Should Literature Be Political?

Keynote address by Tamim Al-Barghouti (translated by Adam Talib)

Previously scheduled to be presented at the Edinburgh World Writers Conference, Cairo 8-9 December 2012. The Conference was cancelled at late notice in consideration of the events in Cairo at that time.

 Tamim Al-Barghouti Keynote

“Poetry and Politics”

(Original Arabic text below)

Poetry is a form of language, which itself is the product of a given community. The history of a community is a combination of its current state, as well as its past and future. This history records the community’s times of war and peace, and is itself a conflict between the way a community sees itself and the way it is seen by others. Poetry, though, is itself a means of regaining control over how we name things. A poet might for example choose to call death ‘martyrdom’, or anger ‘love’, or fire ‘a tree’, or the sun ‘a gazelle’. I call my country Palestine; my opponents call it Israel. I refer to the rebellion of my people as a resistance; my opponents call it terrorism. I call those who are killed by airstrikes martyrs; my opponents either say, ‘they had it coming’ or ‘that’s collateral damage’. I agree with those who say that poets usually try to steer clear of topics like these, and I swear to you I’ve tried to steer clear of the the airstrikes, but they won’t leave me alone. We tried writing about what’s on the inside, but it didn’t take us long to discover that even in our hearts, there are tanks and jets and children under siege, grandmothers stranded at border posts, families with no hope of reunion—or at least not until the global balance of power shifts somehow. We decided to try our hand at singing and we realised that if we imitated those who invaded and occupied our lands and learnt to sing Opera, our rulers would borrow money to build a monumental Opera house for us to sing in, except no one we knew would turn up. Then when the ruler found he couldn’t afford the interest on the loans he’d taken out to build the building, the whole country would be taken over, occupied. But then when it’s time to recite our folk epics like The Saga of Bani Hilal, or The Hero of Hashim, they get recited in coffeehouses and village squares. Millions of people know the lyrics to these epics by heart but no one pays any attention when one of the famous epic-reciters dies and if you want to know why a reciter of epics has to sit on a wooden chair in a coffeehouse while the audience at the opera house luxuriate in cushioned seats, remember what Ibn Khaldun said: ‘The oppressed love nothing more than imitating their oppressors.’ This brings us back to the shifting balance of power—and to politics—whether we like it or not.

I was born in 1977. I hadn’t yet turned five-months old when the Egyptian authorities ordered my father to leave Egypt. Anwar Sadat had decided to make peace with Israel so he ordered everyone in Egypt associated with the PLO (Palestinian Liberation Organization) to get out and he ordered the closure of the PLO media bureau where my father worked. My father finally settled—after stints in Baghdad and Beirut—in Budapest, and the only time our family could be together was during summer holidays. At my Hungarian kindergarten, the teacher insisted that my name, Tamim, was the Arabic version of the name Tamás (Hungarian for Thomas) or other European varieties of the same, and my parents were unable to convince her that the name Tamim is actually the name of an old Arab tribe and not a derivation of Thomas or Tamás. Later when I was old enough to read, I learnt that Tamás, or Thomas, is the Greek version—adopted via Latin into other European languages—of the Hebrew name T’oma. T’oma in Hebrew means twin; that is, one of two children born in a single pregnancy. By definition, one cannot be a twin unless one has a twin sibling; a twin needs another person in order to be itself. Historically, Arabs thought of twins as deficient, or weak, because they grew in the womb alongside someone else. Consider, for example, the verse by the pre-Islamic poet ʿAntara b. Shaddād al-ʿAbsī:

What a hero! His clothes cling as though wrapped ‘round a tree,
his feet are encased in softest leather. No lowly twin is he!

My name, on the other hand, is Tamim. He who ‘completes completely’ from the verb tamma (‘to complete, finish’). It’s an exaggerated form of the active participle ‘completer’, as if to say Tamim is ‘extra-complete’. Thus in reality my teacher was insisting that my name means the opposite of what it actually means. She was a good person, and well intentioned, but imperialism, which forcefully installed itself as the teacher and guardian of all conquered peoples, deliberately changed our names. Imperialism transformed us from a whole people into a nation of twins, each in need of a sibling who’s nowhere to be found. The Arabic language bears this out: we don’t call the people living between the borders that the invaders drew for us nations, we call them peoples, a word that comes from an Arabic root meaning ‘to branch out’. For us, these peoples are like branches split off from the whole. At the beginning of the last century, the generals overseeing the foreign occupation drew some lines on a map, which they called nations, and in turn they expected us to call them our countries. But the truth is that they’re nothing more than oil companies with massive security apparatuses plus some flags, and anthems, and a border patrol. The armies, police forces, and rulers in these places are just middle-men who mediate between us and the world powers who drew these borders. We didn’t choose these borders, or these names, or these instutitions. And like any occupation, or tyranny, the system isn’t complete unless it penetrates the imagination of the subject, and even though our nation was indeed occupied by others, they never succeeded in colonising our imaginations entirely. They may have divided up the ground beneath our feet, but they could never split up the language we share. Arabic poetry is still Arabic poetry. It’s not Kuwaiti poetry or Jordanian or Libyan. This unity of language reflects a unified imagination, and that in itself—no matter what a given poem is about—makes it a political act, an act of resistance.

It’s been said that poetry in standard Arabic is pan-Arab, whereas poetry in colloquial Arabic is national and confined to national borders, but this doesn’t begin to explain how three of the most important Egyptian colloquial poets: Bayram al-Tunisi, Fouad Haddad, and Salah Jahin all had non-Egyptian backgrounds. If you look at the way they express themselves, you’ll see there’s nothing Pharaonic to it. Their colloquial poetry is Arabic in the same way that the Epic of Bani Hilal is Arabic. What makes them Egyptian is what makes them Arab.

Arabic poetry, like other varieties of world poetry, is connected to the rise of an imagined community. The nomadic Arabs couldn’t know every member of their own tribes personally so they had to devise a symbolic system in order to link all the members of their tribe together. And while city dwellers in the ancient world could feel at home in their cities, imagining the roads, temples, and state institutions that bound them together, Arab bedouin who were constantly moving camp couldn’t exactly build temples and roads or foster a sense of identity centred around place. The classical Arabic poem, the Qasidah, tells the story of the tribe: their lineage, the achievements of their knights, where they found water, the dates on which they fought their battles, the moral principles by which they lived, etc. and being part of the tribe meant memorising these poems of praise and belonging. If a tribe were to leave a place, there would be no trace of its having been there except for what the poets recorded. And the sons of a tribe could never be true sons of the tribe unless they imagined themselves to be so. The Qasidah was one way of binding the individual to the community, and individuals to other individuals, and two people to a third, and three to a fourth. The poem, therefore, itself created a community in the political sense.

Moreover, Arabs were in the habit of turning eloquent lines of poetry into proverbs; folk wisdom with moral authority, which could be applied to situations other than the one which prompted it. The implicit belief operating here is that something that is well said must be true. The eloquence of an expression is an indication of its veracity and the moral authority implicit in it. The poet Abu Tammam went so far as to mock people for the extravagant powers they granted to eloquent poetry, while at the same time boasting about it, in a verse praising his own poetry:

They say it’s wise, though it’s really a joke.
They do its bidding, though it becomes their yoke.

A poem’s eloquence didn’t just give it credibility, and moral weight, it also helped poetry circulate and gain fame among the tribes, elevating both the poet’s reputation and that of his tribe. In the pre-Islamic period, whenever a poet’s line of verse was made into a proverb, he and his tribe got a boost in the societal hierarchy of the Arabian Peninsula, provoking the envy of the other tribes.

This habit of mind made its way into mediaeval Islamic philosophy. According to Muslim belief, the Quran’s eloquence gives it its credibility, and it is this eloquence that makes it inimitable, unique. This inimitability, in turn, is proof that it is a divinely authored text. It is also, therefore, the foundation of its moral and political authority. The Quran is divinely authored because it’s eloquent. And because it’s a divinely authored text it should be respected and all governments should derive their political legitimacy from one interpretation of it or other. Just as the poem, the Qasidah, created the tribe, the Quran created a community of believers: a tribe of individuals who memorized a text in rhymed prose that told the story of a specific community, detailing their attributes, values, and culture, and thus their political life.

Ever since the pre-Islamic period, Arabic poetry has been linked to the way the community defines itself. When the community regarded itself as a tribe, poets were tribal poets. And then when the community became a caliphate, and after that a collection of kingdoms, poets were called court poets. In the modern period when the community began to call itself a nation and a people, poets became known as poets of the people, or national poets. After the collapse of the Pan-Arab movement in the late 1960s and up until the late 1990s, as communal cohesion gave way to self-interested individualism, poets sang only of the self. This was the period that saw the rise of literary theories claiming that poetry is the expression of personal freedom, totally divorced from communal authority; that comprehensible language is produced by the community and that a poet’s dependence on it hobbles his creativity and by giving into the community he constrains his freedom; that a poet must invent his own language, which hardly anyone other than him or those like him can understand. Poems intended to be incomprehensible to most everyone were all the rage, but the aloof and gloomy poets who wrote them were simply reflecting the attitude of society at large by running away; they belonged whether they knew it or not. Then, from the 1990s on, and especially in the period of successive American wars on Iraq, whose victims during the sanctions regime from 1991 to 2003 totalled more than one million people—more than half of whom were children according to UNICEF estimates—as well as more than a million people who died as a result of the American invasion and the subsequent civil war that raged from 2003 to 2011, from that period on, there has been, I believe, a growing trend among Arab writers toward isolation,  grief, and depression. Although inventing a language that no one else can understand is a luxury we cannot afford. Rather—in order to survive—we desperately need to muster strength from any and all sources, and our cultural heritage is one of them; it bears weight, it does not burden.

Imperialist control over the affairs of Arab countries is the greatest threat to the Arabic language today—to its use and the feeling of belonging it engenders—and poetry is under threat because it is the densest form of the language. The language was never divided up like the land and that’s why a poem written by Abu al-Qasim al-Shabbi could be turned into a chant in Tunisia and be echoed in Yemen and a poem written by Badr Shakir al-Sayyab in Iraq could be repeated in Egypt and The Saga of Bani Hilal as told in Upper Egypt could come to be told in southern Tunisia. What’s more, most colloquial poetry, which one would have expected to participate in creating national identities, canonizing these tiny states, which had been given borders and governments by the invaders, actually ridiculed these identities. The Saga of Bani Hilal, by far the greatest work of colloquial poetry in Egypt, links Egypt to a cultural sphere that stretches from the Caspian Sea to Tunisia. The epic recounts the history of the Bani Hilal tribe, some of whom live in Upper Egypt today: their origins in Najd (in the Arabian Peninsula), the marriage of their hero to Naʿisa daughter of Zayd al-ʿAjjaj, king of Persia, and their journey westward to Tunisia to take revenge against the ruler there, himself of Yemeni origin, who had mistreated their uncles from the Hijaz (also in the Arabian Peninsula). In the modern era, when the cultural flank of the Egyptian nationalist movement—led by the Wafd party, which is now no more than a shell of its former self—was championing Egypt’s ancient pharaonic heritage to the exclusion of everything else and the Museum of Egyptian Antiquities was being built along European lines—don’t forget of course that Egypt’s rulers had been hellbent on making the country into a slice of Europe ever since the mid-eighteenth century—it was Bayram al-Tunisi, one of the great Egyptian colloquial poets of the first half of the 20th century, who ridiculed the government’s entire project. Ahmad Shawqi’s poems in standard Arabic and Bayram al-Tunisi’s in the colloquial in praise of the Ottoman army during the First World War defied, and even threatened, the authority of the Sultan of Egypt, who had been appointed by the British after they’d made the country a protectorate in 1914.

Therefore, Arabic poetry, whether in standard Arabic or colloquial, is a threat to the current structure of power in Arab countries simply by virtue of its existence. It is the voice of the people, and the people are, by definition, the body politic.

Poetry also affects the imagination, however, and rulers exist only in the imagination of those whom they rule. If enough people decide that their ruler is actually a vegetable peddler, he’ll have no choice but to take his cart to the market the very next day. The only power a ruler actually has can be covered by a shirt and trousers; everything else comes from the obedience of others. They will only obey him if they imagine that it is their duty to obey, whether motivated by dread or delight. And of course these notions—dread and delight—are themselves products of the imagination. Words give the imagination form, and if poetry is words best expressed, then it is better able to shape the imagination than any other form of expression, and is therefore a ruler’s greatest threat.

The modern governance of Arab states began with Napoleon’s occupation of Cairo and ended with George Bush’s occupation of Baghdad. These modern states—with borders, bureaucracies, police forces, militaries, and economic policies imposed on them by others—have failed. They have failed to achieve the most important mission for which states are founded: to protect their people. What we have now is the occupation of Iraq and Palestine, the presence of American military forces in the Gulf, and in all the other nominally independent Arab countries abject economic, political, and military subservience. There was a time during the Cold War when Arabs thought there was a chance they could succeed by following a non-colonialist European model of government–the model proposed by the socialist camp in its many guises—but the defeat of 1967 and the catastrophes that followed all the way up to the occupation of Iraq, drove people to give up the idea of taking control of the state. Rather they began to build an alternative state: one without borders or bureaucracy, without a externally dictated economic system, free from international law and military transparency. Since the end of the twentieth century and the beginning of the twenty-first, we in the Arab world have seen numerous examples of non-governmental organization: groups that engage in defence and policing, that provide health services and education, that run media networks, and that even carry out foreign relations, with little regard for the government. They don’t aim to seize control of state institutions; they simply carry on as if those institutions didn’t exist.

The Lebanese resistance fought without the army and the first Intifada set up local councils in Palestinian townships without any institutional structure resembling a state. During the Tunisian Revolution, the people of Tunisia were able to organise themselves outside the governmental framework and protected their neighborhoods when they were attacked by Ben Ali’s thugs after the fall of his regime.

In Egypt, the ruling Supreme Council of the Armed Forces itself acknowledged that twenty million Egyptians took part in the demonstrations and sit-ins that gripped the country from January 25th to February 11th. The people who were gathered together in Egypt’s squares practiced medicine without any Ministry of Health, covered the news without any Ministry of Information, protected themselves without any Ministry of the Interior, defended themselves during the Battle of the Camel without the army, and negotiated with Mubarak’s collapsing government without any ambassadors or Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Egyptian society carried on for several months despite the complete absence of the police, and  in fact the Ministry of the Interior’s support of this complete and criminal withdrawal was an attack on that society. The police forces were the main driver of the crime wave and still the society managed to stick together. The people made do with an unwritten constitution and instinctive laws and they triumphed.

Poetry is political in the same way that those people were politicians. They managed to pursue a politics more beautiful and more successful than anything they’d been offered by the modern state with its colonial pedigree. This was thanks to the way they spoke to one another and the way they imagined themselves to be a cohesive unit. The only leaders of the revolution were the people’s demands, their thoughts, their imagination. The people followed their imagination; an image of themselves they’d dreamt up and decided they wanted to be.

A nation, ummah in Arabic, is nothing more than a group of people who follow a leader, an imam, and in Arabic an imam can be a person, a book, or an ideal. In fact, the tool that builders use to measure a building’s centre of gravity, the plumb-line, is also called imam in Arabic. Furthermore, the nation, the ummah, is itself an imam; it is its own leader. The nation pursues its own idealized, imagined notion of itself. In Arabic, a nation (ummah) can consist of a single individual. If someone has an image of his or her self that they decide they want to live up to, then that individual becomes a nation and its own leader.

That’s why the verb amma, the root of the word ummah (‘nation’), is one of those linguistic contradictions in Arabic: it means to lead and to follow. If you say ‘amamtu so-and-so’, it either means you led someone in prayer or you went toward someone, as though they were a target. It’s a verb of movement and it’s no accident that the verb ‘to head toward’ should be the origin of the word ‘nation’ (ummah) just as another verb meaning ‘to head toward’ (qasada) gives us the origin of the word for poem, qasidah. A poem, a qasidah, is an ideal image of the world as imagined by society. If they head toward it, they will become it. By this logic, the people gathered in Tahrir Square wrote a poem and were themselves its verses. They brought into reality on the ground an imaginary, idealized image of themselves and turned the imaginary into politics, power, and authority. They were a nation who challenged the state, poured out from it and overwhelmed it. But of course this wasn’t anything new. As I said before, the ruler only exists in the imagination of those who are ruled. When enough people had decided that Hosni Mubarak was no longer their ruler, and that the leader that should take his place was in fact this idealised, imaginary vision of society, and that every individual was responsible for making sure that they were behaving in such a way as to accord with this vision, Hosni Mubarak fell and the idealised vision took over. The dictator fell and the nation rose; the state fell and the poem ruled.

The party politics we see today is a step backward. People have given up on the ideal vision of politics in the hopes of getting their hands on those same state institutions, which the colonial regimes established. Today a given party or a given president is prepared to defy the will of the people—defy the sovereignty of the people as encapsulated in that ideal vision—in exchange for control of the legal authority of the modern state as established by Lord Cromer. This person would prefer for the people to obey him—not because he resembles the ideal in their imagination—but because the founding documents, which Lord Cromer drafted for them and were approved by all the puppet rulers who followed, say they should. Because the UN and the US and some judges and some army generals say he’s the president.

Turning away from the ideal vision—or in other words, abandoning the leader (imam)—has broken the rhythm of the collective poem and this has dire consequences. A poet, or an experienced listener, notices a break in the rhythm straightaway, and though it may take a poetry novice slightly longer to notice the interruption, the ruler will realize sooner or later that the true source of power is the people’s imagination. Document and laws and constitutions are nothing more than a means of persuasion; a pointless means of persuasion. And if he should abandon his leader, i.e. the vision set down by the people, the ideal upon which they built their expectations, he will lose his power over them sooner or later.

A love poem by a Palestinian poet in standard Arabic may not seem like it’s political, but it joins with thousands of other images, imaginings, reports, and visions, to create a sense of Palestine in Egypt, Morocco, Lebanon, Syria. It helps to shape—alongside other creations—Egyptians’ conception of what power should be, of what is meant by war and peace and justice. This notion, if it grows and matures, and if it attains self-confidence and esprit de corps, soon becomes feet on the ground, tearing down thrones and putting up new ones.

Copyright: Tamim Al-Barghouti, 2012

الشعر والسياسة

تميم البرغوثي

الشعر لغة واللغة صنع الجماعة، وحال الجماعة وماضيها ومستقبلها معا تاريخها، وتاريخها سجلّ حربها وسلامها، والصراع بين تعريفها لنفسها وتعريف الآخرين لها. والشعر استعادةللسيادة على الأسماء، كتسميتك الموت استشهاداً والغضب حباً، والنار شجرة، والشمس غزالة.  أنا أُسَمِّي بلادي فلسطين وخصمي يسميها إسرائيل، أنا أُسَمِّي تمرد أهلي مقاومة وخصمي يسميه إرهابا، وأنا أسمي موتهم تحت القصف استشهادا وخصمي يسميه عقاباً عادلاً أو أضراراً جانبية، ومن يقل إن الشعر في العادة يبتعد عن هذا كله، أوافقه، ولكن حاولت والله أن أبتعد عن القصف فلم يبتعد القصف عني. وحاولنا أن نكتب عن دواخل أنفسنا فوجدنا في قلوبنا دبابات وطائرات وأطفالاً محاصرين وجدات يهنَّ على الحدود وعائلات لا تلتئم حتى يتغير ميزان القوة على الكوكب، حاولنا أن نغني فوجدنا أننا إذا قلدنا غزاتنا وتعلمنا منهم فن الأوبرا فإن والينا يستدين ويبني لنا داراً فخمة نغني فيها ولا يحضر إليها أحد من أهلنا، ثم يقع البلد كله تحت الاحتلال لأن الوالي لم يستطع تسديد فوائد الدين، أما إذا غنينا ملاحمنا الشعبية وسير بني هلال أو مقاتل بني هاشم فإننا نغنيها في المقاهي والقرى، ويحفظ الملايين أغانينها، ولكن يموت حافظو هذه الملاحم  ولا يلتفت إليهم، فإذا سألنا عن سبب الفرق بين مقعد راوي السيرة الخشبي، ومقعد الأوبرا الوثير، قال لنا ابن خلدون: “إن المغلوب مولع بتقليد الغالب”، فردَّنا راغمين إلى ميزان القوة المائل، وإلى السياسة.

ولدت في عام 1977، وقبل أن أكمل الشهور الخمسة كانت السلطات المصرية تطلب من والدي مغادرة البلاد. كان أنور السادات قد قرر أن يسالم إسرائيل فأمر بترحيل كل من كان له علاقة بمنظمة التحرير الفلسطينية في مصر وإغلاق دار إذاعتها حيث كان الوالد يعمل.استقر بأبي الترحال، بعد بغداد وبيروت، في بودابست، عاصمة المجر، وكان شمل الأسرة يلتئم في الإجازة الصيفية. كانت مدرستي في دار الحضانة المجرية تصر على أن اسم تميم هو تعريب لاسم تماش أو توماس بالمجرية وغيرها من اللغات الأروبية، ولم ينجح الوالدان في إقناعها بأن اسم تميم هو اسم قبيلة عربية قديمة غير مشتق من توماس أو تماش. وحين أصبحت في سن القراءة، عرفت أن تماش أو توماس هو النطق اليوناني ثم اللاتيني ثم الأوروبي عموماً لاسم توما العبري. وتوما بالعبرية تعني التوأم، والتوأم اسم يطلق على أحد أخوين يولدان من حمل واحد، فإن لم يكن للتوأم أخ فهو ليس بتوأم، فهو محتاج إلى آخر ليكون نفسه، وعند العرب كان التوأم يظن ناقصاً أو ضعيفاً لأن غيره يشاركه الرحم، وفي معلقة عنترة بن شداد العبسي يصف رجلاً قوياً قال: “بَطَلٌ كَأَنَّ ثِيَابَهُ فِي سَرْحَةٍ…يُحْذَى نِعَالَ السِّبتِ لَيْسَ بِتَوْأَمِ”. أما اسمي فتميم، وهو من تمَّ تماماً، أي كَمُلَ كمالاً، وهو صيغة مبالغة على وزن فعيل، فكأنه الشديد التمام. إن السيدة كانت تصر في ترجمتها اسمي على تغيير معناه إلى العكس منه تماماً. ومدرستي كانت طيبة حسنة النية، ولكن الاستعمار الذي أخذ على عاتقه عنوة دور المربي والمعلم للشعوب المغزوة، كان يغير أسماءنا عن عمد، وينقلنا من أمة تامة، إلى شعوب توائم يحتاج كل منها إلى شقيقه ولا يصل إليه. وفي اللغة العربية ما يبين ذلك، فنحن لا نستخدم لفظ الأمة للإشارة إلى سكان الأقطار التي رسم حدودها الغزاة، بل نسميهم شعوباً، والشعب من شَعَبتَهُ فانشعب انشعاباً، أي كسرته فانكسر وانفصل عن بقيته. أقول رسم القادة العسكريون لقوى الاحتلال الأجنبي في أوائل القرن الخطوط على الأرض وسموها دولاً، ثم طلب منا أن نسميها بلادنا، وما هي إلا شركات لبيع النفط وأجهزة أمن متضخمة ركب عليها علم ونشيد وحرس حدود، جيوشها شرطة وحكامها وسطاء بيننا وبين الدول الكبرى التي أنشأتها. نحن لم نختر هذه الحدود ولا هذه الأسماء ولا هذه المؤسسات. وككل احتلال، أو سلطة غاشمة فهي لا تكمل إلا في خيال المحكوم، وإن كان احتلال الآخرين لبلادنا اكتمل فإنهم لم يحتلوا خيالنا كاملاً، وإن كانوا قسموا الأرض، فإنهم لم يستطيعوا تقسيم اللغة. إن الشعر العربي، بقي عربياً ولم ينقسم إلى شعر كويتي وشعر أردني وشعر ليبي. وحدة اللغة هذه انعكاس لوحدة الخيال، وهي في حد ذاتها، وبغض النظر عن موضوع القصيدة، عمل سياسي، وعمل مقاوم.

وقد يقال إن الشعر الفصيح عربي، أما الشعر المكتوب بالدارجة فقُطري، محكوم بحدود لهجته. ولكن هذه المقولة تعجز عن تفسير كون ثلاثة من أهم رواد الشعر العامي المصري مثلاً من أصول غير مصرية، بيرم التونسي وفؤاد حداد وصلاح جاهين، وإذا نظرت إلى محتوى لغتهم وتعبيراتهم لما وجدت من فرعونية مصر شيئاً، وشعرهم العامي هو في عروبة السيرة الهلالية، وعروبتهم من عروبة مصر.

وللشعر العربي، كغيره من أشعار الأمم،  قصة مع خلق الجماعة في الخيال. إن العرب الرحل لم يكونوا قادرين على أن يعرف أحدهم كل أفراد قبيلته، وكان لا بد من منظومة من الرموز يتوحد بها كل فرد من أفراد القبيلة وينتمي إليها، ولما كان ممكنا لأهل المدن من سكان العالم القديم أن ينتموا إلى مدنهم، فيتخيلوا شوارع ومعابد وحكومات يتوحدون بها ومعها ومع أقرانهم من خلالها، لم يكن لدى البدوي العربي المرتحل من مكان لآخر أن يبني معابد وشوارع وأن ينمو لديه إحساس بالهوية قائم على المكان. كانت القصيدة تحكي قصة القبيلة، أنسابها ومآثر فرسانها وموارد مائها وتواريخ قتالها ومراجعها الأخلاقية، وكان الانتماء إلى القبيلة يعني أيضاً حفظ هذه الأشعار والمفاخرة بها والانتماء إليها. وإذا رحلت القبيلة من مكان فلا دليل على مرورها فيه إلا ما يذكره شعراؤها. وإن أبناء القبيلة لا يكونون أبناءها إلا إذا استقر في خيالهم أنهم أبناؤها، والقصيدة كانت وسيلة من وسائل التوحد تلك بين الفرد والجماعة. وبضم الفرد للفرد، والفردين لثالث والثلاثة لرابع، كانت القصيدة إذن تخلق الجماعة خلقاً من الناحية السياسية.

وأكثر من ذلك، إن العرب كانت إذا استحسنت بيتاً تمثلت به، أي جعلته مثلاً سائراً، كلاماً له سلطة أخلاقية، يستخدم كمرجع في مواضع غير تلك التي نشأ فيها.  ويكمن في هذا افتراض معرفي قوامه أن القول إذا حسن فقد صدق، وأن بلاغة القول هي علامة صدقه ومصدر مرجعيته الأخلاقية، حتى أن أبا تمام حبيب بن أوس يسخر من هذه السلطة المفرطة التي يمنحها الناس للشعر البليغ ويفخر بها في آن واحد إذ يقول في مدح شعر له:

“يُرى حِكْمَةً ما فِيهِ وَهْوَ فُكَاهَةٌ…ويُقضَى بما يَقْضِي بِهِ وَهْوَ ظَالِمُ”

إن بلاغة الشعر لم تكن تمنحه سلطة تصديق الناس له وسلطة كونه مرجعية آخلاقية لهم فقط، بل كانت تمنح الشعر سيرورة وشهرة بين القبائل ترتفع بها مكانة الشاعر ومكانة قبيلته، وكلما تُمُثِّلَ بقصيدة شاعر، فإن اسمه واسم قبيلته يكتسب من السمعة السياسية في مجتمع الجزيرة العربية ما قبل الإسلام ما تحسده عليه بقية القبائل.

وقد تسربت هذه الافتراضات المعرفية إلى الفلسفة الإسلامية في العصور الوسيطة، فتبعاً لما يؤمن به المسلمون فإن بلاغة القرآن هي دليل صدقة، وهي مصدر الإعجاز فيه وعلامة كونه نصاً سماوياً، وهي لذلك سبب سلطته الأخلاقة والسياسية. فلأن القرآن بليغ فهو سماوي، ولأنه سماوي فهو واجب الطاعة، وعلى كل نظام سياسي أن يستمد شرعيته السياسة من تأويل ما للقرآن. وكما كانت القصيدة تخلق القبيلة، فإن القرآن كان يخلق الأمة. قبيلة من الناس، يحفظ أفرادها نصاً مسجوعاً يصف المجموع ويحدد ملامحه وقيمه وثقافته، وبالتالي كيانه السياسي.

وقد ارتبط الشعر العربي منذ عصر ما قبل الإسلام بالطريقة التي كانت الجماعة تعرف بها نفسها، فحين كانت الجماعة تسمي نفسها قبيلة، كان الشاعر شاعر قبيلة، وحين سمت نفسها خلافة كان الشاعر شاعر الخليفة، وحين عرفت نفسها بالإمارة أصبح الشاعر شاعر الأمير. وفي العصر الحديث، حين أصبحت الجماعة تسمي نفسها أمة وشعباً صار الشاعر شاعر الأمة والشعب. وحتى حين انهزم المشروع الجماعي للشعب والأمة من أواخر الستينيات إلى أواخر التسعينيات من القرن العشرين، وانفرط عقد الجماعة إلى أفراد منطوين على أنفسهم، أصبح الشاعر شاعر الذات المفردة. وراجت النظريات الأدبية التي ترى أن الشعر ممارسة للحرية الفردية المنفلتة من سلطة الجماعة تماماً، وأن اللغة المفهومة هي من إنتاج الجماعة، والتزام الشاعر بها إنما هو اقتراض يقدح في إبداعه، وخنوع للجماعة يقدح في حريته، فوجب عليه أن يخترع لغته الخاصة التي لا يكاد يفهما إلا هو أو من كان يشبهه، وكثرت القصائد التي لا يفهمها معظم الناس عن قصد. ولكن هؤلاء الشعراء المنعزلين المكتئبين كانوا في هروبهم من الجماعة يعكسون حالتها وينتمون إليها دروا بذلك أم لم يدروا. ثم، ومن التسعينيات فصاعداً، خاصة مع الحروب الأمريكية العراقية المتتالية، والتي كان ضحاياها أكثر من مليون نفس في الحصار بين عامي 1991 و2003 أكثر من نصفهم أطفال حسب تقديرات اليونيسيف، وأكثر من مليون نفس آخرين في الغزو الأمريكي والحرب الأهلية التي تلته من عام 2003 حتى 2011، أقول من هذا الزمن فصاعداً، نَمَى في الأمة تيار يرى أن الانطواء على النفس والحزن والاكتئاب واختراع لغة لا يفهمها أحد ترف لا نملكه، وأننا في حاجة، لكي نعيش، أن نستمد القوة من كل مصادرها، وأن تراثنا مصدر من مصادر هذه القوة وهو سند لنا لا عبء علينا.

إن اللغة العربية اليوم، والشعر أكثر أشكالها تكثيفاً، يهدِّدُ الانتماءُ إليها والتكلُّمُ بها الترتيبَ السياسي الاستعماري لبلاد العرب. إن اللغة لم تقسم كما قسمت الأرض، وهذا خلى شعراً يقوله أبو القاسم الشابي يُهتَفُ به في تونس فيتردد صداه في اليمن، وشعراً يقوله بدر شاكر السياب في العراق يتردد صداه في مصر، وسيرة هلالية تروى في الصعيد تردد في الجنوب التونسي.

بل، لقد كان أكثر الشعر العامي المفترض فيه أن يخلق هويات قطرية تكرس للأوطان الصغيرة التي رسم الغزاة حدودها ولحكوماتها، يسخر من هذه الهويات، فالسيرة الهلالية، أعظم أعمال الشعر الشعبي في مصر بامتياز تربط مصر وأهلها بفضاء ثقافي يمتد من حدود بحر قزوين إلى تونس. في الملحمة يروي بنو هلال الذين يسكن بعضهم صعيد مصر اليوم قصة أصلهم النجدي، وزواج بطلهم من الناعسة بنت زيد العجاجي ملك بلاد الفرس، وتغريبهم إلى أرض تونس ليثأروا من ملكها ذي الأصول اليمنية والذي كان قد ظلم أخوالهم الحجازيين. وفي العصر الحديث، بينما كانت الثقافة الرسمية للحركة الوطنية المصرية التي يقودها حزب الوفد القديم تركز على فرعونية مصر، وبينما كانت السلطات المصرية مولعة منذ منتصف القرن التاسع عشر ببناء مصر تكون قطعة من أوروبا، وبينما كان المتحف المصري يبنى على طراز أوروبي، كان بيرم التونسي أحد أهم مؤسسي شعر العامية المصرية في النصف الأول من القرن العشرين يسخر من مشروع الدولة كله.ومدائح شوقي بالفصحى، وبيرم بالعامية، في الجيش التركي في الحرب العالمية الأولى كانت تناقض وتتحدى تماماً السلطة الناشئة لسلطنة مصر التي عين البريطانيون سلطانها بعد فرض الحماية على البلاد عام 1914. وبيرم يختار في كثير من قصائده عن حرب الأتراك واليونانيين البحر الطويل المغنى على الربابة وهو القالب الذي تبدأ به عادة أبيات السيرة الهلالية التي ذكرناها أعلاه، أطول قصائد الحروب في الوجدان الشعبي المصري. أما فؤاد حداد، ففي دواوينه من نور الخيال وصنع الأجيال في تاريخ القاهرة، والحضرة الزكية ما يغني عن الشرح.وإذا خرجنا من مصر إلى غيرها وجدنا في مواويل الشام والعراق، وشعر الرحبانيين ومسرحياتهم في لبنان، والشعر البدوي في جزيرة العرب واليمن وشرق السودان وفي فن الملحون المغربي ما يربط بين الناس أكثر مما يفرقهم. إن الشعر العربي دارجه وفصيحه اتصال بين الناس، والدول العربية ذات الحدود الاستعمارية انفصال بينهم.

لذلك، فإن الشعر العربي، سواء كان فصيحاً أم دارجاً، مهدَّدٌ للسلطة القائمة في بلادنا بمجرد وجوده، هو كلام الناس، والناس كيان سياسي بالتعريف.

والشعر خيال، والحاكم لا يوجد إلا في خيال المحكوم، ولو قرر عدد كاف من الناس أن حاكمهم بائع خضرة مثلاً فلن يجد بداً في الصباح التالي من جر العربات في الأسواق. لا يملك الحاكم من قوة إلا ما ضم قميصه، وكل قوة أخرى نابعة من طاعة آخرين له، وهؤلاء لا يطيعونه إلا إن كان في خيالهم واجب الطاعة إما لرهبة أو لرغبة، والرهبة والرغبة فكرتان، مكانهما الخيال، والكلام يشكل الخيال، والشعر، إن كان أكفأ الكلام، فهو أكثر تشكيلاً للخيال من غيره من صنوف الخطاب، وأخطر على الحاكم منها.

إن الدولة الحديثة في العالم العربي، بدأت باحتلال نابليون للقاهرة وانتهت إلى احتلال جورج بوش لبغداد، فشلت هذه الدولة الحديثة التي بنيت على حدود وبيروقراطية وجيش وشرطة واقتصاد حددها لها غير أهلها، فشلت في أهم ما تخلق الدول لأجله، الدفاع عن شعوبها، وانتهينا باحتلال العراق وفلسطين، وبوجود قوات أمريكية في الخليج العربي، وبتبعية اقتصادية وسياسية وأمنية في كل الدول العربية الأخرى المستقلة استقلالاً اسمياً. وقد مر بالعرب وقت، أيام الحرب الباردة، ظنوا فيه أن هناك إمكانية للفلاح باتباع نموذج أوروبي غير استعماري للدولة، هو النموذج الذي كان يقدمه المعسكر الاشتراكي بأطيافه المختلفة، لكن هزيمة عام 1967 وما تلاها من كوارث حتى احتلال العراق، أدى إلى عزوف الناس عن محاولة السيطرة على الدولة، بل قاموا ببناء دول بديلة، هي بلا حدود وبلا بيروقراطية، وبلا نظام اقتصادي تابع، متحررة من قيود القانون الدولي، والتبعية الاقتصادية والانكشاف العسكري. ووجدنا في العالم العربي منذ نهايات القرن العشرين وبدايات القرن الحادي والعشرين نماذج للتنظيم خارج الدولة، أناساً يمارسون الدفاع والأمن والصحة والتعليم والإعلام بل والعلاقات الخارجية متجاهلين الدولة، لا يرغبون في السيطرة على أجهزتها بل هم يتعاملون كما لو كانت هذه الأجهزة منعدمة.

إن المقاومة اللبنانية قاتلت خارج الجيش، وإن الانتفاضة الفلسطينية الأولى أقامت إدارات محلية في أحياء البلدات الفلسطينية خارج أي بنية مؤسسية تشبه الدولة، وحين قامت الثورة التونسية إستطاع أهل البلاد أن ينظموا أنفسهم خارج إطار الدولة، وأن يؤمنوا أحياءهم حين هاجمهم بلطجية نظام بن علي بعد سقوطه.

أما في مصر، فقد شهد المجلس العسكري الحاكم أن عشرين مليونا من المصريين شاركوا في المظاهرات والاعتصامات التي عمت البلاد بين 25 يناير و11 فبراير 2011. كان هؤلاء المجتمعون في الميادين يمارسون الطب بلا وزارة صحة، والإعلام بلا وزارة إعلام، والأمن بلا وزارة داخلية، والدفاع، يوم موقعة الجمل، بلا جيش، والمفاوضات مع نظام مبارك الآيل للسقوط بلا سفراء ولا وزارة خارجية. وعاشت البلاد لعدة أشهر في غياب كامل لوزارة الداخلية، بل وهي تتعرض لهجوم من وزارة الداخلية عبر تشجيع الانفلات الجنائي، كانت أجهزة الأمن هي المصدر الأساسي للجريمة، ورغم ذلك حفظ المجتمع تماسكه، تعامل الناس بدستور غير مكتوب وقوانين حدسية، وانتصروا.

أقول إن الشعر سياسي، بقدر ما كان هؤلاء الناس ساسة. لقد أستطاعوا أن يمارسوا سياسية أجمل وأكفأ مما يمكن أن تقدمه لهم الدولة الحديثة ذات الأصل الاستعماري، ولقد كان لكلام أحدهم مع الآخر، والتشكيل الجماعي لخيالهم، الفضل في ذلك. لم يكن للثورة قيادة غير مطالبها، غير أفكارها، غير خيالها، كانوا أناساً يتبعون خيالهم، يتبعون صورة لأنفسهم في خيالهم يريدون أن يكونوها.

 والأمة مجموعة من الناس يتبعون إماماً، والإمام في لسان العرب يكون رجلاً، أو كتاباً، أو مثالاً كائنا ما كان، بل إن الميزان الذي يستخدمه البناؤون لقياس استواء البناء يسمى في اللغة إماماً. وفي اللغة أيضاً، الإمام هو الأمة. أي أن الأمة تتبع نفسها، تتبع صورة نفسها المثالية المتخيلة. والأمة في اللغة ايضاً قد تتكون من رجل واحد، إذا تبع صورة له عن نفسه في خياله وأراد أن يكونها فقد أصبح أمة ذاته وإمام نفسه.

لذلك فإن فعل الأَمّ، وهو الأصل اللغوي لكلمة الأمة، هو من الأضداد في اللغة، فهو يعني القيادة والاتباع، تقول أممت فلانا، أي كنت إمامه فتبعني كما في الصلاة، أو كان هو وجهتي ومقصدي فذهبت إليه كقولك أممت البيت أو القِبلة. وفعل الأَمّ، هو فعل القَصْد، وليس من قبيل المصادفة أن الأَمّ وهو أصل الأمة، مرادف للقصد، وهو أصل القصيدة. إن القصيدة صورة مثالية عن الناس في خيال الناس،  إذا تبعوها فقد كانوها، وبهذا المعنى فإن المجتمعين في ميدان التحرير كتبوا قصيدة هم أبياتها، فقد حققوا على الأرض صورة مثالية خيالية عن أنفسهم، وجعلوا الخيال سياسة وسلطة وحكماً، كانوا أمة تتحدى الدولة وتفيض عنها وتتجاوزها. وليس هذا بدعاً، فكما قلت من قبل الحاكم لا يكون إلا في خيال المحكوم، فحين كان ثمة عدد كاف من الناس يرى أن حسني مبارك لم يعد حاكمه، وأن الإمام الذي يحل محله هو هذه الصورة المثالية الخيالية وأن على الفرد منهم أن يحدد سلوكه بناء على توافق هذا السلوك مع الصورة الخيالية تلك، سقط حسني مبارك وحكمت تلك الصورة المثالية، سقط المستبد وحكمت الأمة، سقطت الدولة، وحكمت القصيدة.

 إن ما يجري اليوم من سياسة الأحزاب، هو عودة إلى الوراء، فقد تم التخلي عن هذه الصورة المثالية للسياسة طمعاً في السيطرة على مؤسسات الدولة التي بناها الاستعمار. أعني أن حزباً ما أو رئيساً ما أصبح مستعداً أن يأتي من الأفعال ما يفقده الإقرار الشعبي، الشرعية الشعبية الصادرة عن هذه الصورة المثالية، مقابل حصوله على الشرعية القانونية للدولة الحديثة التي بناها  اللورد كرومر. أي أن فلاناً يفضل أن يطيعه الناس، لا لأن سلوكه يقترب من الصورة المثالية التي في خيالهم، بل لأن الأوراق التي كتبها لهم  اللورد كرومر، ومن بعده حكام البلاد تباعاً تقول لهم أن يطيعوه، لأن الأمم المتحدة والولايات المتحدة ومجموعة من القضاة ومجموعة من الضباط تعترف به كرئيس.

إن الخروجَ من الصورة المثالية، أي الخروجَ على الإمام، كَسْرَ وزن القصيدة الجماعية، له عواقبُ وخيمة، وقد يدرك الشاعر أو السامع المتمرس الكسر الطفيف أو الزحاف مبكراً، وقد يأخذ غير المتمرس وقتاً أطول في كشفه، ولكن سيعلم الحاكم عاجلاً أو آجلاً، أن مصدر السلطة الحقيقي هو خيال الناس، وأن الورق والقوانين والدساتير ليست إلا وسائل إقناع، وأنها وسائل إقناع غير ناجعة، وأنه إن خرج على إمامه، أي خرج على المثال الذي وضعه له الناس وبنوا عليه توقعاتهم منه، فإنه سيفقد سلطته عليهم عاجلاً أم آجلاً.

قد  لا توحي قصيدة حب يكتبها شاعر فلسطيني بالعربية الفصحى بأنها قصيدة سياسية، لكنها تساهم، مع ألاف الصور والخيالات والأخبار والأمثال، في خلق عاطفة ما في مصر والمغرب ولبنان وسوريا عن فلسطين، وتدخل مع غيرها في تكوين خيال المصريين عما يجب أن تكون عليه السلطة، وعن شكل الحرب والسلم والعدل، وهذا الخيال، إذا تراكم وتعتق، وكان من مكوناته الثقة بالنفس والاتصال بين الناس، تحول إلى أرجل على الأسفلت، تهدم عروشاً وتقيم أخرى.

The Future of the Novel

Keynote address by Sahar el Mougy

This event was previously scheduled to be presented at the Edinburgh World Writers Conference, Cairo, December 9th 2012. The event had to be cancelled due to the upheavals in the city at that time.

Sahar el Mougy Keynote text: “The Egyptian novel: questions and challenges”

In the last decade, the world as we have known it since World War Two has changed, is still changing. We are actually in the very heart of this change now. The internet revolution is one facet of this change. It is both a reflection of the ongoing strong current of change as well as one of its many causes.  And in parallel with the internet revolution, waves of social upheaval have been gaining force in different parts of the world since 2004, and culminating in the huge wave of protests of 2007 till the present moment. The two factors of the internet revolution and the social upheavals raise questions related to the novel and to what extent the genre is affecting and being affected by this change.

I believe the internet has led to a multi-layered state of democratization. It has led to an expansion of readership, with readers gaining access to free books online, the classics as well as the hacked. Culture is no longer accessed only by those who could pay for its products. Yet the democratization of culture raises questions related to the publishing business: has this access enjoyed by the “people” been as fortunate to the publishers? Is there a threat to the business? Will the publishers have to think of ways of competing, or maybe minimizing the damage?

The internet has also democratized writing and self-publishing. Since the year 2000, millions of people around the world have enjoyed the free space for self expression offered in blogs and on the pages of social media. Some of those bloggers happened to be/ turned out to be writers. They were young writers with hardly any access to the publishing world. But through the virtual space, they could write and with a tap on the keyboard their writings were out there, readers reading and responding. Online self-publishing would not bring the writers money, yet their works would be read, they would be given feedback and offered a chance to pool with other writers/ bloggers.

In the Egyptian case, blogging was not just an escape from and a challenge to the publishing business. More importantly, it has lead to some radical psychological change in the 1980s generation, which I call “the Emergency Law generation”. This is the generation which has been born to a multi-faceted marginalization. They called themselves “the Egyptian expatriates in Egypt” as shown in the slogan of an internet radio station- “Teet”- whose mission statement reads: “The Voice of the Egyptian Expatriates in Egypt”. Funny but true. Blogging eventually meant resistance, the cultural resistance of the oppressed as Bill Ashcroft puts it in Post Colonial Transformations, though the colonizer-colonized relationship has acquired new dimensions. Blogging has offered those writers a zone where they can deconstruct and reconstruct their sense of identity against the social and political mainstream. Lately, many Egyptian blogs have been popular enough to seduce publishers into publishing such works (novels, poetry collections and short stories)! In order to keep up with this phenomenon, Amazon has started a self publishing line of E-novellas sold for one dollar. A certain percentage goes to the writers. Is this the door to a deeper and wider change in the world of writing/ publishing? Does it pose a challenge to the critic and to the reader?

The other element which I believe will impact the novel in many ways is the social/ political upheaval the world has been witnessing since 2004. From Iceland to Greece and Spain, from the Arab world to the UK, Russia to the US, ripples of anger against the failure of governance are growing. How will this new consciousness impact on the novel? While I do not have the answers regarding world literature, I can attempt to trace some signs of change in Egypt. In parallel with the work of the civil opposition groups, the world of culture/ writing has enjoyed a revival. New publishing houses have been founded, many of them introducing new voices. Quite a number of new novelists have emerged. Some of those writers came from the blogging world. More bookstores have opened. Signing events are taking place, a newly introduced tradition which did not exist before 2004. Private book clubs, operating away from the cultural institutions which monopolized all cultural activities for decades, have mushroomed. Meanwhile, Writers and Artists for Change was founded in 2005, a branch out of Kefaya, the mother movements to many offshoots. On 5^th September 2005, fifty five Egyptian artists and theater critics were burnt to death in a fire that took place in a small performance hall in Beni Soueif.  The tragedy came as yet another bitter reminder of the dilapidated state of the political regime. Writers and artists left their desks and  protested for months on end against the Ministry of Culture and the corrupt regime which protected the minister for twenty three years in office. Serious questions related to the state’s continuous efforts (since the 1970s) to “tame” the Egyptian writers have surfaced.

In the meantime, a question related to the content of the novels written by the writers of the last two decades poses itself. Children of the internet have been exposed to the world in a different way. The image has been part of their perception of the world. Would the content and style of such writings reflect some change as compared to the works of the previous generations? In certain cases, a happy marriage existed between narratives and the image, as in the case of the graphic novel. In some other cases, novels were affected by the blogging medium in that they show a tendency to pull down the wall between writer and reader. There is always an addressee with whom the writer engages. I would borrow Maggie Gee’s question here: will the novel develop into an oral saga? It very well might.

In some novels, the language and tools of the internet have been adopted and adapted within the narration. The formatting, for example, of emails, chats and fragmented conversations have inspired some novels. Some blogs have been converted, with minimal or no changes, into books. To what extent will the genre, already flexible and receptive of new elements, evolve or change? Could it be that what is happening represents the early seeds of a more radical change yet to materialize?

But one can already register some change in the content of the Egyptian novel, a change which coincided with the awakening taking place since 2004. Many Egyptian novels stopped turning their back on the political. Unlike the works of the writers of the 1990s (myself included), which dealt with the subjective and the personal, some novels built bridges with the socio-political context. Examining the novels of the 1990s, one finds out that the writers turning their backs on the reality that was out there was both a need and a statement. The novelists explored their sense of estrangement, both on the level of the self- self or that of self-surrounding reality. The rejected self busied itself with its quest. There was a need to wrap one’s self in the inner cocoon. I guess what took place in many novelists’ minds then was that maybe the existentialist quest would bear fruit, unlike the engagement with the political. This was also a statement against the mainstream which alienated writers and pushed them to the far away desert of indifference.

Significantly, some of those same writers (who enjoyed the cocoon in the 1990s) showed some degree of involvement with their context as revealed in their novels in the mid 2000s. For instance, in my 1999 novel Daria, the reader can hardly trace the time frame of the story, which focuses on the protagonist’s journey towards some degree of self-knowledge and her fight against patriarchal pressures. In 2007, I published Noon, which takes place in Cairo between 2001- 2004. It begins with 9/11 and takes the reader to the fall of Saddam Hussein. Though it is not a political novel, it reveals a state of re- engagement. Now the journey of the self (of the four characters) could be located in a specific time, against a specific background which impacts the characters in many ways. Many novels showed direct engagement. Then the revolution happened.

During the revolution, social media platforms revealed a change in the position of Egyptian writers. It has made their voices louder when it comes to issues of change. Egyptian writers, who complained back in the 1990s of closed circles of readership, were both witnesses to the social change as well as active agents in it. Their position changed from the marginal to the focal. During the Egyptian revolution, writers’ tweets, facebook statuses, article quotes and youtube clips helped steer public opinion and raise debates. Their presence in the streets and on social media reflected the awakening of the people and endorsed it simultaneously. Ironically, such presence was highlighted because of the virtual space, which was no longer “virtual”. The internet, rather than the media, became the treasure house of the collective consciousness.

Now I believe the question of the collective consciousness has put writers in a difficult position. How would the novel capture a moment that is larger than life? One of the major successes of the revolution is the deconstruction of the image of the collective self, carefully etched by the dictator who has worked really hard to deform/ defame it. We found out we are not “lazy”, “submissive”, “indifferent” and “ignorant” as they have told us about ourselves. On the exact contrary, we are beautiful, compassionate, brave and wise. We have an insatiable craving for freedom and justice and dignity. And we are willing to pay the price of what we want. In the first eighteen days of the revolution, we were larger than life. Memory keeps record of amazing moments which challenge the writer. Can he/ she portray these moments of grandeur? How can writing capture and frame glory and bliss and the painful but joyous experience of rebirth?

Photography can do it. Poetry can do it, now. But the novel tells the novelist “Wait, this is not the right time. Live the experience. Take photographs and notes and enjoy the poetry. Join the marches and write articles if you wish. Sleep on it. One day you will revisit the squares and be able to write”.

The question of how the novel can keep up with such a radical change of consciousness is open to infinite possibilities. When Egyptian novelists will write about the revolution is unknown to me. But I am certain that the Egyptian novel of the next decade will turn into a playground of experimentation and aesthetic adventures based on the principle of “the sky is the limit”. Haven’t we seen it happen? And most certainly the novel will reflect new perceptions of reality and a reconstruction of the image of the collective self.

Sahar el Mougy, 2012

Please note: We regret to announce that the Edinburgh World Writers’ Conference Cairo, originally postponed from December 8^th – 9^th 2012, will not be rescheduled.

We will publish the keynote speeches by Sahar El Mougy and Tamim al-Barghouti on the EWWC website, where comments and responses will be welcomed. In the absence of a live event, we would like to remind all interested in the project, particularly its followers in Egypt and in the wider Arab world, that you are warmly invited to continue to follow the Conference and join in on the discussion boards at www.edinburghworldwritersconference.org , which are available for comments and conversation on the Conference themes, as well as via Twitter #worldwritersconf and our Facebook page, www.facebook.com/worldwritersconf.

Aonghas MacNeacail by Murdo Macleod

Skyeman Aonghas MacNeacail is an award-winning poet in Gaelic, English and Scots, songwriter in folk and classical idioms, journalist, broadcaster, translator and occasional actor. Laoidh an Donais Oig (Hymn to a Young Demon) appeared in 2007, and his New and Selected Gaelic poems, Deanamh Gàire ris a Chloc (Laughing at the Clock) is newly published and was shortlisted for the Saltire Scottish Book of the Year. He will travel to Cairo this week for the Edinburgh World Writers’ Conference to respond to Tamim Al-Barghouti’s keynote address on ‘Should Literature Be Political?’

EWWC: You’re visiting Cairo this week to take part in the Edinburgh World Writers’ Conference. Do you have any particular affinity with or interest in the Arab world?

AM: I am a passionate news addict, and describe myself as a non-practising journalist (I’m still a member of the NUJ though). But coming from my own background of a culture under threat [as a Gaelic speaker and writer] has made me interested and concerned with the issues surrounding, for example, the Kurds – a culture whose identity has been extrapolated by those surrounding it. But I am inevitably drawn to be interested in the plight of the Palestinians as a people without a state. To put myself in perspective, I belong to a culture, Scots Gaelic, which has less than 100,000 speakers, though now with a thriving education system through the medium of the language (so there’s hope).

I both curse and bless the Arabs for algebra – and all the wonderful things we gain from it! So while I don’t have a specific academic or journalistic interest, I have a strong general interest in and personal awareness of what’s happening in the Arab world.

EWWC: In terms of cultural identity, language is always going to play a major part. For you is it THE major part?

AM: Yes, for me it is. The language in a sense defines who I am. I am trying to get a campaign going in Scotland based on the premise that ‘I am not an adjective’. I have come to the stage where I am tired of being identified as ‘Gaelic Poet’. I’m proud of my Gaelic background and my ability to express myself in Gaelic. But I’m also a poet in English and indeed I’m also a poet writing in Scots; and sometimes it’s the case that an adjective can be used as a box. So you live with a divided loyalty to your own culture in that sense; you’re proud of it – and yet you don’t want to be defined by it.

EWWC: At the Conference in Edinburgh you were, I think, the only representative there for Scots language writing. Did this make your participation a no-refusal? Is it sometimes something of an albatross?

AM: Certainly I was the only representative for Scots Gaelic, yes. I’ve been in that position so many times, you get used to it I suppose. You are aware that often you’re invited to take part as someone who represents the culture and who is not afraid to take a position.

EWWC: What questions do you think a World Writers’ Conference in 50 years’ time might address?

AM: I think I’m one of the last of the generation which is tied to the printed page. I’m toying with the idea of buying myself an ipad, and I don’t have an e-reader as yet. I’m still holding on to the book. We are very much moving into the electronic age and I think there are going to be huge changes. But people are always going to have tell stories, people are always going to have to sing, people are always going to have to recite.

I’m working at the moment on an extended essay on the life and the poetry of Nazrul [Kazi Nazrul Islam, 1899 – 1976], who’s the national poet of Bangladesh. He’s hugely popular in his own culture and, like Tamim [Al-Bargouti] – they are much closer to the oral tradition that perhaps British, European and American poets are. The poetic tradition I come from has until the 20th century essentially been oral. I have much too bad a memory to be an oral poet – I forget my own words! But I think  there’s a chance that oral poetry will become much more pronounced, with people becoming more attuned to hearing and listening to poetry through the new media. Despite the fact that I can’t understand the language, listening to Nazrul read his poetry on YouTube it comes alive, because you can hear the rhythms, the sonorities, the tonalities – it’s really hypnotic stuff. You can match the sound patterns and the rhythms with the words, even if they’re not brilliantly translated – and suddenly it’s a different ball game.

EWWC:“Should the novel be political? I don’t believe in ‘should’ anywhere near art.” – Ahdaf Soueif, EWWC. What do you think?

AM: Should literature be political? No. It can be, it may be, even will be – but not ‘should’ – should sounds terribly Presbyterian! Poetry should be honest and reflect the world of the poet, and if the poet is engaged with the world around him then it has to be political in a sense – it can’t be otherwise.

One of my most delightful moments was being invited to a festival in Rome, which was held in the open air on the Capitol. In front of me was the Statue of the great Caesar, Marcus Aurelius, on his horse, and in the museum to the right the statue of the Dying Gaul (the last Celt!) – and I was there, reading my poems in Gaelic, a Celtic language, and saying ‘Caesar, we’re still here!’ That affirmation of keeping the language alive is very much a political act.

EWWC: And finally … If you had to be exiled permanently to one of the EWWC cities – Edinburgh, Berlin, Cape Town, Toronto, Krasnoyarsk, Cairo, Jaipur, Beijing, Izmir, Brussels, Lisbon, Port of Spain (Trinidad), St Malo, Kuala Lumpur & Melbourne – which would you choose and why?

AM: I have one ambition – to go south of the equator, I’ve never been. So I might play it safe and sayMelbourne, because of the lack of a language barrier. I might even meet a few Gaels there. My clan chief is in Australia!

(Above image of Aonghas MacNeacail© Murdo Macleod)

China Miéville at Edinburgh World Writers’ Conference Tues 21 Aug c Pascal Saez

China Miéville will be revisiting the Conference theme of The Future of the Novel in Toronto at the International Festival of Authors on 25th October.  We had a quick chat ahead of his trip in which he revealed, among other things, his sanguinity towards pirate editions, in which city he would choose livelong exile, and his reaction to the reaction to his Edinburgh ‘moment’ this past August.

EWWC: The Guardian called your keynote address on ‘The Future of the Novel’ “barnstorming”, Kirsty Gunn spoke of the “exhilarating anarchic spirit of true creativity” which “electrified” your address; other audience members were less enthused and scorned your “dotcommunism”. Were you prepared for the kind of reception your address elicited in Edinburgh?

CM: I really didn’t know what to expect. I wasn’t necessarily expecting that much of a response to it. If you’ve been thinking about something for a long time you kind of lose track of what other people think about it. It was useful for me to hear the objections from people like Ewan [Morrison] – who obviously I disagree with, but who’s smart and serious and interesting – they made me realise that I have to hone my explanations somewhat. That’s the appeal of giving version 2.0 of the same talk again – it gives me a chance to think about those critiques and respectfully respond to them. Overall I was really startled and pleased that there was such a response to it on both sides.

EWWC: Where there any responses that you’d heard before, or that you were expecting?

CM: I think what tends to happen – and this is not unique to just this debate – is that your own position becomes parodied. So if, for example, you say “I am not a defender of the existing punitive system of copyright”, people turn round and say “How can you say that writers shouldn’t be paid?” Which is incredibly infuriating, because you didn’t say that. I think that kind of debate happens all the time with high octane arguments. I find that exhausting and I oscillate between thinking it’s my duty to dot every “i” and cross every “t” – while on the other hand sometimes it feels like it’s occasionally almost wilful misunderstanding. It does depends on my mood, but that kind of defensiveness tires me.

EWWC: You’re revisiting the theme of ‘The Future of the Novel’ in Toronto later this week. Have any of your positions or suggestions changed or developed since August?

CM: I think I’ve come to realise a bit more where it’s helpful to spell certain things out. The point of these things is to present a provocation. It’s in the nature of a 15 minute talk that it’s neither possible nor is it your job to laboriously spell out all possible positions; your role is to get the discussion started. I haven’t changed my opinion but I’ve become more aware of what’s clear and what’s not clear in my argument. I think sometimes you can make a stronger case if you lay out an alternative remit or position, but you’re not obliged to. That’s a rhetorical trope, the critique can have teeth whether or not you lay out an alternative. It’s quite helpful and the argument might be more persuasive if you do, but there’s nothing wrong with holding your hand up and saying “I am open minded about what’s going on”.

The other thing is that people’s responses in the main focused on digitisation – there were a few other points in that talk for example, about translation and so on, but the ‘dotcommunism’ overwhelmed the other strands a bit in the ensuing discussion which I somewhat regret, as I think the other issues of, for example, form and experiment, are important and interesting.

EWWC: To your knowledge has anyone ever remixed or repurposed your work – and what do you think of it? Do pirate editions of your work concern you?

CM: Pirated editions of my work come out the second the work is published, like everyone’s. To the best of my knowledge there’s not a great deal of fanfic about my work, so I honestly don’t know. It’s worth reiterating that I never advocated remixing. I said that it’s likely and unworrying and may or could lead to some interesting things. I also said it may lead to some absolute crap. It’s more a question of being sanguine about it, than enthusiastic.

EWWC: You didn’t sign the ‘Statement of Principle and Intent’ agreed at the Edinburgh World Writers’ Conference in August 2012 which stated that “copyright which has historically been the basis for writers’ income is increasingly being infringed, (something which threatens both the income generated by the individual literary work and its artistic integrity).” Why?

CM: First of all, I want to be clear – I do understand why some writers want to sign this and I think it’s a perfectly legitimate debate. But I felt that the formulations within that statement are highly problematic, both implicitly and explicitly. When the statement talks about copyright having been the thing which has protected work’s artistic integrity – i.e the existing model of copyright which is a model predicated on punishing transgressions – I think that’s a model which is broken and outdated and philistine. I think we have huge problems with the current model. I felt that the Statement assumed that model, and for that reason I wasn’t comfortable with it. Many of its predicates are unproven and indeed highly questionable, so when it says that copyright enshrines the work’s integrity, I think that’s straightforwardly bogus. You can make a strong case that copyright has been a profoundly philistine dynamic over the years. When it says that it protects the writers’ incomes, I think that is highly questionable. My position is not a naïve libertarian one whereby you get rid of copyright, information is free and everyone makes loads of money – I don’t think that’s true at all. Nor do I think there aren’t important and knotty questions of, for example, courtesy and fair recompense. My problem is with the existing model and the punitive actions around it. My position is that it’s a very complicated discussion; that it is virtually impossible to generalise. There are undoubtedly times when the mass-scale pirating of a particular book has resulted in large scale losses for the author – I don’t dispute that for a second. I can also name specific examples where the pirating of a particular book has given it a new lease of life and has increased its sales. To posit that a non-paid for download is stealing is in my view entirely wrong. It’s a basic error: the idea that a million unpaid-for downloads are a million instances of theft is just nonsense because you have no idea how many of those people would have paid for it otherwise. Maybe 995,000 of them had no intention of looking at the book otherwise before they looked at it via download and therefore you might even ultimately gain sales. You’d have to go much more into it to prove that a download is theft. I make my living as a writer, I’m not advocating that writers shouldn’t be able to make their living from writing books  – what I’m saying is that the model in that declaration was, to my mind, simplistic and wrong.

There is a moral issue here as well which I feel very strongly about. This is very noticeable in the music industry, when I hear some people who make their living from music attacking filesharers and accusing them of moral transgression through theft, I want to say to them, ‘Did you ever in the playground exchange a mix tape? Did you ever lend a friend a book and have that book passed around the class and it was amazing and you discussed it and you all shared it? I think it is completely immoral to take what a younger more hi tech generation are doing, which is an updated version of what we all did, and attack them for it. I think it’s outrageous. And I think what we should be doing instead is having a serious conversation which says ‘let’s work out a model in which you have access to what you want, in ways which are not difficult for you and which are financially possible for you, and for which we get paid.’

EWWC: On to, perhaps, more flippant territory. You’re interested in Futures; what questions do you think a World Writers’ Conference in 50 years’ time might address?

CM: I suspect much like this time it would be the same questions with different answers. While I think there might be new questions I think it would be interesting to rigorously ask the same questions again and see what the answers are.

EWWC: And finally … If you had to be exiled permanently to one of the EWWC cities - Edinburgh, Berlin, Cape Town, Toronto, Krasnoyarsk, Cairo, Jaipur, Beijing, Izmir, Brussels, Lisbon, Port of Spain (Trinidad), St Malo, Kuala Lumpur & Melbourne – which would you choose and why?

CM:I really love Cairo, and I haven’t been to Cairo for many years. It can only be a partial answer as there are many cities on that list I haven’t been to – Berlin, for example – so it would be irresponsible to say it’s my final answer – but Cairo would be my first choice, I think.

China Miéville at Edinburgh World Writers’ Conference Tues 21 Aug c Pascal Saez