{"id":4050,"date":"2011-02-20T08:41:35","date_gmt":"2011-02-20T04:41:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/?p=4050"},"modified":"2011-02-20T08:42:33","modified_gmt":"2011-02-20T04:42:33","slug":"tahrir-and-the-%e2%80%98liberation%e2%80%99-of-arabic-literature","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/middle-east-society\/middle-east-art\/middle-east-literature\/tahrir-and-the-%e2%80%98liberation%e2%80%99-of-arabic-literature\/","title":{"rendered":"Tahrir and The \u2018Liberation\u2019 of Arabic Literature"},"content":{"rendered":"

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In the U.K.\u2019s Independent<\/em>, Boyd Tonkin has an exuberant look at Egypt\u2019s publishing future, declaiming, \u201cNow all is changed\u2014changed utterly.\u201d<\/p>\n

Certainly he\u2019s not the only exuberant one\u2014who can look at events in Tahrir and not enthuse? \u2014 but perhaps declaring the \u201cutter\u201d liberation of Arabic literature is premature; perhaps no literature, anywhere, can really be liberated from social censors and taboos.<\/p>\n

Nonetheless, a happy Jordanian-born author Fadia Faqir told Tonkin:<\/p>\n

\u201cWe had a psychological barrier \u2013 what I call \u2018the policeman inside us\u2019. That policeman was killed\u201d on Tahrir Square. The mental hurdle that inhibited free expression \u201chas been totally destroyed for all of us \u2013 whether in Jordan, Yemen, Saudi Arabia or Egypt\u201d.<\/p>\n

Surely, there is a new feeling of freedom: A group of Egyptian writers at the Casablanca Book Fair in Morocco made a similar announcement, according to Youm7<\/em>, and Meedan is curating a whole section titled \u201cHas Egypt\u2019s uprising liberated Arab literature?<\/a>\u201d There are certainly many reasons to believe in a brighter future for Egypt\u2019s writers and readers.<\/p>\n

But Egyptian novelist Khaled al-Berry, shortlisted for this year\u2019s International Prize for Arabic Fiction\u2014while also exuberant, of course\u2014gave us a harder look at future challenges and possibilities.<\/div>\n

We have different forms of censorship in Egypt: political, religious, and moral. The past regime always said that it didn\u2019t ban books. It could be right. The problem was that they didn\u2019t let you make valid books. They blocked the access to \u2018real\u2019 information and let people produce books that made them look silly and trivial. \u2026 Hence, they made books and reading itself something that one wouldn\u2019t be proud of. People of means became far prouder of having the latest mobile phone than of having the latest book.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Al-Berry went on to talk about his personal experience with censorship, not at the hands of the government, but at the print workshop:<\/p>\n

The above means that even in absence of direct political censorship there are both religious and moral censorship. The politicians rested and relaxed and left the new forces doing their works. In 2004, I was overseeing the printing of my novel Negative<\/em>, a novel that includes some sort of\u00a0 masochist relationship between a dreamer of the sixties who still loved the regime that imprisoned him and a wife who fell for a younger man who abandoned both dreams and \u2018big patriotic causes\u2019 and who was extremely individualistic. For me, this was a testimony of my generation.<\/p>\n

Well, a worker in the print workshop who obviously had not read the book read one passage that contained \u2018obscene\u2019 sex scene. He insisted on stopping the whole thing midway. I tried to convince him to go on but he was adamant. We agreed in the end that we\u2019d go to the owner of the print workshop, a middle aged man who smoking hashish in shisha. After the worker explained the case, I was subject to a moral lesson from the owner. \u2018Do you agree that your sister could read this?\u2019 he asked. Yes, I said. And he told me that \u201cevery household has its moral standard.\u201d<\/p>\n

This prompted me to end the conversation and ask him to give me his last word because if he wasn\u2019t going to do it I\u2019d take the novel away and wouldn\u2019t pay him. My publisher advised me in private to pay the worker a bribe. And that\u2019s how the whole dilemma ended. The guardian of morals took 20 pounds and the novel was published. (The publisher himself, who\u2019s proved to be daring in publishing political books, kept this novel at very low profile so that it didn\u2019t cause problems with the public).<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Al-Berry told Tonkin that a cultural revival needs to include not just highbrow literature, but good children\u2019s books, crime writing, and romance. \u201cI hope to see these and other genres coming back so that everybody finds a book that suits their taste.\u201d<\/p>\n

He added these hopes to ArabLit:<\/p>\n

I\u2019m looking forward to a more transparent society that allows access to information and paves the way to the production of \u2018more valid\u2019 books\u2026. But the big task is the change of attitude socially. This needs time. It needs civil organisations to work in order to make book commodity worth being proud of and worth defending. In absence of a regime that monopolise \u2018public services,\u2019 I hope we will have a sector of business people who care to build public libraries and to support publishing. That\u2019s a real struggle.<\/p>\n

The good thing is, there is something deep in the Egyptian culture that values reading and writing\u2014we need to unearth it. I really rely more on the kids and younger generations; they will be the real drive behind prospect of change.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

M.LYNX QUALEY: \u201cWe had a psychological barrier \u2013 what I call \u2018the policeman inside us\u2019. That policeman was killed\u201d on Tahrir Square.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":16,"featured_media":3998,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[80],"tags":[4708,105,18300,18305,427,18334,4706,2957,18275,428,399,1541,18337,18313],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4050"}],"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=4050"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4050\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3998"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4050"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4050"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4050"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}