'I am not like you': an open letter from 'Shahrazad' to to Asma al-Assad

An Arab woman author, journalist, conceptual artist and editor has, under the name Shahrazad, written this eloquent open letter in poster form to Asma al-Assad, wife of the Syrian president.

No one has ever called me “a rose in the desert”. I was never considered the It Girl of Middle Eastern ruling wives. I haven’t posed with world leaders or royalty, or ever worn Chanel or Christian Louboutin. For Arab womanhood to be acceptable, it should be uncovered, aristocratic and groomed, never tempestuous – like Salome or Leila Khaled. It should exude first class cool. It was not only your designer wardrobe that impressed, your IQ was described by a Vogue journalist as “killer”[1]. Cultured, articulate you were the product of a Harley Street cardiologist and a former diplomat, a childhood in Acton, private school education and college degrees in computer science and French literature, a pedigree tailor-made for an illustrious career in banking and hedge funds. I wonder if JP Morgan or Deutsche Bank prepared you for the current crisis. As for myself, I’ve never studied finance or considered applying to Harvard Business School.

In the early years of your marriage, you must have felt a higher calling: the liberalisation of Syrian banks and modernising the Internet. Your WiFi caravan for rural women toured the countryside. You appeared angel-like to poor children, promising them a decent life and better education, against the odds and in apparent defiance of your in-laws whose greed has stripped the nation bare. In the Old City, a photographer spoke in a low whisper, looking around to make sure no one was listening: ‘Our country is rich, but it doesn’t belong to us.’ A heavy brocade curtain parted slightly. A daughter of political dissidents told me about her parents in jail, and hints from popular culture kept corroborating their experiences. First time was a political cartoon by Ali Farzat: a dismembered prisoner hangs in a cell, while the jailer sitting on the floor, sharp implements at hand, sobs over a television soap opera. Then there was Rafik Schami’s novel, The Darker Side of Love, about generational violence and vendetta, and the systematic use of efficient torture after the blond German-speaking Stasi officers arrived. A BBC journalist reporting in the region recently admitted to me, there is a PhD thesis to be written about the special relationship between the communist secret police (Russia’s and the GDR’s) and Syria’s mukhabarat.

For those of us who grew up in loving Arab households, violence like this is inconceivable. If your immigrant father is like mine, your bedtime stories were filled with scenes from the old country. Once we started travelling there by ourselves, as young women, we became infatuated with a people and culture. When the US invaded Iraq or Gaza suffered, we talked obsessively about how to make some noise, effect change. Political and social transformation has always driven my ideas about the Middle East and it seemed you felt the same way. You told Vogue that it was your mission to empower the six million Syrians under eighteen, to give them “a stake” in their country so they felt it belonged to them. Mistakenly I thought I had witnessed your engagement first hand for myself on an annual bike ride for peace as women from all around the world cycled down dusty Syrian roads beside you (unlike Queen Rania who refused to ride with the hoi polloi). At rest stops, you disarmed all of us with your laughter and charm. We could have been more than friends; we could have been sisters. But you are a sister no longer, and each and every one of us feels played like a sucker.

My father believes the Arabs are caught in a cycle of never-ending historic violence. The revenge for the massacre of Karbala of 680ad is taking place today in Homs, Hama and Idlib to be followed by yet another killing field. My aunt, a Syrian Orthodox Christian, justifies the murderous actions of the regime because she fears the consequences of the old adage: ‘Alawites to the grave, Christians to Beirut.’ After eleven months of silence, a “stand by my man” email was issued from your office. The wording was stiff as though written by someone in a cult – ‘The president is the President of Syria, not a faction of Syrians, and the First Lady supports him in that role.’ Perhaps it was your inexperience – Arab daughters are often too sheltered and make notoriously bad decisions when it comes to men. But there is a glaring difference between sexual misconduct and the wanton killing of civilians.

Meanwhile the bloodletting continues unabated. But this time it is not a hairdresser like Mrs Ben Ali propping up a regime but a westerneducated, British born, First Lady, a former banker with populist pretentions and Chanel agates around her neck, whose Sunni family ironically originates from Homs, the very worst of Syria’s current killing fields. I am not like you.

When the violence is spent, don’t whine about what was beyond your control; how you were somehow the victim. At times like this, semper paratus should be your guide. Pack the Louis Vuittons, ready the abayah and familiarise yourself with the polite language of political exile in case an unscheduled flight whisks you off to Tehran or the malls of Doha. The grinds at the bottom of the Turkish coffee cup foretell only one future: you are no longer an innocent bystander. Mutilated honour – the very thing our women have always been killed for – spreads like a deep red stain across your husband’s silken bed sheets.

1. Joan Juliet Buck, “A Rose in the Desert”, Vogue (US), February 2011, an article that was withdrawn from the Vogue website and only available online from PresidentAssad.net

Edition of 2000.

Available for free from iamnotlikeyou@safe-mail.com

Written by Shahrazad

Picture credit: Louai Beshara / AFP / Getty Images

bqfp statement on iraqi authors' tour of uk

(L to R) Inaam Kachachi, Samuel Shimon, Ali Bader, at Oxford Literary Festival

Bloomsbury Qatar Foundation Publishing (BQFP) statement on Iraqi Authors' Tour of UK:

[an appearance of the three writers, scheduled for Bristol Festival of Ideas on 3 April, was cancelled "due to unforeseen circumstances"]

Bloomsbury Qatar Foundation Publishing Spotlight on Leading Iraqi Authors:
Ali Bader, Inaam Kachachi and Samuel Shimon tour the UK

UK, 8 April 2012- Last week Bloomsbury Qatar Foundation Publishing authors Ali Bader, Inaam Kachachi and Samuel Shimon spoke to rapt audiences at the prestigious Southbank Centre in London and Oxford Literary Festival as part of a four day tour of the UK. Speaking on the 9th anniversary of the US invasion of Iraq the three authors discussed the richness and resilience of Iraqi literature and the very different ways in which they each provide an alternative vision of their homeland to images perpetuated by the media.

With the publication of An Iraqi in Paris, The American Granddaughter and The Tobacco Keeper BQFP brings great contemporary Iraqi fiction to an English-speaking audience. Among the few translations of Iraqi writers into English, Bader, Kachachi and Shimon are rare voices, offering insight into the social make-up of their complex country.

The National states ‘despite all the turmoil of Iraq's past three decades, the country's literature has been steadily evolving... English translations of Iraqi work hasn't been quite as prolific, although that's slowly changing, with the help of Bloomsbury Qatar Foundation Publishing’.
Andy Smart, consultant publisher at BQFP, commented on the recent tour by the three writers : ‘We hope everyone who attended the events will have been surprised and invigorated by the passion and humour of three great writers.’

at Oxford Literary Festival

An Iraqi in Paris A young Iraqi writer sets out to become a Hollywood film-maker, only to end up as a refugee on the streets of Paris where he beds down in a train station. Although his dream of making a film about his deaf-mute father is never realised, the extraordinary encounters he has with the likes of Jean-Luc Godard, Samuel Beckett and a ghost from Père Lachaise Cemetery transform his own story into a captivating drama more compelling than anything on the big screen.
Samuel Shimon is an Assyrian writer, filmmaker and publisher. Born in Iraq, he left his country in 1979. He is the assistant editor of Banipal., the leading magazine of Arabic literature in English He lives in London.

The Tobacco Keeper A former member of Saddam’s army, now working as a journalist, returns to Baghdad to unravel the mysterious circumstances surrounding the death of the celebrated violinist Kamal Medhat. He soon discovers an extraordinary secret, the man known as Kamal Medhat had lived three lives; as a Jew exiled in Israel, a Shia Muslim while in Iran and a Sunni Muslim on his return to Iraq.
Ali Bader is an award-winning Iraqi novelist, essayist, poet, scriptwriter and journalist who has written ten novels, two poetry collections and several works of non-fiction. He fought in the Iran-Iraq war as a conscript and more recently worked as a war correspondent covering the Middle East.

The American Granddaughter Fifteen years after emigrating from Baghdad to America, Zeina returns to her war-torn homeland as an interpreter for the US Army and finds herself tormented by conflicting allegiances. Her traditional grandmother disapproves of her granddaughter’s involvement with the occupying forces. Whilst in Baghdad, Zeina meets two ‘brothers’ she knows nothing of. When she falls deeply in love with one of them, a militant in the Mahdi Army, she herself begins to question her values.
Born in Baghdad, Inaam Kachachi now lives in France. She writes for several Arabic newspapers and has previously published two non-fiction books and one novel.

About BQFP
Bloomsbury Qatar Foundation Publishing (BQFP) is owned by Qatar Foundation and managed by Bloomsbury Publishing Plc in London. BQFP is based in Doha, Qatar, and has three main aims:
• Publishing: To publish books of excellence and originality to the highest editorial, design and production standards, in Arabic and in English.
• Reading and Writing Development: to encourage lifelong literacy in Qatar and the Arab World.
• Knowledge Transfer: Transfer of publishing and related skills to Qatar and the Gulf region via training and other initiatives.
For more information on BQFP’S activities please refer to our website:
www.bqfp.com.qa

For more details on BQFP titles contact Laura Brooke and the BQFP team at lbrooke@bqfp.org.qa/ +974 55 9351 50

'voices from iraq' - 3 bqfp Iraqi writers at london's southbank

'Voices from Iraq' speak out at London's Southbank Centre

Ali Bader (L) with Andy Smart, BQFP Consultant Publisher

Inaam Kachachi

Samuel Shimon

Last night three leading Iraqi authors - Ali Bader, Inaam Kachachi and Samuel Shimon - discussed their work in front of an audience at London's Southbank Centre, as part of the 'Voices from Iraq' UK book tour organised by their publisher, Bloomsbury Qatar Foundation Publishing (BQFP). The discussion was chaired by Paul Blezard author, broadcaster, Literary Director of Firebird Poetry Prizes - and literary interviewer par excellence.

Ali Bader is author of The Tobacco Keeper (translated by Amira Nowaira), Inaam Kachachi of The American Granddaughter (trans. Nariman Youssef ) and Samuel Shimon of An Iraqi in Paris (trans Piers Amodia and Christina Phillips). In 2009 The American Granddaughter was shortlisted, and The Tobacco Keeper longlisted, for the International Prize for Arabic Fiction (IPAF).

The three authors had appeared the previous day at the Sunday Times Oxford Literary Festival. Today they travel to the south west of England to participate in the Bristol Festival of Ideas [this event was in fact cancelled]. The tour of Iraqi writers followed a UK tour by three bestselling BQFP Egyptian authors Khaled AlKhamissi, Ahmed Mourad and Ahmed Khaled Towfik last October. I went to an evening with the three Egyptian writers at the residency of the Egyptian ambassador in London.

Paul Blezard

The Iraqi writers' discussions with Blezard were wide-ranging, rich and sparky - with the writers at times challenging him and each other. One question that was raised repeatedly was that of the responsibility of the Iraqi author to for example recreate Iraqi history, which might otherwise be lost, for the younger generation of Iraqis. The discussions often referred back to an Iraq that seems to have vanished, including in its previous multiculturalism. Asked about the Iraqi future, Inaam said "we are living in the past" and described how Iraqis are very active on the internet in looking back and remembering and posting old songs and other cultural elements and creating a sort of virtual Iraq in cyberspace. Samuel Shimon said the second part of his autobiographical novel, in which he writes about his childhood growing up in multicultural Iraq had struck a chord with Iraqi readers, many of whom had sent him appreciative letters.

Paul Blezard asked Bader about the fact that the central character of his "absolutely brilliant" novel The Tobacco Keeper is actually three characters over time. Bader said that when he visited Iraq in 2008 it was a time of civil strife, which made him confront issues of identity. His novel explores "the tangle of identity in Iraq" and the way in which it has caused suffering from the 1941 pogrom (the Farhud) against the Iraqi Jews onwards. And yet there has been no real Iraqi self-critique of the link between identity and violence, he observed.

Ali Bader's references to his long years as a conscript in the Iraqi army, taking part in the war against Iran and then the invasion, occupation and war in Kuwait in 1990/91, were harrowing. Many of his friends were killed, and he had returned from Kuwait to Iraq after the 1991 war to find his country destroyed. This led to tortured feelings: "Everyone thinks his country is immortal. I couldn't 't understand how all this culture, arts, had disappeared."

Shimon in contrast had left Iraq to pursue his dreams of making films in Hollywood in the 1970s at a time when Iraq was very wealthy - and when the Iraqi dinar was worth three US dollars. He remembered the profusion of cabarets, bars and streets full of bookstores. "It was very civilised... Iraq was so beautiful. If I think about Iraq I think I'll be sad. I wanted to write about my dream."

Blezard started the discussion by asking how the culture of novel writing had developed in Iraq, when poetry had been traditionally the dominant literary form. Bader referred to an explosion in novel writing from the early 1990s and Kachachi noted that 65 Iraqi novels have been written dealing with the 2003 invasion alone. Blezard also asked about the influence if any of foreign literary models on novel writing. Samuel Shimon - who as well as being a novelist is co-founder and editor of Banipal magazine and founder of the kikah.com website - said he had learned from Russian writers "how to write about tragedy in a noble way".

Bader noted that influences on Iraqi fiction had passed through several phases, starting with Russian novels and moving to the influence of French pioneers of the Nouveau Roman such as Alain Robbe-Grillet - who visited Iraq several times in the 1980s. Bader, who is a journalist as well as a novelist, said one particular influence on him had been the Polish writer Ryszard Kapuscinski, with his elements of docudrama. Bader said Iraq is itself really like a fiction: "Iraq is not a well of petrol, it is a well of stories."

When Blezard asked why, when Iraq offers so many real-life stories that could lend themselves to non-fiction forms, there is a need to write fiction. Kachachi, who is a Paris-based journalist as well as a novelist, said that in her work as a journalist she meets a lot of people and witnesses many events but there are stories you cannot put in reportage or features. In addition, there is the problem of the pressures on freedom of expression from Saudi Arabian and Gulf control of the Arab media. Arab journalism cannot be as free as novel writing. She thinks the strength of Iraqi novel writing comes from its subject rather than its style. Iraq has "so many stories that go beyond the imagination." She does not need to find "a fantastic idea" to write a novel, because "the reality is fantastic."

The room in which the 'Voices from Iraq' event was held was high up on the fifth level of the Southbank's Royal Festival Hall, with a spectacular panoramic view across the River Thames. "How many literary events do you get to go to where you see the sinking sun through the prism of the London Eye and with arguably the world’s third oldest parliament building?" Blezard said in his introductory comments of welcome to the event.

But during the discussions Kachachi, a woman of great spirit, described how a photographer had come to take pictures of the writers an hour before the event. "He photographed the three of us outside on the terrace and he said 'Do you see? There is the Parliment in the background of the photo, what do you think about it?'" Inaam sighed deeply as she said she had answered the photographer: "All those big lies of Tony Blair flew from here to destroy my country, that's it!" The audience burst into resounding spontaneous applause.

The authors' discussions were to have been followed by an audience Q&A session but this swiftly gave way to audience demands for readings from the writers' three novels. Bader chose to read a steamy bedroom scene from The Tobacco Keeper and there were some barely suppressed giggles from certain audience members as the scene hotted up. Would Bader read the scene to its conclusion? He did, and someone later joked that BQFP should consider releasing audio versions of its books read by their authors.

Susannah Tarbush

Rabee Jaber's IPAF win opens new translation opportunities

Rabee Jaber receives the IPAF award from Sheikh Sultan Bin Tahnoon Al Nahyan MD of Emirates Foundation. On left of picture, Dr Khaled Hroub

Rabee Jaber’s IPAF win widens the Lebanese novelist’s translation and publishing horizons
by Susannah Tarbush

The announcement in Abu Dhabi on Tuesday night that Lebanese writer Rabee Jaber had won the International Prize for Arabic Fiction (IPAF) for his novel The Druze of Belgrade is bound to intensify interest in his work among translators and publishers of Arabic literary fiction.

Laure Pécher, co-founder of the Paris-based literary agency Pierre Astier & Associés, which represents Jaber, says first offers for translation and publication of The Druze of Belgrade have come from publishers in three Balkan countries that were part of former Yugoslavia - Bosnia, Serbia and Croatia. She adds: “We are now focusing on the UK, Spain, Germany, the Netherlands and Brazil”.

The New York publisher New Directions has already signed up two of Jaber's other novels for publication in English translation. It may now seek to also acquire rights to The Druze of Belgrade. Editor-in-chief and publisher of New Directions Barbara Epler says she has asked Pierre Astier to see the IPAF-winning novel. “I hope to have a chance to consider that one as well, and perhaps we’ll be able to add that to our plans," she says.

The prize is worth a total of $60,000 to the winner – the $50,000 prize itself, plus the $10,000 that goes to each of the six shortlisted books. It is the Arab world’s most prestigious literary prize, and is often referred to as the Arabic Booker because while funded by the Emirates Foundation of Abu Dhabi it is run with support from the Booker Prize Foundation in London.


The Druze of Belgrade begins in the 1860s, following the war between Christians and Druze in Mount Lebanon. A Christian egg seller, Hanna Yaqoub, has the identity of a Druze fighter forced on him and is exiled with a group of Druze fighters. The book tells of his 12 years of imprisonment and his ordeals in Belgrade and elsewhere in the Balkans.

Jaber told the BBC World Service radio programme The Strand that although the novel is set in an Ottoman world that no longer exists, “at the same time it is this world that we are living in right now.” He cites the example of Ahmed Pasha al-Jazzar, “the Butcher” who ruled Akka and then Beirut in the late 19th century. He kept prisoners in underground jails, anchoring them to the ground with iron fetters. He changed the chains only when new prisoners arrived, at which point he told guards to throw the old prisoners into the sea so the new ones could take their place. “Now this is the third world – it’s still going on one way or another,” Jaber said.

German was the first foreign language in which Jaber (under the name Rabi Jabir) was published when his 2002 novel Rahlat al-Gharnati (Journey of the Granadian) was published in 2005 by Verlag Hans Schiler under the title Die Reise des Granadiners translated by Nirmin Sharkawi and Claudia Ott.

Gallimard published Berytus Underground City in French translation by Simon Corthay and Charlotte Woillez as Berytus, Une Ville Sous Terre in 2009. Feltrinelli published America in Italian translation by E. Bartuli and H. Bahri last September, under the title Come fili di seta.




Jaber’s IIPAF win will encourage translators and publishers to assess the potential not only of The Druze of Belgrade, but also of other works in the (so far, and counting) 18-novel oeuvre of this amazingly prolific author whose first book appeared in 1992, the year he turned 20.

This was the second time Jaber had been shortlisted for the IPAF: his novel America was shortlisted in 2010. He has also received the accolade of being a Beirut39 author, one of the 39 authors aged 39 or less who were in 2009 selected by a jury as being particularly important. Beirut39 was a flagship project of Beirut UNESCO Book Capital 2009. An excerpt from America, translated by Marilyn Booth, appeared in Beirut 39: New Writing from the Arab World edited by Samuel Shimon (Bloomsbury 2010).

In addition to the IPAF cash prize, the IPAF award includes a guarantee that the winning novel will be translated and published in English. Although translations of some novels by Jaber (but not The Druze of Belgrade) have been published by French, Italian and German publishers, his work has yet to appear in English. No British publisher has yet reached a deal to publish any of Jaber’s work in translation.

New Directions of New York reached the first and only agreements so far to publish Jaber’s work in English with the signing up of two novels with translation by Kareem James Abu-Zeid. “We plan to publish The Mehlis Report this coming spring 2013 and then Berytus Underground City probably a year after that, allowing time for Kareem to translate that one for us as well,” says Barbara Epler. Berytus Underground City was first published in Arabic in 2005, and The Mehlis Report in 2006.

Jaber’s IPAF win is excellent news for his US publisher. “We are thrilled Rabee Jaber won the prize,” Epler says. “We think he richly deserves it but we also think this will be a great help here in bring his books with New Directions to the attention of reviewers, booksellers and readers.”

When it signed up its two Jaber novels, New Directions had “had an eye on Jaber for a while and had received a sample and summary of America from his distinguished agent Pierre Astier, whom we’ve known since he ran the terrific French publishing house Le Serpent a Plumes.”

Epler says: “We admired the writing very much, but New Directions tends to focus on what used to be called avant-garde or experimental fiction. While America has many excellent qualities, it seemed to us in many ways to be a strong traditional narrative. One of our editors, Jeffrey Yang, knows a young translator, Kareem James Abu-Zeid, and it somehow came up that we were interested in Jaber but hadn’t felt America was quite right for our somewhat narrow bailiwick. Kareem started raving about The Mehlis Report, and sent us in a very good sample and a convincing reader’s report describing the novel as a whole.” Friends of New Horizon at French publisher Gallimard had also spoken very highly of Jaber.

The central character of The Mehlis Report is a middle-aged architect Saman Yarid; the time is the period around the publication in October 2005 of the report by UN-appointed Detlev Mehlis into the car bombing that had killed former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri the previous February. Jaber weaves a complex narrative around his characters and Beirut itself that lends itself to multiple readings. Epler says: “The Mehlis Report is more than a realist novel, though tackling very real themes; it ventures into the land of the dead, where almost everyone is writing their memoirs.”

Epler adds: “Pierre has explained to me that in a broad sense Jaber works in two veins: one is the more experimental approach of The Mehlis Report and Berytus Underground City and the other is somewhat more traditional (and in that case historical) path of America. We decided, being very impressed with Jaber's writing, to acquire both The Mehlis Report and Berytus. Those are the two we now have under contract.”

Jaber, who studied physics at the American University of Beirut, combines his career as a novelist with that of a journalist and has been editor of leading pan-Arab newspaper Al-Hayat’s Afaq (meaning Horizons) section since 2001. He is an extraordinarily productive fiction writer. His novels have been published at the rate of almost one a year since his first novel Sayyid al-Atmah (Master of Darkness) was published in 1992. His most recent novel, Birds of the Holiday Inn, appeared last year.

Given Jabir’s rapidly growing and acclaimed oeuvre over the past two decade, it is surprising that his work has not so far been published in English translation apart from excerpts published in for example Banipal magazine. The extract from The Druze of Belgrade published in the most recent issue of Banipal, along with extracts from the other five novels shortlisted for IPAF, was translated by Nancy Roberts.

One wonders whether Jabir may prove to be like the famous Libyan novelist Ibrahim al-Koni in the sense of being an “under-translated” Arab author whose work suddenly catches on with English-language translators and publishers. Al-Koni is one of Libya's most celebrated authors, and has written more than 60 books but little of his work was translated before 2000. Since then a slew of his titles has appeared in English translation.

Kareem James Abu-Zeid has championed Jaber's writing for some time. In his reader's report to New Directions arguing that it should sign up The Mehlis Report he said: "As someone who has read many of the best Arabic novels of the past few years (and been offered the opportunity to translate some of them by various presses), I can say that Jaber is certainly one of the most talented...He is the single Arab author I am, personally, most excited about translating."

Egytpian-American Abu Zeid has emerged as one of the most talented of young Arabic-English literary translators in recent years. His translation of Sudanese novelist Tarek Eltayeb's Cities without Palms (American University in Cairo Press) was joint runner up for the Banipal Translation Prize in 2010. His translation of Eltayeb's The Palm House appeared was published this month by AUC Press and next month by Oxford University Press. He is now translating Moroccan writer Mohammed Achaari's IPAF 2011 co-winning novel The Arch and the Butterfly for Bloomsbury Qatar Foundation Publishing (BQFP) with publication due in September.

omar sabbagh squares up to his lebanese roots in 2nd poetry collection

The Lebanese-British poet Omar Sabbagh squares up to his Lebanese roots in his second collection from Cinnamon Press

English original of an article that appeared in Al-Hayat on 18 March 2012:
عمر صبّاغ شاعر بريطانيا اللبناني

الأحد, 18 مارس 2012
سوزانا طربوش

The article in Al-Hayat was accompanied by 3 translations of Sabbagh's poems into Arabic (the first-ever published English-Arabic renderings of Sabbagh's work) by the novelist, poet and Al-Hayat writer Jad El Hage (author of One Day in April ). The translated poems are On Lebanon (dedicated to Fouad Sanyoura), Poetry (dedicated to Maha Evers), and The Kindess of the Man (in memory of the poet's late maternal uncle Bisher Faris).

The 30-year-old Lebanese-British poet and scholar Dr Omar Sabbagh has in recent years won growing recognition as a distinctive and arresting voice on the British poetry scene. His poems have appeared many leading British poetry publications, and in September 2010 the Welsh independent publisher Cinnamon Press published his first collection “My Only Ever Oedipal Complaint” to critical acclaim. Now Cinnamon Press has published his second collection “The Square Root of Beirut” .

How does Dr Sabbagh view the second collection in comparison to the first? “I think my first book was an angry young man’s book - it was, quite literally, the objective correlative and transmogrification of a kind of felt misery, into measured words,” he says.

“I would say quite generally that my second book evinces, for all its remaining negativity, a certain extra factor of maturity and calm. In this second book if there is negative valency at any part, it is taken on board in a more ‘objective’ way, as an observer, or me a bit more able to stand outside myself. My tone or attitude –my stance towards the reader – is more resigned, more contemplative and at ease with evil, whether this latter be natural, circumstantial, purely psychological, or moral.”

“The Square Root of Beirut” carries praise on its back cover from Professor Roseanne Saad Khalaf, Associate Professor of English and Creative Writing at the American University of Beirut ( AUB). “Sabbagh’s distinctive voice is startling in its cool intelligence, deeply absorbing and provocative in its intensely complex love-hate fascination with his homeland, particularly Beirut, a seductive city of disturbing contradictions,” Khalaf writes.

Sabbagh says that on reading Khalaf’s comment “I realised that this book, to a certain extent at least, is like the first, which centred around parent-child relations, but writ large -- the city takes the place of parents.”

“The Square Root of Beirut” also has a highly favourable review on its cover from Patricia McCarthy, the editor of Agenda poetry journal. McCarthy writes: “Omar Sabbagh demonstrates how he has grown into his Arab/English voice, and found his own place in its archetypal, instinctive reaches. His ear is finely-tuned in these deft, incisive poems that shift between home and exile, love and death.”

She adds: “Each poem flows all of a piece, carrying its own alchemy, eroticism, and startling imagery, along with feeling thoughts, and thought-full feelings. Clever conceits, word play and large scope combine in this haunting, metaphysical, excitingly original collection.” Agenda’s book publishing arm Agenda Editions is due to publish Sabbagh’s third collection, “Waxed Mahogany”, by the end of this year.

Some of the 52 poems in Sabbagh’s second collection first appeared in magazines and online publications including Agenda, Envoi, Kenyon review online, Poetry Review, Poetry Wales, The Reader, Stand and the Warwick Review. Three of the poems were published in Banipal, the magazine of modern Arab literature – proof that he is gaining a reputation not only as a British poet but also as an Arab poet, albeit one who writes in English.

Sabbagh was born in London in 1981 to Mohamad and Maha Sabbagh who had left Lebanon in 1975 and settled in the British capital. Sabbagh’s parents returned to live in Beirut some five years ago. Omar was awarded his PhD at Kings College, London University, a year ago for a thesis on the subject of Narrative and Time in the writings of Ford Madox Ford and Joseph Conrad. He is currently spending a year as a visiting assistant professor teaching creative writing and English literature at AUB.



The new collection is dedicated to the memory of Omar’s maternal grandmother Sabiha Faris and of his uncle Bisher Faris, who died within a week of each other in summer 2010. “The four poems for my grandma and uncle are strategically in the centre of the collection,” says Sabbagh. The tender poem dedicated to his grandmother , entitled “A Rival to Incontinence”, finds the four-year old out walking with his grandmother: “Do you remember how we walked between the hedgerows / in the park, I at four aching to grow, you / aching at my aching?”

His uncle’s death leads to meditations on life and death and grief. The poem “A Day On” ends: “Death’s dance, / It’s grim ballet of breaking waves, / its slyly awful game with chance.”

Sabbagh thinks his literary side comes from his mother’s family, Faris. His mother’s father was Iraqi but she grew up in Lebanon and met Mohamad Sabbagh at AUB. Her mother Sabiha Faris taught children’s literature at AUB. Omar’s mother loves English literature, and she gave Omar him the works of Jane Austen and Charles Dickens to read when he was 11. He says that even today, “my mother is my first editor”

His mother’s late brother Bisher was an economist who worked in the Saudi Finance Ministry. “He was a bachelor who thus lavished immense affection and kindness on all his nephews and nieces,” Sabbagh says. “I wear his purple scarf daily here, even if it clashes, to keep him close to my heart.”

Another of his uncles, Waddah Faris, was an art dealer and artist in Paris in the 1970s and 1980s. He now lives in Barcelona with his wife, the prominent Catalan artist Assumpcio Mateu with whom he has two children.

Some of the poems in “The Square Root of Beirut” are dedicated to his parents, jointly or singly, and to other family members. Other poems are dedicated to politician Fuad Siniora, psychiatrist George Resek, political activist and writer Tariq Ali and the psychoanalyst and writer Adam Phillips.

Sabbagh leads a life committed to poetry. Those on his poetry e-mailing list often receive one or more poems from him in a day, characteristically including the name of the bar, cafe or restaurant where they were written. He works with unusual speed. “I generally agree with Keats that poetry should come naturally or not at all...which is to say the most I ever spend on a poem is half an hour and I virtually never return to them. I write therefore 70 per cent rubbish, but feel this is necessary to produce that 30 per cent which is good.”

He adds: “I would say that the criticism a more senior poet than myself may make towards me is that my very fluency and embodied feel for the English language, sometimes makes me trust too much to talent and not enough to hard work.”

In terms of form, “I write what Goethe would call “bold writing”. I don’t use understatement like a lot of the cleverer sort of natively northern temperaments.” And “I believe that in so far as any real poetry is a confrontation with death, that all real poetry is actually about God.”

Sabbagh’s first collection was divided into two halves, the second of which consisted of 23 poems dedicated to a mysterious woman referred to only by the initial “C”. There are two poems dedicated to “C” in the second collection, entitled “First Bone” and “Sonnet of the (Latent) Stalker”.

Sabbagh compares the influence of “C” on his poetry to that of other women who have inspired a writer’s work. “C is my Beatrice (Dante), my Laura (Petrarch), my Dark Lady (Shakespeare), my Maud Gonne (Yeats), my Vera (Nabokov), my Asja (Walter Benjamin), my White Goddess (Robert Graves)... she represents the feminine for me, which is to say motherhood/matrix (how one is plugged into the earth), lust or, as well, the feminine side of me, what Jung would call my ‘anima’.”

Sabbagh did his first degree in Philosophy, Politics and Economics (PPE) at Oxford University. “C” is “based on a girl I espied in Oxford University’s Bodleian PPE reading room in autumn 1999 when I was 18 ...we talked maybe 4 or 5 times, me blushing and not being able to say anything beyond, say, ‘Hi, how are you?’” He adds: "I must stress ‘C’ signifies and is 'real' solely within a poetic perspective, rather than a realistic prosy one...that said, in many ways metaphors are more real than so-called reality.”
Susannah Tarbush

palestinian-us writer susan abulhawa tours jordan, qatar and abu dhabi with arabic version of 'mornings in jenin'

Susan Abulhawa

The Arabic translation of Palestinian-American author Susan Abulhawa's acclaimed debut novel Mornings in Jenin , (first published in English by Bloomsbury in 2010) is published this week by Bloomsbury Qatar Foundation Publishing (BQFP)as a paperback under the title Baynama Yanam Al Alam meaning "While the World Sleeps". To publicise the Arabic translation Abulhawa will be appearing at events in Jordan, Qatar and Abu Dhabi in the last week of this month. The publisher says: "This is our first major multi-country author tour we have arranged, so it is a milestone for BQFP."

The novel was translated by Samia Shanan. The title of the Arabic version is a translation of the title of the German translation of the novel, Während die Welt Schlief , published by Diana Verlag as a hardback in March 2011 and as a paperback next month. Explaining why the German rather than original English title was chosen as the basis of the Arabic title BQFP says: "The reason for choosing this title is that Jenin in Arabic means newborn which would sound strange. The German title therefore seemed to work better."The novel has so far been published in 22 countries including Norway, where it is a bestseller.



Susan Abulhawa's book tour begins on Sunday 25th March when she will appear in Amman, Jordan, at a 7pm event at the contemporary art space Makan , Building number 21, Nadim Al-Mallah Street, Jabal Al-Weibdeh,

On Tuesday 27th March in Qatar at 6.30 there is ‘An hour with Susan Abulhawa in collaboration with Fakhoora’ - an event in English with simultaneous translation. Location: Student Centre, Education City

Wednesday 28th March finds Abulhawa at the Abu Dhabi International Book Fair where at 5.30pm she will take part in an event chaired by ADTV journalist Fatima Al Beloushi. On Thursday 29th March at 12.15pm in Abu Dhabi Abulhawa will take part in "Where the Heart is" - a panel discussion on how the idea of “home” affects writing - with cookbook writer Sally Butcher, travel writer Tim Mackintosh-Smith (travel writer) and poet Tishani Doshi.

marwan bishara presents his new book 'the invisible arab' at london's frontline club

The Nazareth-born Palestinian political sociologist Marwan Bishara has come to international attention in recent years as senior political analyst of the satellite TV channel Al-Jazeera English (AJE) and as editor and host of its flagship show Empire. Bishara, who lives in Paris, Washington DC and Doha, was at the Frontline Club in London on Tuesday night to discuss his new book The Invisible Arab: The Promise and Peril of the Arab Revolution (Nation Books, New York) in front of a packed-out audience. He discussed the book with BBC presenter and special correspondent Lyse Doucet, who has reported from several of the hotspots of Arab revolution over the past year. The discussion was followed by a Q & A session with the audience and a book signing.

Bishara has been a lecturer in International Relations at the American University of Paris and a fellow at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales. He has written for numerous publications including the Guardian, New York Times, International Herald Tribune, Newsweek, Le Monde and The Nation.

The event was sparky and punctuated by frequent laughter. But then humour has been a hallmark of the Arab revolutions. As Bishara writes in his book: “If, as one keen observer noted, every joke is a tiny revolution, the Arabs, and most notably the Egyptians, are revolutionaries par excellence.”

When asked by Doucet about the “Invisible Arab” of the title of his book Bishara explained there were two ways of looking at this, from the inside and the outside. “Within the Arab world those people who struggled over the last several decades for freedom and justice in their region, in their societies and their states, were made invisible in the rest of the society by dictators who wanted to make sure that those who had something to say did not say it. So the many thousands upon thousands of unionists, community organisers, human rights activists, and so on who struggled were imprisoned, tortured, censored and kept away from media – and there was nothing but state media anyway – or were sent to exile or to their deaths. So from within the Arab societies dictatorships made sure that those who had something to say were made invisible as much as possible.

“For the outside world, those very same people were also made invisible by an approach that saw the region through three prisms: energy security – the Arabs being those with their hands on the spigot so to speak - Israel’s security, and third and last the Arabs were seen as a threat to Western national security – hence terrorism, Islamic fundamentalism and so on.” The Arabs, and especially the activists, were seen as unfriendly and as the enemy. “In so many ways because the region was seen from those three angles of national security, Israel security and energy security, the Arabs as human beings, as activists, as democrats, as human rights militants and so on were completely and utterly marginalised by Western leaders.”

But the West did like what he calls the "good Arabs" - young guys like Saif al-Islam Gaddafi who might for example use words like "awesome" and "cool". Bishara recalled an earlier event at the Frontline Club, a panel on the Arab uprisings held on 2 March 2011. Bishara's three fellow panellists on that occasion each gave Saif al-Islam the benefit of the doubt, and saw him as having been genuinely reform-minded. Bishara was the only panel member who strongly spoke out against Saif, saying he was neither good nor liberal but a “thug”, son of a dictator and, on the basis of his behaviour over the years, “like father like son”.

Recalling this earlier Fronline event he said Saif al-Islam might have spoken English, looked cool and been flamboyant, but he was nevertheless a “macho asshole”. But in the view of some in the West, the dictators generally were old fashioned "but the young dictators were wonderful – they were flamboyant, travelled round the world using their people’s fortunes – wasting them basically on parties and on paying call girls and so forth – and selling or giving out good contracts to Western companies by simply being invited to this and that.” They were routinely described as Western-educated "but mostly they stole the certificate or somehow got around it." The Gamal Mubaraks, the Saif al-Islams, and other young dictators or dictators-in-waiting were encouraged by the West and were seen as reformers. "There is nothing reforming about it at all except that they are more willing than their elders to speak of liberal, neo-liberal, politics with an American accent."

Bishara refers in his book to the young revolutionary Arabs as the "miracle generation" contrasting them with the "liberation generation" of the 1950s, the "defeated generation" of the 1970s and 1980s and the "lost generation" of the 1990s.

Marwan Bishara

The Invisible Arab is an essay, "a voyage in time and space" on the roots of many of the components of the Arab Spring. It is a reflection, its author writes, on "Arab defiance and hope against all odds; on how a new generation of Arabs overcame decades of fear, oppression, defiance and outright slaughter at the hands of some of the cruelest and bloodiest dictatorships of the twentieth century; on how the revolution exposed Western clichés about Arabs as neo-colonial farce, some of which were internalized by many of the West's 'good Arabs' over the decades."

He says that the revolution will ultimately be judged on how it scores with freedom and justice and on whether it can "pave the way for accommodating the various ideological, religious, political, and civic trends, as well as reconciling nationalism and Islam with democracy as the indispensable trinity of stability and progress in the Arab world." He observes that since the new Arab awakening started, the Egyptian and Tunisian “honeymoons” have given way to difficult and bloody confrontations in Libya, Bahrain, Yemen and Syria. “It soon became clear that the swift beginnings of peaceful transition in Tunisia and Egypt were exceptions to the rule...” He acknowledges that the situation at the end of 2011 when his book went to press was fluid, and that future political storms could flood the Arab world with chaos. "However, I sincerely believe that the peoples of the region have made a decisive break with the past."

He writes that the Arab revolutions are motivated by an inclusive, pluralistic nationalism. The book assesses how the demographic "time bomb" has "proved to be the carrier of progress, unity, and freedom, how social networks of people have demanded social justice, and how new and satellite media intertwined to reconnect Arabs across borders, ethnicity, and religion."

Many concerns have been expressed about the course of the Arab revolutions more than one year after they erupted. Bishara used the example of an in-flight questionnaire, asking for passengers’ assessment of point of departure, point of arrival, service, stopovers, delays, convenience, and so on. "Revolutions cannot be judged that way," he said. There is no specific point of arrival, and it is not known how many bumpy rides there may be during the flight. To those who are dismayed that democracy still has not arrived he says "I am at least optimistic about the fact that we are breaking with the past and that there is a new generation that is promising, there are perils ahead, there are pitfalls on board, but it’s going to be up to this generation that made the revolutions possible to move their societies on the right track and in that way I’m optimistic."

There was considerable discussion on whether the uprisings in the Arab world could actually be called a revolution. Bishara said that at AJE there had been long discussions on what to call the phenomenon. “It’s not revolution in any historic context that we know and certainly not in an Arab Muslim context. So we are in a place where we have to have ijtihad – we have to interpret." What is revolutionary is that “there is a break with the past, there is a break with fear, there is a break with dictatorship but because this is not a totalitarian revolution they were not about to impose a new regime the morning after...What's incredible about the miracle generation is that actually they buy into this whole idea of pluralism, they take it seriously, they buy into this whole idea of opinion, and the other opinion, and freedom of expression and letting the people decide."

Asked about the apparent setbacks experienced by some women in the revolutions, for example in Egypt, he responded: “I don’t think Egyptian women or any other women in the Arab world today are less than what they were in 2010. I think they are far more than what they were. In principle, there was a far bigger role for the women in the revolution than there is generally speaking in society or in politics. Women played an indispensable role in the revolution; I think this will not go away. But this will not translate into equality and women being a forceful player in politics the morning after... And that’s where there’s a disappointment. In that sense I think women are more than in their rightful position to say, This is not fair."

He added: "I don’t think it’s the end of the road, i think women today are far more important because of the revolution and I think as time goes by they will prove to be, even within the Muslim Brotherhood, more powerful. The young women in the Muslim Brotherhood, I call them the Young Sisters of the Muslim Brotherhood, have become so vocal that even the older more cynical generation need to meet some of the stuff that they are saying because they are actually more in touch with the people than the old cynics... In a sense the unfairness is there, it is not as dramatic as it’s reported and I think it’s just fair but also practical for women to be playing a far greater role in the future of the Arab world".

On the question of the Palestinians and the Arab Spring Bishara said: “I think Palestine will suffer in the short term because Arabs are going to be preoccupied with themselves and they have a lot to be preoccupied by. But in the long term there will be fewer clients in the region, and more leaders representing people, and hence Israel will have more to reckon with.”

Some in the audience expressed worries about the possibility of an attack on Iran by Israel or the US or both. Bishara saw the scenario of possible war on Iran as an example of the regional old order and as “certainly in no way conducive to, or encouraging of, democratic peaceful changes in the Arab region." He was concerned that the question of Iran “will end up translating a lot of the good changes in the region to perhaps sectarian polarisation, and that is certainly the worst thing that could happen.”
Susannah Tarbush

cinnamon press launches new anthologies of poets omar sabbagh, frank dullaghan & bill greenwell

Based on information from the Cinnamon Press website:

Poets Frank Dullaghan, Bill Greenwell, Omar Sabbagh

& their publisher Cinnamon Press

invite you to the launch of the poets' new anthologies:

Enough Light to See the Dark - Ringers - The Square Root of Beirut

Friday March 9th, 7.00 pm

The Poetry Cafe; 22 Betterton St; Covent Garden; London WC2H 9BX

Free event with bar

rsvp jan@cinnamonpress.com

village phone box reborn as a library

above: the event as reported in the Hunts Post, 7 March

Edward and Andrew Baily

On Thursday I travelled out of London to the Cambridgeshire village of Hemingford Abbots for the opening of the former BT phone box in the High Street in its new incarnation as a free 24-hour mini-library known as the Swap Box. March 1 was chosen as the date of the opening of as it was World Book Day. My twin uncles Edward and Andrew Baily had been given the honour of jointly cutting the red ribbon with two pairs of scissors. The event attracted much local interest: photographers present included representatives from the Hunts Post and Cambridge Evening News.

Edward and Andrew, who are poets and avid readers, have lived in the charming village dotted with thatched houses for nearly 40 years. They were also loyal long-time users of the phone box in the days before before their cottage was finally fitted with a BT landline.

a little light reading from the Swap Box

BT sold the phone box to the village for the princely sum of £1.00. After repainting, the box was fitted with shelves filled with books, magazines, DVDs, cassettes and videos donated by the villagers. The idea is that anyone who removes a book or other item replaces it with an item in similar condition, thereby keeping the stock ever replenished. The box remains unlocked 24/7.



The twins' initial donation to the Swap Box was the novel Fludd by Hilary Mantel and The Ringmaster by Morris West. A fellow villager had donated a run of paperbacks by Bernard Cornwell, author of books featuring Sharpe who was memorably portrayed by actor Sean Bean in a TV series. (The administrators of the Swap Box apparently at first thought on hearing of the donation of Cornwell books that it was a set of guide books and the like on Cornwall).

Edward and Andrew with Councillor Bates

A short speech was made at the ribbon cutting by councillor Ian Bates, of Huntingdonshire District Council who represents the Hemingfords and Fenstanton on Cambridgeshire County Council where he is cabinet member for growth and planning. He joked that when he had seen the twins' names he had thought of another Edward and Andrew: "we've got the royalty here at the moment!" He thanked the Village Hall committee: "A lot happens behind the scenes and they need to be thanked by the community for the work that they do not just today." He also thanked Edward and Andrew for agreeing the cut the ribbon and said "I am told that this used to be their phone - they've really claimed it back now. They used it for 35 years actually as their phone."

spread in the Village Hall

The ceremony was followed by tea and delectable homemade cakes in the large village hall which opened in 2004. I was struck again by the warmth of the community in Hemingford Abbots. There are village lunches in the Village Hall on the third Tuesday of every month except July and August, and art classes, yoga, whist drives and many other activities are also held there.
Susannah Tarbush

Polly Harper with the twins

wael ghonim's book 'revolution 2.0'

Wael Ghonim's book “Revolution 2.0”: chronicle of a personal and political odyssey in the social media era
by
Susannah Tarbush

an Arabic version of this article appeared in Al-Hayat 25 February 2012:

وائل غنيم في كتابه «الثورة 2.0»: مسلم ملتزم متفائل بالأكثرية التي ستحكم مصر


One year on from the January 25 2011 revolution in Egypt, Wael Ghonim – the 31-year-old Google executive who became in the eyes of people worldwide the “face of the Egyptian revolution” – has been touring the UK and USA to promote his book “Revolution 2.0”. The book’s subtitle is: “The Power of the People is greater than the People in Power“.

The book is published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt in the USA and by Fourth Estate (an imprint of Harper Collins) in the UK. Ghonim is currently on leave from Google to launch a non-governmental organisation supporting education and technology in Egypt. The proceeds from his book are going to this organisation.

Ghonim’s book and tour have generated much interest and enthusiasm. Ghonim received extensive media coverage, and was warmly received by packed-out audiences at his many public appearances and booksignings in London and in cities across the US. He came across as an engaging, thoughtful personality, humorous and highly intelligent.



Over the past year Ghonim’s role in helping to spark the revolution has brought him international praise and recognition. Time magazine put him in first place on its 2011 list of the world’s 100 most influential people. Arabian Business ranked him 2nd on its list of the world’s 500 most influential Arabs in the world.

The international awards made to Ghonim include the JFK Profile in Courage Award, presented to him last May by Caroline Kennedy daughter of the late president John F Kennedy. He received it in the name of the people of Egypt.

But throughout his tour Ghonim was modest about his role in a “leaderless” revolution. He writes in his book:”I utterly refuse to be labelled as a hero or take credit for igniting the revolution. I was no more than a guy with some marketing experience who started a Facebook page that snowballed into something greater than any of its thousands of contributors.”

Ghonim first leapt to worldwide fame after he was kidnapped by State Security agents in Cairo on the night of 27 Jan 2011 and disappeared for 11 days. In captivity he was kept permanently blindfolded and was interrogated by State Security officers who, he recounts in his book, accused him among other things of being a CIA agent.

Google issued advertisements saying Ghonim, its head of marketing for the Middle East and North Africa, had gone missing and asking for information on his whereabouts. A cry rang out around the world – Where is Wael Ghonim?

During Ghonim’s detention it was revealed that he was the hitherto anonymous founder and administrator of the highly influential Facebook page “Kullena Khaled Said” [ie “We Are All Khaled Said”]. Ghonim set up the page in June 2010 after seeing a gruesome photograph on the internet of the injured face of Khaled Said who had been beaten to death in Alexandria by two security agents.

Ghonim wept when he saw the photograph. “For me Khalid Said’s image offered a terrible symbol of Egypt’s condition. I could not stand by passively in the face of such grave injustice. I decided to employ all my skills and experience to demand justice for Khaled Said and to help expose his story to vigorous public debate.”

Ghonim had done a Masters in Business Administration at the American University in Cairo. This course was crucial for him: “Learning the science behind marketing was key to my career progress, and later on was vital to my online activism.”

He used his marketing skills to develop the “Kullena Khaled Said” page and to mobilise people to protest. On its first day 36,000 people joined the page, and to help him cope with the volume of activity he asked his trusted friend AbdelRahman Mansour to be the second administrator. Ghonim wrote his postings on the site in the first person “I”, but used only the name “administrator” rather than his own name. The tone of his postings was consistently non-violent. Among the novel ways of demonstrating pioneered by “Kullena Khaled Said” was the series of Silent Stands in which people were asked to dress in black, bring copies of the Quran or Bible, and stand in city streets silence in a human chain.

Ghonim announced on “Kullena Khaled Said” that there should be an event on January 25 2011 to mark National Police Day. On January 14 Ben Ali departed Tunisia and “I started to believe that we could be the second Arab nation to rid itself of its dictator”. For the first time Ghonim used the word “Revolution” on the page, declaring “January 25: Revolution against Torture, Poverty, Corruption and Unemployment.”

He started rallying people by appealing to organised groups such as the “ultras” soccer fans and by working with other activists such as those from the April 6 Movement. He was living and working for Google in Dubai, but flew back to Egypt on January 24 to take part in the January 25 demonstrations.

On his release from captivity on February 7 2010 Ghonim made a memorable and emotional appearance on the popular satellite channel Dream TV. He insisted to the interviewer Mona al-Shazly that he did not want to be treated as a hero. “I was only one member of the revolutionary masses who had fulfilled his duty toward his country.”

When Ghonim was shown during the TV interview pictures of those who had been killed in the demonstrations while he was in detention he broke down in tears. He said he wanted to tell every father and mother who had lost a child he was sorry. “But this is not our fault: it’s the fault of everyone who clung on to power and would not let go” he said. He said he wanted to leave, and he ran out of the studio.

Mehdi Hasan

In a discussion with senior political editor of the New Statesman magazine Mehdi Hasan in the Mosaic Rooms in London, Ghonim said there were three reasons for writing the book. The first was his wish to inspire people to realise that “they can achieve things bigger than they could imagine through gathering and organising people, talking about matters, and delivering messages and spreading awareness.”

The second reason was to give an account of the Egyptian revolution from his angle and personal experience. “We are blessed that this revolution is leaderless. A lot of people were involved in different angles of it.” Ghonim thinks it is “important for all of us, not just me, who experienced the 18 days of revolution to write about it, and to tell the story from his angle, so we can put these bits and pieces together for a complete picture of the Egyptian revolution.”

His third reason for writing the book was “to tell the West we are not terrorists”.

As for the title of the book, “Revolution 2.0”, Ghonim explained that during the January 25 revolution it had struck him that the revolution was like the online encyclopaedia Wikipedia, in that “people contribute together on doing something amazing and you simply don’t know most of the contributors. Everyone is contributing anonymously. When you go to Wikipedia you don’t see who wrote what but you do trust the content of it and the outcome.”

Unlike revolutions in which there has been a charismatic leader, “there was no Gandhi in the revolution or Martin Luther King that was inspiring the masses and directing them”. There was instead what he refers to as the “Wisdom of the Crowd”. This was to Ghonim a second version of revolution, ie Revolution 2.0.

Ghonim was born in Cairo and grew up in Egypt and in Saudi Arabia. His father went to work Saudi Arabia to escape the horrendous economic conditions in Egypt – but like many other Egyptians he lost his life savings through Islamic private investment companies which promised huge returns and he stayed much longer in Saudi Arabia than originally planned.

In his book Ghonim writes of how when he was at high school the death of a female cousin in a car crash led him to explore his faith. He started to start to pray five times a day, and often at the mosque. “At the university I mixed with people from many religious groups and ideologies including the Muslim Brotherhood, and I joined many of their activities at the school. But I always made my own sense out of things.”

In 1998 Ghonim founded the IslamWay.com [tariq al-Islam.com] website to help Muslims worldwide network with one another. It became one of the most popular Islamic destinations on the Internet.
“Surprisingly, IslamWay led me to my future wife,” he writes. Despite his young age he wanted to get married, but he had been rejected by the Egyptian girls to whom he had proposed. “Stubborn and independent-minded as ever, however, I was determined to solve my problems my own way.”

He decided that he needed to marry a non-Egyptian who would convert to Islam. And because he admired the openness of American culture he wanted an American Muslim convert. “I figured that anyone who changed her faith after a period of contemplation must be someone special.”

He started corresponding online via IslamWay with an American Muslim convert but she refused his suggestion that she travel from California where she lived to visit him in Cairo. Their correspondence faded out. But when he travelled to the USA in June 2001 to donate the IslamWay website to a US-based Muslim charity a friend introduced him to a woman who was looking for a Muslim husband – and it turned out to be Ilka, the girl from California. They married within weeks. He did not tell his parents in advance, and they were at first not happy about the marriage. It took his mother in particular some time to accept her new daughter-in-law.

Ghonim had planned to stay in the US to finish his degree because he was so impressed with American higher education but he changed his mind after the 9/11 terror attacks when life in the US became difficult for him and his headscarf-wearing wife. They moved to Egypt in December 2001, and are now parents of a daughter and son.

Ghonim says he was not one of the typical Egyptian political activists, but his book chronicles his growing anger over the way the Egyptian political system was going. After the rigged parliamentary and presidential elections of 2005 “we all knew it was a sham. The question was, would we put up with it?”

He writes “we all craved an alternative. We needed a saviour.” For a time Ghonim thought that the saviour was Mohammed ElBaradei. When ElBaradei returned to Egypt in February 2010 he helped him with his Facebook page and with circulating ElBaradei’s petition with its “Seven Demands for Change”. But eventually he recognised “ElBaradei had it right all along: we did not need a saviour; we had to do it ourselves.”

During Ghonim’s book tour interviewers and audiences were struck by his optimism, despite the continuing turmoil and bloodshed in Egypt. “I believe pessimism is not an option,” he said. “I personally believe that patience is very critical and being optimistic is very critical because you cannot really change things if you think that we’re doomed”.

He said: “Personally I am very optimistic, I think we have achieved things in the past 12 months that if someone had told me two years ago that this is going to happen I would have said that guy was crazy”. The revolution is a still unfinished process, with many challenges ahead. The most critical issue now is “electing a president as soon as possible”.

Some of those who talked to Ghonim during his appearances on his tour expressed concern that the Muslim Brotherhood and Salafis had performed so well in the recent parliamentary elections. But Ghonim refused to share their concern. In the elections 27 million Egyptians voted, and 10 million of them thought the Muslim Brotherhood the right people to govern, he said.

When Mehdi Hasan asked him whether being in government would moderate these parties Ghonim replied: “I wouldn’t say moderate because I don’t want to give the impression that they are extremists. In Egypt one out of almost every two people lives on under $2 a day. Those people are not going to sit down and listen to intellectual debates about what should happen and who’s doing this and who’s doing that.”

He added: “One of the best quotes by a spokesperson for the Salafis came when he was asked ‘would you guys ban alcohol in Egypt if you get a majority?’ I love his answer - he said over 50% of Egyptians drink polluted water, and you are asking about alcohol...”

Ghonim added: “I remember one of the Muslim Brotherhood statements is that we are there to help people with economy and so on, not to teach them religion, and I think this will be the spirit. They deserve to have the right to govern the country; democracy brought them to power. They were elected based on their reputation. If in 5 years they are re-elected, this will be based on their performance.”

'hajj: journey to the heart of islam' exhibition wows at british museum

Magnetism 2011 by Saudi artist Ahmed Mater

World's First Major Exhibition on the Hajj
Documenting a Supreme Theological and Religious Experience

Over the past 18 months, the British Museum has organized three exhibitions on the subject of faith. The final exhibition in this series takes a closer look at both the personal and practical aspects of the Hajj and seeks to give visitors a sense of the experience of the Hajj and what the pilgrimage means. By Susannah Tarbush

The exhibition entitled "Hajj: Journey to the heart of Islam", which runs at the British Museum in London until 15 April, is the first-ever major exhibition to focus on the annual Muslim pilgrimage. Mounted in the museum's iconic Round Reading Room, the exhibition brings together an extraordinary array of 209 items from the British Museum and 39 institutions in the Arab world, Europe, Mali, Malaysia, the USA and Australia.

the book of the exhibition

This ground-breaking exhibition is accompanied by a magnificent 288-page book edited by Venetia Porter, the British Museum's curator of Islamic and Modern Middle Eastern art and co-curator of the exhibition, and her colleague Qaisra Khan.

"Our key purpose in this exhibition is to try to allow everybody – Muslims and especially non-Muslims – to get some sense of what the experience of Hajj is and above all what it means," says the museum's director Neil MacGregor...continued at Qantara