiq al-Hakim, who was not just was not just Egypt’s could-have-been Nobel laureate (he died in 1987, a year before Mahfouz won the prize), he was a wild innovator, a player, a wit, and — according to Mahfouz — the true genitor of the (modern) Arabic novel:

Al-Hakim continues to be widely read (see Richard Jacquemond’s “best seller” data) and widely influential, although he is  globally much lesser-known than Mahfouz.

Yet Mahfouz, as you might expect, esteemed al-Hakim very highly. In Mahfouz’s Naguib Mahfouz at Sidi Gaber: Reflections of a Nobel Laureate, 1994-2001, which was compiled from conversations with Mohamed Salmawy, there is a section called “Return of the Soul.” Al-Hakim has been most associated, since his death, with his dramatic works; indeed it is an assessment he promoted. But he was also a crafter of prose, including science fiction. His Return of the Soul had a particular effect on Mahfouz:

“I consider Hadith Isa ibn Hisham the first modern Egyptian novel. Although it has not received the attention it deserves from researchers, I believe it is a great work. It draws directly on the Arab heritage through its use of the maqama style. Its content of social criticism has shaped Egyptian novels until today. In fact, that novel affected our whole generation.

“After Isa ibn Hisham, I read Muhammad Husayn Haykal, known as the father of the Egyptian novel, then Taha Husayn and al-Mazni. Then I reached Tawfiq al-Hakim, whose works were truly landmarks in the evolution of Arabic novel writing. In the truest sense, they represented and helped shape a new age.

“Al-Hakim’s writing ushered in a modern phase in the art of narration. In all truth, after the early sources of inspiration that shaped my concept of narration, such as the Qur’an, the Thousand and One Nights, and the epic tales that so fascinated me as a child, my direct mentor was al-Hakim. The Return of the Soul I believe marked the true birth of the Arabic novel. It was written using what were then cutting-edge narrative devices. Its predecessors, on the other hand, had turned toward the Western novels of the nineteenth century for inspiration. The Return of the Soul, in that context, was a bombshell.

If you haven’t read al-Hakim, well!

You can find his “Miracles for Sale” here.

I also strongly recommend The Essential Tawfiq al-Hakim, trans. and ed. Denys Johnson-Davies.

The video began circulating on Wednesday: A talk by novelist Alaa al-Aswany at the Institut du Monde Arabe in Paris was suddenly derailed by chanting protestors getting up on chairs, shouting, breaking glass:

Alaa al-Aswany.

According to organizers, it happened soon after al-Aswany took the stage. The Egyptian pop novelist and political commentator is in France this week to discuss his most recent novel, Automobile Club*, which will appear in French next February and is also forthcoming in English and Italian.

It was only two minutes into the video of events that a voice interrupted to ask, “Excuse me doctor, may I speak?”

Translator and host Gilles Gauthier, at that point, reminded the audience that questions would be taken at the end, but the speaker continued to talk over him. Soon there was a show of four-fingered hands, of yellow t-shirts, and shouting. Several protesters advanced on the platform, causing organizers to rush al-Aswany out the back; after that, the protest continued.

Although the total damage, according to Le Monde, was one broken window, the Arab World Institute has reportedly filed a police complaint against unspecified parties.

See the video:

It is not particularly surprising that protesters would target al-Aswany’s talk, particularly after the author’s statements giving what seems to be a blank check to the Egyptian Army vs. any anti-government forces. Certainly, as Chiara Comito points out over on Editoriaraba, Ahmed El Shamsy on Muftah, and as Richard Jacquemond discusses in Le Monde, al-Aswany is hardly alone in supporting the army. With notable exceptions such as Ahdaf Soueif and Bilal Fadl, and younger writers like Mansoura Ezz Eldin and Muhammad Aladdin, most high-profile Egyptian writers have actively or tacitly given support to the military. Yet al-Aswany has been among the loudest and most visible. And it was long before June 30 — for instance — that al-Aswany suggested that the illiterate shouldn’t be allowed to vote.

Yet Jacquemond adds:

Mais attention, le silence ne vaut pas acquiescement. Ne nous laissons pas abuser par l’unanimisme de façade, les portraits omniprésents du général Sissi et les chansons patriotiques reprises ad nauseam. Surtout qu’avec l’état d’urgence et le retour de l’Etat policier moubarakien (les arrestations ne se limitent pas aux cadres et sympathisants des Frères) la peur, qui avait disparu depuis le 28 janvier 2011, revient en force. Redisons-le, la fin de l’histoire n’est pas écrite.

All this happens at the same moment when maverick publisher Mohamed Hashem, head of Dar Merit, has announced that he is looking to leave Egypt, saying that he does not want to join a team that practices “political terrorism under the name of religion” or the “chorus of Abdel Fattah al-Sisi’s deification.”

As novelist Muhammad Aladdin noted, “I wish I could make him stay, but a large part of me knows that he is a human being, a father who has a family, and nobody would dare to ask anybody to do more than what he can. But his honesty, and  his integrity, told him to choose voluntarily exile over staying and jeopardising his shirt turning to black.”

*Do you know who’s translating Automobile Club into English? Are you the translator? Do drop me a note.

In May, author Karam Saber was sentenced — in absentia — to five years in prison for alleged defamation of religion in his short-story collection أين الله (Where is God). Following protests from at least 46 Arab human-rights organizations, the case appeared again in mid-September, but was deferred until an October 22 hearing:

Photo courtesy: Arabic Network For Human Rights Information

Thus tomorrow, Saber is scheduled to appear before the Court of Misdemeanors in Biba, Beni Suef, to appeal his sentence. The appeal also calls for the punishment of the sentencing judge.

The case stems from an April 12, 2011 complaint filed by citizens in Beni Suef, which accused Saber’s short-story collection, which deals with the everyday lives of farmers and peasants, of containing statements that defamed religion. The public prosecutor in Beni Suef investigated — which apparently meant asking members of the Coptic Church and a representative of al-Azhar for their opinions on the text  – and referred the case to the Misdemeanor Court, which issued the maximum penalty of five years in prison.

Some have suggested that the real story isn’t about Saber’s book at all, but — according to a report in Daily News Egypt — “a result of personal feuds by police and Ministry of Endowments representatives because of Saber’s work defending farmers’ rights.”

In any case, such a ruling is chilling. In an interview with Aswat Masriya, Saber sensibly said that a “collection of short stories is a work of literature that should not be measured using ‘religious standards,’” and that “he will continue to defend his right of expression inside and outside of the court.”

In his commentary on the case for Sampsonia Way, Egyptian novelist Hamdy al-Gazzar wrote:

By October 22, the destiny of the writer and the future of the freedom of creativity will be determined in Egypt!

More:

The Arabic Network for Human Rights Information’s special section on Saber’s case

Novelist Muhammad Aladdin — one Akhbar Al-Adab’s “Writers of the New Millennium” and of the Millions’ “Six Egyptian Writers You Don’t Know But You Should,” and author of The Gospel According to Adam — answered a few questions about the relationship between the State and the Writer soon after one of the guiding lights of Egyptian literature, publisher Mohammed Hashem, announced that he intends to leave Egypt (although he has since said he hopes to stay):

ArabLit: Why did you decide not to go to the Conference on Egyptian Culture that took place at the beginning of the month?

Muhammad Aladdin: That was the main question the polite Supreme Council staffer asked me. She was so nice as to call me twice, asking, “Is it because of the minister?”

“It’s because of nearly everything,” I replied.

I know we are dealing with the Old State, the same one we revolted against, and despite the sweet words, I think they will do nothing fundamental or different from before. They would use us as make-up for the same ugly face, using the good will of our great friends who fostered it and participated in it.

I had the honour of giving the young writers’ speech in the first Convention for the Egyptian Intellectuals, which was held in the journalists’ syndicate prior to Mursi’s ousting. Then, I could be flexible enough to accept the majority votes, which meant it had some of the same personalities from the old regime. But, in an official state conference, while the Old State is fully in power, I guess it wasn’t an option for me to participate. I did the same with the intellectual strike in the Ministry of Culture. I was there from day one, but I chose to limit my appearance there when I didn’t like the ideas being held there and, out of respect to my friends, I never spoke or wrote publicly about it till now.

AL: Why do you think the conference hall was barely half-full?

MA: I guess lots of people had the same stand. I know that a dear friend was offered to give a speech in the opening, but she refused to do so. Sahar Al Mougy gave the speech, and I really think she delivered a strong good message.

AL: Are there issues that the conference addressed well? What was missing or frustrating about this conference?

MA: From what I heard and read, I guess the best thing was our friends’ speeches, especially in the round tables, like the joint speech of three great artists and friends Magdy El Shafee, Alaa Abdel Hamid, and the great graffiti talent Ammar Abou Bakr.

Magdy was so kind to show it to me before reading it, and I think it was like Sahar’s; very assertive on our calls for a different path to represent what this revolution was about. Also, what’s good about the ideas of the conference is we must to use the cultural palaces and youth clubs.

On the other hand, you found a second part of the conference speaking about “regulation of censorship.” I think that’s enough in itself to show you what kind of a mentality the ministry is happy with, not to speak about the mandates the conference ended with, which were quite insignificant.

AL: What are the biggest problems facing Egyptian writers and publishers at this moment? To what extent can the Ministry of Culture apparatus help, and to what extent does it create more problems?

In a nation of 90 million, it is quite impossible to say only 1,000-5,000 people read; it is only because of a lack of distribution.

MA: I think the central problem was and is book distribution, and it is so lame that we haven’t solved this issue through the tens of years we’ve had book publishing here. The book in Egypt can be more like a secret manifesto kept in Cairo and Alexandria (not even in the whole two cities). In a nation of 90 million, it is quite impossible to say that only 1,000-5,000 people read; it is only because of a lack of distribution. If that’s there, then you can have a cheaper book, which is a great point. I think that’s a thing a government body would really help with if they had a will to do it.

About the problems, I expressed in my speech my own personal wish to abolish the Ministry of Culture, a position that novelists like Ibrahim Abdul Meguid and a poets like Iman Mersal have advocated. I said before in one interview that ” The real problem with the Ministry of Culture is the idea that culture can enlighten the masses, because funding can be used to push their agenda or ideas.” And you can imagine what sort of reaction an idea like this gets in a military state.

AL: What should the priorities of the Ministry of Culture be — or the institutions that should take the place of the Ministry of Culture?

MA: Simply it is making culture there, in those places which aren’t even remote: to activate the role of the Cultural Palaces, which have a library and usually a good space for theatre and cinema screening; to support young new un-funded artists; to support and foster different cultures like Nubian and Bedouin, which are deeply neglected under a “National State.”

AL: What was important about Mohamed Hashem & his publishing house, Dar Merit, both for Egypt and for all Arabic readers?

It’s remarkable that it was founded in 1998, and in less than four years, it was held up as a notable publishing house, a major one with numerous titles — quite a lot of them were really remarkable and milestones in the last 10 years of literature in Egypt.

MA: I think Merit and Hashim did an excellent job of supporting new writers and new literature. It’s remarkable that it was founded in 1998, and in less than four years, it was held up as a notable publishing house, a major one with numerous titles — quite a lot of them were really remarkable and milestones in the last 10 years of literature in Egypt. You can mention titles like The Yacoubian Building, Being Abbas Al Abd, Black Magic, Mariam’s Maze, Thieves in Retirement, Aminah’s Stories, Law of Inheritance, Tranquility of the Murderers, and I may add The Gospel According to Adam. Merit’s books were dominant in an important prize like the Sawiris.

Moreover, Merit, with its unique cover-art style by Ahmad El Lappad, made a different kick for the Egyptian and Arab book. I think Merit shares these two elements with a great experience you find in Sharqiyat with its founder Hosny Sulieman. If Sharqiyat was rightfully the patronage for the 90s generation, I firmly believe that Merit is so for 2000s generation.

AL: What was your reaction to Mohammed Hashem announcing that he planned to leave Egypt?

MA: Well, nobody’s here is an angel. But on this human scale, Hashem is one of the most honourable guys I ever met in the Egyptian intelligentsia, and his commitment to his views about revolution is firm and solid. … It is such sad to hear about his intentions, speaking about how Merit — under his administration — was a home for the new literature and one vocal real point for 25 of January. But I guess Hashem knew that keeping his shirt white in a coal mine is impossible, moreever, he was always speaking to me about how “dealing with the state has it’s limits.”

I wish I could make him stay, but a great part of me knows that he is a human being, a father who has a family, and nobody would dare to ask anybody to do more than what he can. But his honesty, and his integrity, told him to choose voluntarily exile over staying and jeopardising this shirt turning to black.

I still wish that Hashim, my dear friend who I published with, revolted with, went on strike in the Ministry of Culture with, and trusted to support the right side, I wish that his decision was just made out of the great frustration of a great dreamer, and in a bit, he might reevaluate his stand, and continue doing what he’s always doing: fighting from his own home.

Translators are often expected to remain invisible puppeteers, unseen by all except specialists and those good at squinting. The translator who stays in the background is praised: The reader, we’re told, wants to connect with Elias Khoury, not Humphrey Davies; Jurji Zaydan, not Samah Selim. But there are moments when translators feel they must be heard:

Photo from AUC.

Back in 2007, translator Marilyn Booth felt the need to clarify a few things about her translation of Rajaa Alsanea’s Girls of Riyadh.

In this case, Booth’s translation had been significantly reworked by Alsanea and an editor at Penguin — against Booth’s express wishes. Alsanea apparently wanted to see her story presented in more “universal” terms, minimizing its gender politics and its rootedness in Saudi culture.

Today, another translator, Jonathan Wright, put himself on the public record as being at odds with his author.

In an open letter posted on his blog, Wright goes into painstaking detail about his previous relationship with al-Aswany, how Wright was engaged to translate al-Aswany’s latest novel, and how that translational relationship went sour.

The reasons for poor author-translator relations here seem murkier than they were with Booth and Alsanea. Al-Aswany apparently decided to shift translators “on a whim,” according to Wright, without giving a reason*. That’s fine enough, although Wright still required compensation for the work he’d done. This compensation, according to Wright, has not been forthcoming.

To justify his decision, al-Aswany argued that Wright made a number of “mistakes” in his in-progress translation of The Automobile Club and that the translation was thus “not up to the desired standards.”

The Automobile Club

The corrections al-Aswany gave — in a document provided by Wright — range from the unnecessary to the uncomfortably bad.  ”That radiance,” according to al-Aswany, is incorrect, and should be “that glow.” (Um, okay.) “My wife realized that I needed some time alone” should, according to al-Aswany, be “My wife understood my need for the solitude.” (?) “Like an antique” should instead be “ancient or musty sound.” (Hunh?) The sentence, “I thought hard about the possibilities, eager to reassure myself” is corrected to “I concentrated to get rid of my worries.”

Certainly, Al-Aswany shouldn’t be required to know how to best render his sentences in English: That is the translator’s job. A good editor can help, as can a collaborative relationship with the author, but the author grabbing the wheel is rarely a good thing.

In 2008, Booth wrote in Al Ahram:

In my long experience as a literary translator, I have found the great majority of writers and editors to be deeply respectful of my work and to value true collaboration. Most authors are neither arrogant nor unethical, after all; and most have respect for translators’ unique skills. Many novelists, indeed, are also experienced and sensitive professional literary translators. … But I fear that in the current haste to find the next “Arab bestseller,” the translator’s special and crucial role in creating lasting art will become a victim, to the detriment of writers and readers everywhere.

Although this case may indeed come down to a whim — and the desire to bend others to that whim — the book is also a potential “best seller.”

Not all would shed tears over The Automobile Club, which is not likely to receive much critical applause.  But here, Wright would probably disagree. From his blog: “When the literary elite belittled Aswany’s novels, I always stood up for him, arguing that Egypt and the Arab world in general needed good story-tellers who put plot and character ahead of literary ostentation and obsessive self-analysis.” I might disagree on Wright’s framing of the either/or, but even if this won’t be “lasting art,” Wright’s open letter is chilling.

It is unclear who is now translating The Automobile Club for Knopf, although the publisher is surely continuing with the project. Neither al-Aswany nor the publisher have yet responded to a query about their perspective on events, but a recent profile on al-Aswany in Ahram Online – which goes to far as to compare The Automobile Club to Mahfouz’s Cairo Modern – states:

The English translation was delayed due to a disagreement between the novelist and the publisher regarding the nominated translator, but it is now in process of publication. Soon enough, an English speaking audience will get to know Kamel, who is hoping for a better day for Egypt, and Prince Chamel, a member of the royal family who dreaded its rule, and hoped for a revolution that might eradicate the past and allow for a new, better and more dignified future, even for those who feared to challenge Al-Kou.

From Jonathan Wright:

Why translators should give Dr Alaa Al Aswany and Knopf Doubleday a wide berth

From Marilyn Booth:

From The Literary Saloon - Booth’s TLS letter at bottom 

From Ahram Weekly - Further: Where is the translator’s voice?

On al-Aswany’s Automobile Club:

From Ahram Online: Al-Aswany weaves threads through Egypt’s revolutions

*Originally, this post suggested the author and translator’s diverging politics could be a factor; as the translator points out below, the timeline of events would make that highly unlikely.

A seminar and a festival — in Dubai and in Cairo — are celebrating the life of “the Dean of Arabic Literature,” Taha Hussein. The great author died forty years ago this week:

In Dubai, the Owais Cultural Foundation is organizing an extended seminar on Taha Hussain’s life and work next Sunday and Monday, Nov. 3 and 4. Egyptian scholar and short-lived Culture Minister Gaber Asfour, among others, is set to participate.

In Cairo, the National Centre for Children’s Culture and the Taha Hussein Museum launched a four-day artistic program for children to celebrate the author. Events kicked off on Oct 28, the 40th anniversary of Hussein’s death. The events will take place at the museum, which is at 11 Taha Hussein St, off Haram St. in Giza.

Hussein is best-known for his novel The Nightingale’s Prayer, which became a celebrated film, and for his autobiogaphy, The Days. The autobiography was originally serialized in Hilal and then published as a three-part book. The Days – a landmark of Arabic autobiographical writing – is available in English as a single volume, trans.  E.H. Paxton, Hilary Wayment, and Kenneth Cragg.

But if you’re looking for a way to celebrate the great man, his page-turning The Nightingale’s Prayer – trans.  A.B. As-Safi and published by Palm Press in 1997 — very much needs a re-translation and re-publication.

I recently ran across this note about Helen Keller’s visit to Egypt in 1952. She wrote of Taha Hussein:

For years I had read about Taha Hussein Pasha, and I cannot express my delight one day when he visited me at the Semiramis Hotel, bringing his wife and son, and stayed a whole hour. I was privileged to touch his face, and how handsome, scholarly and full of inward light it was! His responsive tenderness warmed my heart, and I felt as if I had known him always. We discussed many topics — Homer, Aeschylus, Euripides, Plato and Socrates, the liberating power of philosophy, Taha Hussein’s studies of the great blind Arab philosopher of the tenth century [al-Maari] and his work for the blind.

Adam Talib recently gave a talk at the American University in Cairo on “Translating for Bigots.” Talib, who is working on his fourth translated novel, posed the question — how should one translate for a prejudiced audience? — rather than answering it:

From a slide in the presentation “Translating for Bigots.”

Talib began by saying that he didn’t want “to stereotype the bigot. I don’t want to say his address is in Cleveland.” After all, Talib said, one doesn’t translate Arabic literature into English for a North American or British audience, but for an audience of English-language readers worldwide.

Publishers, Talib said, can sometimes package books for bigots (see right). This packaging might be one reason why readers leap to particular conclusions about an author’s narrative. On the other hand, Talib added, he doesn’t necessarily “blame” the publishers, as he also wants to get translated Arabic literature out to a wide audience, and this might be one way to do it.

So who is this wide audience? Talib briefly touched on studies that measure Islam- and Arabophobia, remarking on a time when a British-Egyptian filmmaker he knew was asked by a UK audience member: “Can women in Egypt use the Internet?”

This question, although a particular head-scratcher, is “evidence of a cultural gap between the specialist translator and the potential audience,” Talib said. “Should a translator keep this in mind? I personally have a hard time not keeping these things in mind.“

These prejudices are an issue with any Arabic literature in translation, but they were most at hand, Talib said, when dealing with Arab women writers and Arab women characters.

“Translating Arab women characters is…extremely fraught. Why? Because if you’re a reader of modern Arabic literature, you know that what happens in modern Arabic literature. People date in modern Arabic literature; people have sex in modern Arabic literature; people drink and take drugs. And a lot of times, you will just translate what you find on the page, and you’ll find that reviewers find this peculiar.”

If a reviewer — who Talib sees as a proxy for the reader — finds an Arab woman not wrapped in ten layers of fabric, forced to marry her cross-eyed cousin, and pushed to the back seat of a car, then, “the reviewer says, ‘What an unrealistic depiction of Arab women.’”

“There is a hostility in the reader’s mind” to characters who don’t fit particular stereotypes, Talib said.

Moreover, he said, normally strong readers can lose their bearings when looking at Arabic literature. He pointed to Mekkawi Said’s novel Cairo Swan Song, which has a distinctly unlikeable protagonist. English-language readers are more likely to conflate this protagonist with the author, Talib said, and “you’ll find less tolerance for this sort of psychological depiction in Arabic literature than you’ll find in English literature.”

“For some reason, there is some obstacle to sophisticated reading when you’re dealing with translated literature.”

Talib also wondered if there was a way to compensate for readers’ stereotypes in the language. Certainly, translators can help by bringing out the power of the author’s language, which — in a best-case — should help to re-create the author’s authority.

The talk ended on a discussion of a section of Khairy Shalaby’s The Hashish Waiter. The novel, Talib said, had a section abridged in the French edition because a few of the characters were discussing the use of Holocaust narratives as propaganda. In so doing, the characters brush aside the great sufferings of Jews and others during the Holocaust. This section could be read, at a stretch, as Holocaust denial, and thus it was truncated in the French.

Because Shalaby is an Arab writer, Talib guessed that people are predisposed to read the characters’ views as his and to see him as an anti-Semite. “I don’t want Khairy Shalaby to be read as an anti-Semite.” But how to change the reader’s expectations? The question remained open.

Also:

ArabLit: Q&A with Adam Talib, Translator of Khairy Shalaby’s ‘The Hashish Waiter’

ArabLit: Cairo’s First Ever Translation Slam: Judge for Yourself

Adam Talib’s blog

Eslam Mosbah’s “إيموز“, trans. Raphael Cohen and published by AUC Press as Status: Emo (2013), has a wild, end-of-days atmosphere. Something is rotten in the State of Egypt, and change must be on the horizon:

From AUC Press.

The looming change, whatever it is, seems poised to alter everything. At one point, Emmie — the book’s Unmoved Mover — says:

“But hold on…Egypt will never improve more than it is now. Some day in the near future the whole society will explode. The police will kill citizens in broad daylight. There will be rapes every second, robberies every minute, treason by the hour, and a tragedy every day.”

It’s unclear exactly what Emmie was predicting back in 2010, but this is not a novel that’s interested in social movements or a social uprising. Like Ahmed Alaidy’s Being Abbas al-Abd, Mosbah’s novel takes core inspiration from Chuck Palahniuk’s Fight Club. The unnamed narrator is drowning in his “boring” working-class life: He works the overnight shift at an Internet cafe for a few hundred LE a month while his parents pressure him to marry his cousin Lamis, who can get him a job in Kuwait. The narrator doesn’t “love her. You don’t hate her either. She’s like something vaguely present in your life, a knickknack you’re scared to play with in case it gets broken and your mother tells you off.”

The terse-talking narrator, well-translated by Cohen, interprets his desperation and unhappiness as “boredom.” As such, he looks for ways to entertain himself, spending much of his time on Facebook looking for sex-ready women. This boredom, however, doesn’t just belong to the narrator. It is a condition he generalizes to the whole country and blames on a national passivity: “Eighty million wimps stamped, ‘Made in Egypt.’

The book’s game-changer is Emmie, the personification of the titular “Emo”: She goes to extremes, ignores conventions, flaunts authority. The protagonist falls in love with the idea of Emmie and with her ability to gather people around her in a sort of a “fight club.” Indeed, the narrator says that Palahniuk’s groups were meant to challenge the American way of life, whereas Emmie’s “fight clubs” are atheist gatherings.

The novel’s characterizations of characters’ relationships to authority are often dead-on:

“Emmie says that ordinary peoples’ struggle with authority is preordained and has a foregone conclusion. Ordinary people fight themselves first before taking on authority. Try to look in the eyes of a policeman, however weak his position. The collective conscience forces you to lower your eyes and accept defeat, even if you’re stronger, and even if you’re right.”

The book also pokes fun at Egyptian social mores, as when a young man wants to have sex with Emmie, but “changed his opinion about this good time when he found out I’m an atheist? Imagine: he wants to sleep with someone, but she has to be Muslim. I’m sure he wants her religious as well.”

The protagonist attempts to transcend all this: morality, authority, society, and thus his essential “boredom.” This, he imagines, is how he can take control of his life, leaving “boredom” behind. In hopes of accomplishing this, he flees his parents’ home, quits his job, lives off a friend of Emmie’s, and has casual sex.

But as the book pushes out past red lines — into blurred gender roles, atheism, homosexuality — it begins to splinter, losing its pacing and focus. The protagonist is afraid to cross certain lines, and it seems the book is, too. In the final conference or “fight club,” atheism and homosexuality both become caricatures. Both lead to an ignominious — almost silly — suicide, which the other fight clubbers applaud.

In the end, the narrator’s transgressions are met by state violence and come to an end. After that: “You go to Kuwait. You come back and marry Lamis. You have children from Lamis.” As might be expected, this life is also “boring” and the narrator again craves wild, boundary-breaking Emmie.

Status: Emo is a book with promise, and the first three quarters are page-turning and enjoyable. In the end, however, it never sufficiently interrogates the central “boredom” or looks dead-on at what lies on the other side of suffocating social mores. (What is “boredom”? What conditions engender it, and why?) Yet it does successfully turn its gaze within, sketching out the edges of one interior Egyptian revolution.

There’s a new Cairo books blog, recently launched by AUC Middle East Studies librarian Mark Muehlhaeusler, called Cairo Booklore:

According to Muehlhaeusler:

It is not intended to be a systematic review of books (although I hope to write regularly about new, and noteworthy publications from/ about Egypt). It’s not meant to be a guide to bookstores in Egypt (but will include my personal reflections on bookstores that I know, and could therefore morph into something that can be used as a guide – albeit a very ideosyncratic one).Finally, it’s not a biographical dictionary (even though I would like write about the people who have devoted their lives to producing, selling, and preserving books in Egypt).

So … what I want to do is plant a seed that will grow into a celebration of book culture in Egypt,and have conceived of this effort as a collaborative one: If you have something that you would like to share, please do. Contributions in all languages are most welcome.

The blog launched on Halloween 2013, and its first bookstore profile was of the wonderful Kotob Khan and his first book-trend post was about graphic novels. Certainly one to follow.

If you’re in Chicago tomorrow, you can join translators Kay Heikkinen and Cameron Cross, academic Michael Sells, and novelist Gamal al-Ghitani for discussions of the transmogrification of classical Arabic literature into modern Arabic fiction — as well as the shape-shifting of this literature from Arabic to other languages:

Egyptian novelist Gamal al-Ghitani (Zayni Barakat, The Zafarani Files) is the University of Chicago’s fall 2013 Mellon Islamic Studies Initiative visiting “professor of practice.” Al-Ghitani was given this position not just because of his role as a prominent and pioneering Egyptian novelist, but also as the director — until recently — of the influential literary periodical Akhbar al-Adab. In Egyptian Writers between History and Fiction, Samia Mehrez called al-Ghitani “the silent ironist par excellence.”

Edward Said, according to Ahram Weekly, once said that, ”The finest, leanest, most steely Arabic prose that I have either read or heard is produced by novelists (not critics) like Elias Khoury and Gamal El-Ghitani. … Each of whose prose is a razor-sharp Aristotelian instrument the elegance of which resembles Empson’s or Newman’s.”

Al-Ghitani has been part of the state cultural establishment and also one of its critics. For his role in re-publishing 1,001 Nights, al-Ghitani incurred the wrath of the religious far-right. In 2005, he spoke against the Mubarak regime’s “merciless” coercion of intellectuals.

In the last year, al-Ghitani’s voice has also been deeply involved in politics, occasionally with what reads as a xenophobic twinge. In May, he asserted that the Muslim Brotherhood was a foreign organization, and that their rule of Egypt constituted a “foreign occupation.” He focused an Al-Akhbar column on his assertion that Al-Baradei was “a danger to the Egyptian people and state” and that the Brotherhood was a terrorist organization and should be banned. (Whereas, in a 2010 interview, he had said of the far religious right that ”the key to change also lies in an active political exchange. A vigorous political life also makes a significant contribution to creating an open, well-informed society.”)

Earlier this month, al-Ghitani wrote in an al-Akhbar al-Youm column that Egyptians “need to embrace the points of power brought by the state’s establishments, such as the army.”

This does not alter – transmogrify, transmute, metamorphose, change, modify* — al-Ghitani’s novels, nor (necessarily) how they should be read. Although Ahmed al-Shamsy of the University of Chicago, who will perhaps be at tomorrow’s events?, has a compelling re-reading here. In any case, plenty of silent ironies to go around.

If you’re in Chicago Friday, the full day’s schedule, according to organizers:

9:30 am – Introduction of Workshop

10:00 am – 11:15 am
Kay Heikkinen will lead a panel devoted to readings from Gamal al-Ghitany’s works in the English translations by Farouk Mustafa, followed by readings by al-Ghitany from the original and comments by al-Ghitany on the narrative form and linguistic register of each work.

11:30 am -12:30 pm
Cameron Cross on Translating a Work of Yusuf Idris, followed by Michael Sells on Authorial Personas of Ibn al-`Arabi

2:00 pm – 3:00 pm
Gamal al-Ghitany on the Autobiography of Ibn Sina, followed by a discussion of the text.

3:15 am – 4:00 pm
Plenary Address by Gamal al-Ghitany:
Tarajim as a Source of Literature

You can find events in the Swift Hall Common Room. A reception will follow.

*Too much al-Shidyaq.

Last week at Cairo’s Goethe Institute, three German and three Egyptian writers came together to discuss the writing process, its politics, and how to (not) make a living as an author:

The three Egyptian authors were Ibrahim Abdel-Meguid, Khaled El-Khamissi, and Mansoura Ezzeddin, while the three Germans were David Wagner, Katharina Hacker, and Ulla Lenze. Ahram Online covered the event.

Among the questions up for discussion and debate was how to make a living as an author. The German authors assured event-goers that, contrary to popular belief, they too must grapple with how to make a living. Certainly, the financial issues around writing have taken a slightly different shape in different countries. But nowhere is it easy to make a living as a literary novelist with integrity, excerpt for a fortunate few.

So how to make a living? The German writers said they needed to have day jobs. For example, Wagner was a university lecturer and Lenze offered writing courses. The Egyptian novelists said the same, noting jobs like journalism or publishing. Government money, of course, can also support authors.

But, according to Ahram Online,  ”many” writers (at the event?) had refused state-sponsored scholarships because, El-Khamisi said, they “can’t accept money from a government that works against writers and culture.”

El-Khamisi apparently suggested that, rather than Egyptian authors taking money from a governmental source, a public fund could be established. Private citizens would donate, and the collected monies would be disbursed to support authors.

It’s possible to imagine how this would work — with the right board, the right management, and the right sort of altrustic donors — but it’s equally possible to imagine that benefactors would want to put their stamp on the literature, would want to shape the process, and would have fairly bad ideas about how to do that.

Over at The Arabist, Industry Arabic has translated one of the absurd recent characterizations of an “activist” from Youm 7. Herein, the effeminate “male activist” reputedly is not a poetry-lover (although he likes to curse and use obscene expressions), but the manned-up “female activist” likes the “lewd poetry” of Fouad Haggag and Naguib Sorour:

I’m not sure whether any of Haggag’s poetry or theatre has been translated into English. Naguib Sorour (1932-1978) however, made international headlines in 2001, twenty-three years after the poet’s death. That’s when his son Shohdy posted Surour’s controversial poem “Koss Ummiyyat” (1969) online.

The poem — a long, dark satire in colloquial Arabic– was technically banned in Egypt but had been widely circulated via tapes and hand-copied manuscripts in the decades after its composition.

About a year after Shohdy Sorour posted the poem, Egyptian authorities apparently noticed it, and Shohdy was arrested in November 2001, charged with “possessing ‘immoral booklets and prints’” according to Wired. He was only held for a few days, but Shohdy’s case proceeded. He was sentenced to a year in jail and, as he waited on his appeal, Shohdy relocated to Russia. In his absence, the appeals court confirmed the verdict of one year in prison.

Surour’s work remains in an ambiguous space in Egypt — alternately celebrated and shunned by the establishment. In any case, you should explore Surour’s poetry, and — if you find you like it — goodness only knows what that says about you.

Parts of Naguib Sorour’s Koss Ummiyyat:

On SoundCloud (Arabic) 

From Sorour’s “Drink Delirium,” trans. Mona Anis and Nur Elmesseiri:

On Ahram Weekly 

A few lines from Lana Younis’s translation of Surour’s Protocols of the Wise Men of Riche:

Which begins “Read nothing be a lumberjack…”

Profiles:

From Brian Whitaker’s Al-Bab

From Youssef Rakha, on Ahram Weekly

The Egyptian colloquial poet Ahmad Fouad Negm died Tuesday morning at the age of 84, just before he was to travel to receive the 2013 Prince Claus Award for “Unwavering Integrity”:

Negm at Dar Merit in 2013 with novelist Mona Prince.

Publisher Mohamed Hashem told Ahram Online that he spoke with Negm on Monday, and that he seemed fine, but his voice was a “little heavy.”

Negm, according to Prince Claus organizers, was to be honored:

for creating true poetry in vernacular Arabic that communicates deeply with people; for his independence, unwavering integrity, courage and rigorous commitment to the struggle for freedom and justice; for speaking truth to power, refusing to be silenced and inspiring more than three generations in the Arab-speaking world; for the aesthetic and political force of his work highlighting the basic need for culture and humour in harsh and difficult circumstances; and for his significant impact on Arabic poetry bringing recognition to the rich literary potential of the colloquial language.

Negm was raised in a poor village in Sharkiya and spent most of his early years either in orphanages or in prison, where he was sent for forging documents. From these beginnings, Negm grew into a poet of unparalleled stature in Egypt, and wrote about the nation’s poor and disenfranchised like no one else.

With his daughter, the journalist Nawara Negm.

A 2011 movie, “Al Fagoumy,” explored Negm’s life; a 2012 feature on Al Jazeera did the same. (It’s on YouTube for some.) There are countless recordings of Negm reading his poetry live and, later, on TV. Negm is particularly well-known for his work with Egyptian composer Sheikh Imam.

Promotional material on Alwan for the Arts once stated that, “if the Internationale were to have been written in Arabic, its author would likely have been Ahmed Fouad Negm.”

Negm has been little-translated into English, perhaps because it is so tied to the Egyptian context, but some individual bloggers have made attempts to bring his work across languages. Walaa Quisay translated his “What’s Wrong With Our President?,” “Who Are They And Who Are We?” along with many others. There’s also a new Kindle book (March 2013) by Mohamed F. El-Hewie that promises analysis and translation of Negm’s work. Andeel also translated a few excerpts on Mada Masr’s obituary.

Negm’s funeral was held at Al-Hussein Mosque in Cairo, located near Khan Al-Khalili bazzar; the blogger Zeinobia has organized photos.

Negm leaves behind his sixth wife and children of various ages, including Nawara Negm, a prominent journalist and blogger.

A few online responses:

Yesterday, towering Egyptian poet Ahmed Fouad Negm — who died at the beginning of this month at the age of 84 — was honored as the principal winner at the Prince Claus Award ceremony in Amsterdam: 

Anis receiving the award on Negm’s behalf. Image snapped from livestream.

Negm was to have received the award from Prince Constantijn, but instead Egyptian writer Mona Anis received it on his behalf. Video from the ceremony was streamed live online.

At the ceremony, it was announced that, for the few months before his death, Anis and Negm had been working on the “first serious translation” of Negm’s poetry into English, I Say My Words Out Loud, which is available online, published by the Prince Claus Fund.

Before reading a statement from Negm’s daughter Nawara Negm, an obviously moved Anis said that, “It is indeed a very sad moment for me, to be standing where Ahmed Fouad Negm should be standing.”

In the statement from Nawara Negm, Nawara said that her father’s death had not yet sunk in, and that, ”Even now, I feel that my father is playing a practical joke on us.”

“Being the restless person he was, my father hated sitting down,” Negm’s statement said. She said that he arrived in this world on his feet, and “He also departed from it standing firmly on his own two feet.”

Anis read from Negm’s 1978 poem “The Prison Ward” in Arabic, the poem organizers said Negm had wanted to read during the ceremony. Here, the first stanza from Anis’s English translation:

Image of Negm from Manawishi’s video.

Prison ward, listen in:
I’ve shaken the dice many times,
And gambled with everything on the big prize and lost,
And bitter though prison is,
I’ve never once wanted to repent.
having bid the night guards good evening,
every single one of them,
the bringi
the kingi
And the shingi*,
I say we’re wicked inmates all,
though the storeroom clerk
has given us different uniforms.
My first words are for the Prophet;
my second, for Job;
the third are for my estrangement;
the fourth, for my destiny;
My fifth, I will say that he who oppresses others
Will himself be defeated one day

After Anis’s presentation, there was a  short video about Negm’s life, directed by Ahmed Manawishi. In it, Salah Hassan called Negm a “giant” and said that “no ordinary language can convey his impact.”

Anis’s short collection of Negm’s work includes both Negm’s poetry and essays about him by Hala Halim and Marilyn Booth. There is another collection of Negm’s work in progress, by Arabic literature professor Kamal AbdelMalek, a book on Negm’s life and work in which, according to AbdelMalek, “there will be an appendix of a fair selection of his poems and prose writing in translation.”

Translating Negm is a difficult thing: Not only are his poems thick with Egyptian context, they also rely heavily on rhythm, sound, and rhyme. It would be ideal, for instance, if the PDF of the translation included an audio element. But in her translation, Anis does an admirable job in this difficult territory, often recreating rhythm, making English-language versions that also want to be read aloud. From “Mother Egypt”:

Let our words be preceded by our greetings to all who are listening,
Little sparrow chirping rhymed words full of meaning
About a dark land, a moon,
A river, a boat and a shore,
And fellow travellers on a hard journey

In the tribute AbdelMalek wrote after Negm’s death, he wrote that “Ahmad Fuad Nigm lived by his own principles. He was a fearless poet who spoke truth to power. And the truth he spoke was delivered with an impressive combination of force and beauty.”

Read the new collection:

I Say My Words Out Loud, poetry by Ahmed Fouad Negm, trans. Mona Anis

*Turkish military ranks given to the guards, meaning first, second and third.

Brian Farish, Rewan El-Ghaba, and Kevin Dean, and Yasmin Galal are the core of The Thousand Tongues, a new Cairo-based theatre company that will be staging a theatrical version of Khaled al-Khamissi’s Taxi starting this January. The production, which will run alternately in Arabic and English, will open at a new performance space, VENT, on January 22. ArabLit messaged with Founding Artistic Director Brian Farish and Literary Director Kevin Dean about the project:

ArabLit: Why Taxi?

Brian Farish: I’ve done a lot of adaptation work; it’s one of my ways to create performance texts. I think I learned the most about adaptation when I worked under the direction of two experimental directors at the Moscow Art Theater American Studio to adapt War and Peace for a four-hour performance.

I decided to adapt Taxi almost as soon as finished reading the opening monologue. Kevin Dean told me about it, and as soon as I saw that it was a collection of monologues and scenes (between the author and the drivers), I knew I had to at least give it an initial rough draft. As I went deeper with it, I actually worried whether it was still relevant. The interviews were done with drivers in 2005-2006. But then after June 30th and July 4th this year I began to see that the work was a really excellent illustration, by way of the personal experiences of the drivers, of the nuances of the struggle of humans to gain and preserve their dignity. The stories are historical artifacts that remind the reader (and our audience) of what has changed and what hasn’t. I think it will really be a rewarding communal experience for our audience to see and hear these stories. We’ve found some really exciting ways of staging the text that I hope will electrify the audience.

ArabLit: Why “installation theatre”? Where will it be held?

BF: The piece lends itself to this style of performance, which I love most. Actually, it demands a kind of experimental adaptation; it wouldn’t work if you wanted to adapt it into the traditional “well-made play” format and stage it on a traditional proscenium or thrust. Actually you could stage it that way, but it would be a major snooze.

I believe that the form of theatre in which audiences are sternly told to shut up and sit quietly in the dark while actors perform on a distant stage is dying or is dead already.

I believe that the form of theatre in which audiences are sternly told to shut up and sit quietly in the dark while actors perform on a distant stage is dying or is dead already. Theatre people act like this isn’t true, but we all know it is. If people want to sit and watch a story in the dark performed by actors they’re not allowed to interact with, they will watch a movie. That’s the reality.

But people still crave community. They want to be together laughing, crying, dancing, bumping up against each other physically in the real world–so that’s what we do. We don’t ask audiences to shut up or turn off their phones or sit down. The performances happen all around the space and they are broken up often by music, which allows audience to dance, drink, and discuss what they’ve seen. There will be times when there are up to 3 or 4 performances happening simultaneously. Audience members can watch whatever part of a performance they want, walk away to another performance, or leave, if they like, without any guilt. I’ve done this style of work before, but not here in Egypt and not with this script. I don’t honestly know what will happen. In rehearsal I am working with the actors to build into the performances the facility to deal with audiences who talk back. Actually, we will have “plants” in the audience calling out with questions or comments, encouraging other audience to do so as well. Of course I am preparing contingencies to keep things from descending into utter chaos, but I think in the end the audience will respect what we’re trying to do. I’ve just decided to trust them.

Our first venue is VENT, a new bar/club/performance space downtown at 6 Qasr Al Nil, just a short walk from Tahrir. I am so immensely excited about what they are doing there. Their vision is to create exactly the kind of experimental, risky venue that young Cairenes want. They’ve decided that we’re going to be their opening show and we are thrilled.

After VENT we will be all over Cairo. I’m working with my scenic designer to create highly portable set pieces that we could put in any warehouse, gallery, park, plaza, or street where they will fit–just not theaters. We don’t do theatre in theaters.

After VENT we will be all over Cairo. I’m working with my scenic designer to create highly portable set pieces that we could put in any warehouse, gallery, park, plaza, or street where they will fit–just not theaters. We don’t do theatre in theaters.

AL: But basically anywhere else? Will the shows sometimes be publicly accessible, then, or it will always be somewhere you can collect tickets?

BF: We will be selling and collecting tickets for all performances in all venues, so we will find ways to control entrance to and exit from the performance area. The prices may change depending on the venue and target audience, especially if we end up leaving Cairo for other Egyptian environs. I remember Khalid Al Khamissi saying to me in our first discussion that he wanted to engender cultural pursuits in all regions of Egypt. He expressed his disdain for insular Cairene pretension in extremely colorful terms that I don’t think I should exactly quote him on, but basically he said, “[Forget] Cairo.”

BF: Maybe it’s as simple as two groups of audience from two language communities having a connection simply through having seen the same show. The same experience will be in each of their consciousnesses. I am confident that this performance will give English speakers a look into the hearts of Egyptians that they never could have imagined. I remember being stunned when I read the book and it’s one thing to read words on a page; it’s another to see a human put all of their will and heart into those words right in front of your face.

The “bridge” bit also refers to initiatives of our Literary Wing to generate original works in Arabic and English, which I am incredibly excited about.

The “bridge” bit also refers to initiatives of our Literary Wing to generate original works in Arabic and English, which I am incredibly excited about. I will let Kevin Dean take that one.

We have some educational initiatives we’d like to start as well, in which we bring a simple staging of two 15-minute adaptations of English and Arabic classic plays around to schools in Egypt–a kind of theatre-in-education strike team. We’d do those all in colloquial Egyptian (aameyah) so it would easily grab the attention of Egyptian kids and give them a first way in to literature, building a kind of bridge.

Auditions for Taxi. From the Thousand Toungues website.

BF: We have not yet taken concrete steps forward on this initiative.  The company has really only existed since August of 2013.  Things have exploded for us; so many people are fascinated by the core idea of the company.  I feel like I’ve pushed a snowball down a mountainside and now I’m racing to keep up with the boulder it’s become.  We’re taking one step at a time, though, and just trying to get TAXI rolling along.  Producing Mohamed Mahmoud Moustafa’s play, the first consummation of the relationship between our literary and performance arms, will be the next step this spring.  And then this summer we will likely start gathering performers to create work for the education initiative that would tour schools beginning in the 2014-2015 academic year.  I will need more help to do that also.  It will become a very complex project.

AL: Do you plan/hope to travel with the show?

BF: Absolutely! We want invitations from every corner of the world! This was another reason that I have conceived of a portable and flexible production. Our plans at this moment today only include touring within Cairo, specifically to one of the plazas of the palaces of Islamic Cairo, but things are developing so quickly that that could change within the week. If you know of any opportunities or organizations who would be interested, please send them my way at brianfarish [at] thethousandtongues [dot] com!

AL: Was it you and Rewan who adapted the text? Did you work with Khaled al-Khamissi?

Khaled Al Khamissi did not work with us on the adaptation. We met with him in September (of 2013) at his foundation, Doum, and, when he heard our production concept, he gave us his enthusiastic support.

I did the initial draft in English, working from the English translation by Jonathan Wright and, to the extent of my rather limited Arabic, the original Arabic. I gave the draft to Rewan ElGhaba, my co-director, and she did the first Arabic rough draft. She translated the new scenes that I had written in English, inspired by the book, and then lifted as much as possible directly from the original Arabic novel.

The performance draft that we’re working with now includes translation work by a brilliant guy named Mohamed Mahmoud Moustafa and more adaptation and original writing by our Literary Director, Kevin Dean. The Egyptian ensemble members themselves also fleshed out scenes that were inspired by just a few lines in the book using improvisation in rehearsals.

AL: It opens when in January?

BF: Yes, the dates it will be running in January 22, 25, 26, 27, 29 at VENT starting at 8 pm each night. The first 3 nights will be in Arabic and the last two in English.

AL: Ah! I misunderstood. I thought each performance would be bilingual. But there are alternating English/Arabic nights. Staging essentially the same show?

I saw a performance recently that had equal parts Arabic, English, and French all within the same show. While I appreciate how ambitious that is, and there are people more brilliant than I who I’m sure picked up every word, it made me feel stupid and bored. I want our audiences to feel smart and exhilarated.

BF: Right, exactly–same show, same actors, changing languages from week to week. We want the show to be accessible for multiple language communities, and our actors are brilliant enough to pull it off. I saw a performance recently that had equal parts Arabic, English, and French all within the same show. While I appreciate how ambitious that is, and there are people more brilliant than I who I’m sure picked up every word, it made me feel stupid and bored. I want our audiences to feel smart and exhilarated.

AL: Can you explain more about what your “literary wing” is? What plans you have there?

There are a lot of young Egyptians with great stories to tell. Its the job of the Literary Wing to provide a platform for their voices.

Kevin Dean: As you know, great theater is driven by great writing. That’s where our Literary Wing comes into play. Just as we hope to seek out young and brilliant Egyptian actors, we also want to connect with the country’s best and brightest literary talents, especially those who are writing for the stage. In this sense, the two halves of the company — theater and literature — go hand in hand, each one driving the other. There are a lot of young Egyptians with great stories to tell. Its the job of the Literary Wing to provide a platform for their voices.

Last week we awarded our first literary commission to Mohamed Mahmoud Mostafa, a Cairo attorney who is working on a series of short plays about his experiences at various court houses and law firms in the city. He gets to see a different side of life, both the legal details and the emotions that accompany the winners and losers of any courtroom battle, and we believe that the future performances will be dark and funny and, most of all, important.

We hope to continue awarding commissions like this. After a while, we will have a collection of the plays that we have produced, and these can be gathered into an anthology, printed, and distributed to theater companies around the world. We want plays that will not only move Egyptian audiences, but global ones, too, and so why not take these stories and distribute them far and wide?

I’m looking forward to seeing just how much we can do.