{"id":29981,"date":"2013-09-29T08:35:20","date_gmt":"2013-09-29T04:35:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/?p=29981"},"modified":"2013-09-29T08:35:21","modified_gmt":"2013-09-29T04:35:21","slug":"thuginfiltrator-words-mean","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/middle-east-society\/thuginfiltrator-words-mean\/","title":{"rendered":"‘Thug’,’Infiltrator’: ‘What Do These Words Mean To You?’"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Tahrir<\/a><\/p>\n

In the next several months, Egyptian-American artist and writer<\/i> Amira Hanafi<\/i><\/a> will travel throughout Egypt, interviewing a diverse range of people for a book to be called \u201cDictionary of the Revolution\u201d:<\/i><\/p>\n

Hanafi will use what she calls \u201crevolution vocabulary cards\u201d to spark stories and personal anecdotes. The vocab cards feature \u201cwords and phrases like baltagiyya<\/i> (thugs), killa mondessa<\/i> (a few infiltrators), and kintaki<\/i> (KFC),\u201d and Hanafi hopes these \u201cwill prompt interviewees to share their ideas about the meanings of those words, their context in the\u00a025 January\u00a0Revolution, and their origins in contemporary Egyptian history.\u201d<\/p>\n

Hanafi says that the idea for the project started to germinate in March of 2011. She grew up in an English-speaking household in the US, so she was still learning to speak and understand Egyptian 3meya when she moved to Cairo. In the spring of 2011, she said, she was \u201cinformally getting my Arabic lessons in Tahrir Square and in the ahwas in downtown. I was constantly asking people, \u2018What does that mean?\u2019 I used to take home flyers that were handed to me in the Square and translate them in my spare time. So this put me in this really strange position to be learning the vocabulary of the revolution before I could say basic stuff like \u2018I\u2019m thirsty.\u2019 And I found out that this strategy of asking people for the meanings of words and phrases often led to really rich, interesting conversations.\u201d<\/p>\n

This led to the idea of the book, which Hanafi aims to complete by summer 2014. It will be organized as a dictionary, with entries for each of the \u201crevolution vocab words.\u201d<\/p>\n

Hanafi\u2019s training as a poet will likely influence the structure of the project. She wrote in an email correspondence:<\/p>\n

“I think my training as a poet and my continued relationship to poetry are part of a broader interest in language as a material. I\u2019ve been really influenced by some of the conceptual work being done in the contemporary American poetry scene, as well as by conceptual and socially engaged art. I also was influenced by learning to read the Qur\u2019an in Arabic at a really early age, without being able to speak or understand the language. But identifying as a \u201cpoet\u201d was never a limitation for me. I broke with the formal training I had pretty early on, and I\u2019ve made visual and video and sound poetry, and a lot of works that deal with language as a sculptural material.<\/p>\n

Ultimately, what I got from studying poetry and writing it is precision. I\u2019m very concerned with things like using the right word, creating rhythm in a text, clarity and using the fewest words possible to describe a thing. Those are definitely concerns that will shape the way I put together this book.”<\/p>\n

Hanafi says she won\u2019t change any spoken words provided by the people she interviews, but she will cut and paste them together to create a multi-layered story of the revolution, from the vantage point of multiple perspectives.<\/p>\n

When I asked what she meant by \u201crevolution,\u201d she pointed the the time period beginning January 2011 to present. \u201cBut the project doesn\u2019t take any specific time period as a limitation. I\u2019m asking participants in the project to do the defining of the words[.]\u201c<\/p>\n

The book will be printed in both in the original colloquial Egyptian Arabic and its English translation, although Hanafi is not yet sure if it will be one bilingual text or two separate editions.<\/p>\n

The Arab Fund for Arts and Culture has funded the costs of printing the book<\/a>, but Hanafi is currently fund-raising for travel costs and other project expenses through the Kickstarter crowd-funding website<\/a>.<\/p>\n

More about the project & information on how to donate:<\/b><\/p>\n

Here.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

M. LYNX-QUALEY: Amira Hanafi, an Egyptian-American poet, is about to embark on a novel initiative inspired by her experiences in Tahrir Square during 25th January revolution <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":16,"featured_media":29984,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[154,124,80,235,482,5],"tags":[17826,16910,1209,17047,16817,17825,17035,16909,17824,1959],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29981"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/16"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=29981"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29981\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":29986,"href":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29981\/revisions\/29986"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/29984"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=29981"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=29981"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=29981"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}