Throwing the book at authority

Alaa El Aswany, the outspoken Arab novelist of Yacoubian Building fame, has used literature to challenge authority and his own people. Massimo Farrugia met him in Cairo earlier this month.

Every morning at six, Mr El Aswani strolls out of his flat and walks up a flight of steps to his dental clinic in one of the many dingy buildings in Cairo. Sitting at his desk, he puffs away at the first of many cigarettes he will go through in a morning, sips coffee and collects his thoughts as he waits for his computer to boot.

It is during the first four hours of his day - before seeing to any of his patients' teeth - that Mr El Aswany gradually builds his characters' profiles, typing into his computer the minutest details about their lives: the food they eat, the way they talk, whether they have a toilet at home, where they get their hair cut and - if they smoke - what brand of cigarettes they buy. And it is when the characters are sufficiently developed to start asserting their own individuality that the writer loses control of them, allowing the story to start unravelling.

Mr El Aswany, whose debut novel, The Yacoubian Building, became a bestseller first in the Arab world in 2002 and internationally soon after it was translated into no fewer than 17 languages three years ago, shocked his country's establishment by taking on issues like political corruption, homosexuality, poverty and extremism - capturing with acclaimed clarity the intricate tapestry of Egyptian life.

An Art Deco style edifice in downtown Cairo's Talaat Harb Street, the Yacoubean building which inspired Mr El Aswani's novel housed his father's legal practice for 30 years.

Also a well-known writer, Abbas El Aswany, who was a good friend of Nobel laureate Naguib Mahfouz, brought up his son to love literature so that writing became the young El Aswani's only dream. But since he realised that making a living from literature in Egypt would be virtually impossible, the young writer took up dentistry - a profession he would not give up, not even after he started making decent money from literature.

Mr El Aswany says that having a profession enabled him to maintain his independence from the government, a value of utmost importance to a fiction writer.

"I never got paid by the government and this enables me to write whatever I think should be written. Dentistry is also a very human profession that puts me in contact with people all the time."

As Mr El Aswany handled question after question from 14 journalists sitting in every corner of his tiny sunlit clinic, it became evident that the writer's value of independence had not come without cost. His treating of controversial issues in The Yacoubian Building - which was a veiled (and not so veiled) parody of power, oppression, disillusionment and poverty - made finding a publisher extremely difficult.

"They all said it was a great novel, but a whole bunch of trouble. Finally, I found Mohammad Hashim, an avant-garde publisher, who came out with the first edition. He was already having problems with the regime so it made little difference to him."

Literary critics have often written that The Yacoubian Building's significance lay in its treatment of Egypt's corrupt and undemocratic system dominated by a single party and the spreading of an extremist form of Islam that is feeding on popular disillusionment with the government and its President, Hosni Mubarak. But Mr El Aswany believes in separating the political and artistic.

"I write political articles in newspapers as well. But when I write fiction, I know that I am not writing for any direct or instant change, because... a novel is not going to change the regime. But a good novel does change the people."

Yet, politics is about action to bring about change, essentially in people, someone points out.

"Yes, true. But in a very indirect way," Mr El Aswany replies. "From literature, we learn how to be more tolerant and more human and less judgmental. When you read literature you learn how to understand the characters much more than judging them... This is why good literature makes us better human beings".

Mr El Aswany's emphasis on the characters in his novel stems from his belief that no writer could ever draw a "real" character without painting the social and political background that shapes their thoughts and feelings. "That is when literature is alive on the paper. Literature is like life itself, but more profound, more significant and more beautiful".

Of course, it is difficult for a writer to know who his readers are, especially when his work makes the top 10 fiction and non-fiction charts in nations with strong literary traditions like France, Italy and Spain.

But writers somehow still know who is reading their work, or, at least, who they have in mind when they are writing. In Mr El Aswany's case, many readers write in to comment about his work, and they come from different backgrounds - students, housewives, highly-educated and fairly-educated people, workers and even fanatics.

His latest novel, called Chicago, which is still being translated into French and English, was first published in series in Al Doustur, a weekly independent newspaper. In this novel, Mr El Aswany told the story of a veiled Muslim girl who wins a scholarship to study in the US. As she becomes exposed to new ideas, the girl starts to question her conservative views about sex and, finally, falls in love with a Jewish American.

"When I began to publish the series the chief editor of the newspaper said the story was going to test public opinion. I had 90 per cent of the readers who were very enthusiastic about the novel and five to 10 per cent who were fanatics and kept insulting me. One of them kept sending e-mails every week and saying: 'If this veiled woman is going to have sex with somebody, I am going to give you hell!' And I replied asking him: 'Why do you keep reading?' In the end, I insisted on publishing one page with all the accusations I had received, and explained to these fanatics that fiction should be read without drawing conclusions."

To Mr El Aswany, the interactive process with his readers was a learning experience. Picking 20 men and women who had e-mailed him saying they liked the story, Mr El Aswany asked whether they believed that the sexual details in the novel had been necessary or offensive. The answers were extremely telling: All the women said the sexual scenes were necessary and that they had not been offended. Fifteen out of 20 men also replied they had not found the details offensive, but five objected, saying they had not been offended by the sexual details but would not have been comfortable if their wives read them.

As the conversation turned - almost naturally - towards extremism and tolerance, Mr El Aswany said Egyptians were torn between the regime, on the one hand, and the influence of Wahhabism - an extremist form of Islam - on the other.

As the price of oil spiked since the 1970s, giving the Saudi regime unprecedented power in the world, Wahhabi Islam spread as the Saudis sponsored religion to consolidate their rule.

This is why, Mr El Aswany says, most important mosques in Europe are sponsored by the Saudis.

"It is a very dangerous vision because it is intolerant, not only of non-Muslims, but also of the Muslims who are not Wahhabi. The Wahhabi vision has been sponsored by Arab dictators for 30 years. Why? Because Wahhabism is a gift for any dictator. It preaches complete submission to political rulers and gives people no political rights." So dictators not only oppress their own people with impunity but use religion to convince them that if they want to be good Muslims they must obey.

Though extremist views are spreading in Egypt too, this has not always been the case. "We used to have a very tolerant version of Islam and that is why we were very creative. This is why Egypt has been so cosmopolitan. In the Arab world we were the first to have a Parliament and a Constitution. We were the first to have women in Parliament and at universities. We were leading in arts, cinemas and newspapers. Religion was read in a tolerant way," Mr El Aswany says, recalling celebrating Muslim, Jewish and Christian feasts with his colleagues at the secular French lyceum in Bab el-Louk, where he received secondary education.

A firm believer in the benefits of democracy, Mr El Aswany says Egypt is very close to a big change even if he admits that he cannot foresee when it will happen. Yet, are Egyptians ready for democracy? Ironically, the main case brought up against democracy is stability, as regimes say that chaos would ensue if they let go of power. The forced downfall of Saddam Hussein in Iraq would seem to support this line of thought.

Mr El Aswany says there is no such stage as "being ready for democracy" and argues that the current regime is "pushing the country in the hands of radicals".

When the British occupied Egypt and ransacked the country for 88 years, they said they were modernising and protecting minorities, he says.

"US President George Bush is saying the same thing in Iraq. He has obviously invaded Iraq to instil democracy, not for oil or anything else. Dictators too apply that logic. You will never find a dictator who says I am enjoying power and living like a king with my friends, and I will never give up. But he will say: 'I really love democracy but we must wait for the moment for the people to be ready and prepared'. And this moment will never come."

Mr El Aswany says there are clear paths to follow to bring about change. The only really complicated thing is that the people in power like it so much, that they won't give it up easily. Many argue that if Egyptians are called to vote in fair elections, the Muslim Brotherhood - an outlawed Islamist organisation whose views are, to a large extent, unknown - would win. Yet, Mr El Aswany thinks it is not important who gains power as long as elections are legitimate and the people's right to change their rulers is safeguarded.

On the current political climate in world politics, the writer believes that the West and the Arab world are sadly moving away from each other, largely because of the dangerous stereotypes at play. From the Arab world's perspective, the "so-called" West continually adopts double standards in its regard, of which the Danish cartoons saga was just one example.

"Placing 'the West' in one basket is unfair. While Tony Blair decided to go to war in Iraq, one million people in Britain protested against the war. But most Arabs cannot understand how freedom of expression - an excellent democratic value in the West - could allow people to make fun of Prophet Mohammad, and at the same time forbid any discussions about the holocaust... (And) they cannot understand why all this fuss is made about Iran's nuclear weapons while for Israel it is acceptable that they have any kind of weapon they want."

The neo-liberal theory of a clash of civilisations has gained ground recently as the powerful feed on people's fear in an unstable scheme of things. Mr El Aswany says there is another division of the world. "I believe in the human side and non-human side. In the human side, you have most people who are not deciding to occupy other countries... The non-humans are imperialists like George Bush, the fanatics and the dictators of the world."

The interview with Mr Al Aswany was made possible thanks to the European Journalists' Centre.