Category Archives: Literature

Tabsir Redux: The Book Of Death #28

Contemporary Art, Literature, Poetry


[Illustration: “Refugees” by Palestinian artisit Ibrahim Hijazy, 1996.]

by George El-Hage

Today, the seventh day of the month of Death, I decided to end our relationship. I decided to pack my suitcase and leave. Everything in our spring-like room I left for you: the velvet drapes, old books, notebooks of memories and red roses. All the silk pillows, and the ivory chairs, and the chandelier of carnations, the big bed in the other corner of the room remain for you. I took with me one bleeding suitcase which is my heart. It was so filled with surprise and sorrow that I did not have room for one little pencil. I left empty-handed except for an armful of ashes. I held dejection to my breast, the harvest of a full year of love. I embraced it with anguish and washed its forehead with dew from my eyes. Continue reading Tabsir Redux: The Book Of Death #28 →

Orientalism: Veiled and Unveiled

Egypt, Literature, Orientalism, Orientalist Art


Mahmud Saʻid,The Girls of Bahari; and an untitled portrait by Abdelal Hassan (2000; current location unknown)

[Note: The following is an excerpt from a fascinating discussion of Orientalist art by the philosopher, cultural critic and poet Pino Blasone, whose knowledge of both European and Arab cultures brings a fresh lens to the discussion of the genre. The article is entitled “Orientalism: Veiled and Unveiled” and is available in its entirety online.]

In an online weekly supplement to the Egyptian newspaper Al-Ahram (17-23 May 2007, Issue No. 845), we can read an interesting article by Mohammed Salmawy, entitled“Dialogues of Naguib Mahfouz: A passion for the Arts”. Notoriously Naguib Mahfouz, or Nagib Mahfuz, is the best Egyptian novelist of the 20th century, died in 2006 and received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1988. Salmawy reports and comments a late interview to him. In particular, let us consider a passage from that: “My first exposure to the plastic arts was in the late 1920s… I remember reading an article by Al-Ê»Aqqad about an artist called Mahmud SaÊ»id. This was kind of unusual, for art wasnʼt really big back then. So for someone like Al-Ê»Aqqad to write a whole article about an artist was a bit of a shock. After that, I learned that SaÊ»id came from a prominent family and had a brilliant career in the judiciary, a career that he abandoned to dedicate his life to art. From then on I made a point of going to all SaÊ»idʼs exhibitions. […] Some of SaÊ»idʼs paintings are still imprinted on my mind: The Girls of Bahari, The Liquorice Merchant, and those splendid portraits of countryside women”. Continue reading Orientalism: Veiled and Unveiled →

Viewing the Shanamah in Manhattan

Calligraphy, Conferences and Talks, Iran, Languages, Literature, Miniatures, Poetry, Qur'an, Scholars, Sufism


Portrait of the infant Rustam shown to Sam (folio 30b)

On Thursday night I had the privilege of attending a reading of portions of the Shanamah by Iraj Anvar.
The reading was held as part of the superb series called “Illuminated Verses: Poetries of the Islamic World,” which is a series of readings and events that began in March with a lecture by Bruce Lawrence on the Quran and continues through May 7. This is an extraordinary opportunity to hear and learn more about the variety of poetic production in Islamic cultures worldwide.

While the reading of the Shanamah is over, you can still see the exhibit of the mid 15th century Muhammad Juki’s manuscript of the Shanamah at the Asia Society through May 1.

Tabsir Redux: If Lincoln had seen Aladdin

Literature, Orientalism


Grover’s Theater, Washington D.C.


[Tabsir Redux is a reposting of earlier posts on the blog, since memories are fickle and some things deserve a second viewing.]

April 14, 1865. For Americans, at least above the Mason Dixon line, this is one of those dates that lives in infamy. John Wilkes Booth, a rather bad actor on the stage, shot President Abraham Lincoln at Ford’s Theatre. According to an account by Mrs. Helen Palmes Moss in The Century Illustrated Monthly Magazine for 1909, Lincoln had the option of going to a rival theatre, the National or Grover’s, that night where a private box had been prepared for him by Mr. C. D. Hess, the co-manager. Apparently Booth had planned to attempt the assassination at whichever theater Lincoln attended. He much preferred Ford’s, since he had no inside help at the National and would have to shoot Lincoln as he stepped out of the carriage. What does this fateful event have to do with the Middle East? If Lincoln had attended the National Theatre and J. Wilkes Booth had missed, the President would have seen a dramatization of the Arabian Nights tale “Aladdin.” Would that Lincoln had been more of an Orientalist… Continue reading Tabsir Redux: If Lincoln had seen Aladdin →

Faith Abundant

Gender and Sexuality, Literature, Morocco

by Anouar Majid, Tingis Redux, March 16, 2011

Many years ago, while sitting with a friend in a café in the Moroccan city of Tangier, I expressed my unfailing admiration for Mohamed Choukri, author of the acclaimed memoir For Bread Alone (al-khubz al-hafi) and its sequel Streetwise (the somewhat inexplicale translation of what should have been The Time of Error, or zamanu al-akhta’). I told my friend, a Ministry of Justice official on his way up to a judgeship, that what I liked most about Choukri was his literary courage (al jur’a al-adabiya). My friend, a conservative man with a classical education in Islamic Studies, dismissed such courage as mere silliness, the ranting of a down-and-out man seeking attention and literary fame. Our society, my friend pronounced, was light years away from appreciating such openness and candor. We trade in appearances, not in existential truths. We reward conformity and punish daring acts of individualism.

Things have changed since then, and Choukri is now universally acclaimed across Morocco and much of the Arab world. The die-hard Tangerian is long gone, too, as is my friend, who, one day, collapsed in Fez and never got up. Yet I now find myself asking the same question about the mesmerizing memoir of a Moroccan woman that kept me engrossed for two days straight. The more I read into Wafa Faith Hallam’s The Road from Morocco, the more I realized I was holding a book that—if all literary lights are not dimmed by convention—should become an instant classic. Continue reading Faith Abundant →

Libya’s novelist Ibrahim al-Koni wins Arab Novel Award

Books You Should Read, Egypt, Libya, Literature


Al-Arabiya, December 16, 2010

CAIRO (Arab Media House)

Libyan novelist Ibrahim al-Koni received in Cairo the Arab Novel Award and dedicated the value of the prize to the children of the Tuareg tribes from which he originally hails.

At the closing ceremony of the fifth round of the Cairo Novel Conference, prominent Libyan author Ibrahim al-Koni was chosen from 23 competitors to receive the Arab Novel Award, whose value is 100,000 Egyptian pounds ($18,000).

“Koni was chosen for his ability to breathe life into the desert on the human, natural, spiritual, and mythological levels,” said Syrian critic Sobhi Hadeedi, who headed the jury.

The committee in charge of choosing the winner praised Koni’s ability to utilize folklore, oral tradition, death rituals, and aspects of everyday life in order to create a literary work.

“He creates his own individual anthropology,” added the committee statement. Continue reading Libya’s novelist Ibrahim al-Koni wins Arab Novel Award →

Grease-Monkeys and Bedouin Girls

Anthropology/Sociology, Ethics, Gender and Sexuality, Islamic Rituals, Islamophobia, Literature, Orientalism


Grease-Monkeys and Bedouin Girls: The Rhetorical Fate of Arabs and Muslims in Nadine Gordimer’s The Pickup.
By Daniel Martin Varisco, Tingis Redux, December 11, 2010

Novels tell Stories, allowing readers to fantasize about reality but with no obligation to represent that reality as anything other than fantasy. Good novels, at least the kind that garner a Nobel prize for their author, capture the imagination through creative engagement and style. The South African author Nadine Gordimer has been writing about the shame of apartheid in her native land for more than half a century. Her focus on the moral and psychological tensions of racial inequality provides a welcome political stamp to her fiction. Yet, sometimes in telling one kind of story, especially teasing out the relationships of lovers across cultural boundaries, another story can be read between the lines. The Pickup, Gordimer’s acclaimed novel which pairs a privileged South African white girl named Julie with an Arab Muslim and illegal alien named Abdu, traces an unlikely love story but leaves the identity of Abdu literarily in the dust, the dust of a stereotyped Orientalist denigration of his homeland and his religion. One need not follow Edward Said’s controversial contrapuntal reading to find in this novel a generic image of Arab and Muslim that serves the plot only in its unrelenting negative portrayal. The Pickup, whatever its merits as a close study of personal dislocation, succeeds by picking on distorted images of Arab and Muslim.

For the rest of this essay, read it on Tingis Redux.

The Liberation of Erotic Literature

Books You Should Read, Gender and Sexuality, Literature, Morocco, Syria


Interview with Salwa al-Neimi
in al-Qantara, 7/2010

The novel The Proof of the Honey by Syrian author Salwa al-Neimi is celebrated by some as a milestone of modern Arabic literature and condemned by others as scandalous prose. In an interview with Rim Najmi, the author explains that despite the lightness of its literary style, her novel poses fundamental intellectual and political questions

Your first novel, The Proof of the Honey, attracted a great deal of attention from both readers and critics alike. The most frequent response had more to do with your “courage” in tackling one of the greatest taboo themes in Arab culture and less with the literary qualities of your novel. What do you think was the decisive factor for all the attention?

Salwa al-Neimi: Thank you for this question. I always say the success of the book is primarily based on its language and style. I make this claim even though most of the critics tend to emphasize the theme of the novel and the fact that it crosses the red line. Unfortunately, they have little interest in the actual text itself. Some critics constantly talk about freedom of expression, although this often turns out to be just an end in itself. When it comes to a contemporary text, it is often judged in terms of moral categories, which is just another form of censorship.

By Arab standards, your novel, The Proof of the Honey, sold in record numbers in only a short time. It has also been translated into many languages. What does the international publication of your work mean to you?

Al-Neimi: First and foremost, I wrote The Proof of the Honey for Arab readers. Continue reading The Liberation of Erotic Literature →