Caption and image are The Economist's fault, not mine.

A collage

What do you know about how people live in Cairo or Beirut or Riyadh?

The Middle East has a bad reputation when it comes to books; nowhere else do so few people read them. Statistics show that most Arabs do not read more than six minutes per year and children do not visit libraries or book clubs.

Compounding this is the dearth of translated works, which limits the extent to which the global conversation seeps into the Arab world, hindering intellectual curiosity, access to knowledge and development. In fact, it found that in the past 1,000 years only about 10,000 books have been translated into Arabic – equivalent to the number of books translated in Spain each year.

There are still plenty of pious women around who wear a veil or headscarf.

But what about literature? There will be good books and not so good ones, just as with American fiction. But the great novel of the Arab spring has yet to be published.

It is no accident that Arab countries are mucking up democracy, and it is no accident that Japan and Germany have the No. 1 and No. 2 carmakers. It is too soon to say that the Arab Spring is gone, never to resurface. But the Arab Winter has clearly arrived.

Good art, like revolutionary change, takes time.

Sentences (and headline) borrowed in their entirety from:

The Economist: Revolution between hard covers

The New Yorker: Found in Translation

The Peninsular Qatar: Survey finds poor reading habit among children 

The Media Line: Obstacles to Reading 

NY Daily News: Autumn Settles Over Arab Spring

Inside Story: On the edge of the Arab Spring 

And, more importantly:

Debunking the “myth of the six minutes”: In al-Akhbar

Debunking the myth that “in the past 1,000 years only X novels have been translated, which means Arabs are dumb”:

ArabLit: Translation is Not Dialogue

RAYA: Yasmina Jraissati 

Al Masry Al Youm: Richard Jacquemond 

When I requested a copy of the book, written by Iraqi poet Amal al-Jubouri and translated by poet Rebecca Gayle Howell & Husam Qaisi, all I knew was that Hagar was written by al-Jubouri post-2003, making it one of only a handful of such works in translation. Most works in English that address the Iraqi occupation were written by Anglo journalists, politicians, poets, and/or soldiers. Oh, and I also knew that Rebecca Gayle Howell is not fluent in Arabic, and that Qaisi did a more “literal” translation and Howell largely worked from there.

My first reaction to the collection’s bilinguality was: Fan-tastic!

Bilingual collections are fairly rare, outside of academic texts. The Emerging Arab Voices: Nadwa 1 collection, ed. Peter Clark, was bilingual. Tahar Ben Jelloun’s Rising of the Ashes, trans. Cullen Goldblatt, was in English and French. I think it takes a certain bravery to publish bilingually. Yes, go on, check my work!

Patty Paine, one of the editors of Gathering the Tide, said that she and the other editors of Gathering had considered making their collection bilingual. Ultimately, they decided it would be too long as such. As I read through Gathering and looked up a few of the originals (and in one case an alternate translation), I wished that it had been bilingual. I regretted its monolinguality.

Then, as I read through Hagar, I realized there are downsides to bilinguality.

A translation is a sort of an interpretation of the poem. The translator must decide — more or less – what the poem “means” (yes, yes, I oversimplify) before she can render it in another language. She must weigh different possible connotations of a word or phrase, the other words and phrases they touch, the sound and feel of them, and ultimately she must make decisions.

When I read through Hagar the first time, I couldn’t stick to the English. I’d go back and weigh this phrase against that phrase, this placement on the page vs. that. Unlike Stephanie Fauver, I don’t think of translations as placeholders, as inadequate representations of an original. I consider them works of art in their own right. Rebecca Gayle Howell is a poet; she has made aesthetic decisions (as against repetition, for one); these poems have her fingerprints, and Qaisi’s, as well as al-Jabouri’s.

But instead of taking in the translations whole cloth, as a singular experience, I was hopping here and there, wondering what I would’ve done, wondering — if the poet “approved” the translation — if that means this view is “right”. An interesting experience, but, next read, I’ll have to block off one language.

Perhaps a better bilingual experience would come by presenting the whole collection together in one language, and this facing the whole collection together in the other.

This presentation and debate came on the heels of the release of a report, by Literature Across Frontiers’ Alexandra Buchler and translator/scholar Alice Guthrie, about Arabic-English translation in the UK from 1990-2010. (You can download a copy of the report here.) The report examines trends in Arabic-English  translation and features interviews with a number of professional translators.

The UK presentation and debate, set for Feb 2, will include a presentation by Guthrie and Buchler, as it did in Cairo. But it will also be followed by a panel debate and Q&A that will be chaired by translators Marilyn Booth (whose latest work is a translation of As Though She Were Sleeping, by Elias Khoury) and Peter Clark (who has recently worked with the International Prize for Arabic Fiction and edited the first Nadwa collection). 

The UK debate, I imagine, will be a bit livelier than the one we had in Cairo. And perhaps with more pointed questions and disagreements. That is: We were far too dull and congenial. This (should) be more fun.

If you’re interested in attending, the presentation and debate will be held at the Free Word Centre in London, at 60 Farringdon Road. It’s set to start at 6:30 p.m., and refreshments will be served.  More details on the LAF calendar.

About September’s debate:

Should Egypt pay to promote its authors abroad?

A few of the issues raised in the report:

Should Arabic-English Translators Be Native Speakers of Arabic? Of English?

Which Books ‘Should’ Be Translated from Arabic to English?

Arab Novels: Not as Good as the Russians, Latin Americans?

‘But We Don’t Know Who Else to Ask!’: Lit Festivals & Arab Writers

‘Go and Look Properly’ for the Best of Arabic Fiction

Kareem James Abu-Zeid, who was runner-up for the Banipal Prize in 2010 for his translation of Tarek Eltayeb’s Cities Without Palms, will translate the book. Abu-Zeid said, in an email, “I’m excited to have a press with broader distribution, and also because this is the first time I’ve ever selected the novel/author I wanted to translate, approached the press with it, and had them accept.”

Abu-Zeid has had his eye on Jaber for a while. In a 2009 feature on Quarterly Conversation called “Translate This Book!“, Abu-Zeid had said, “The single Arab author I believe to be the most in need of translation is the Lebanese novelist Rabee Jaber, born in 1972. He has published a host of novels in Arabic, several of which have been translated into French, yet none of which have been translated into English. He captures the life and spirit of the city of Beirut in unforgettable ways.”

Now Abu-Zeid will have his chance to bring Jaber’s work into English. Although Jaber’s work has appeared in excerpts — in the Beirut39 collection and the International Prize for Arabic Fiction (IPAF) “book of excerpts” — no full-length translation has yet been published. And, even though he is not yet 40, Jaber has written seventeen novels, including two that have been IPAF shortlisted (2010 for Amreeka and 2012 for The Druze of Belgrade).

Abu-Zeid described the novel he’s begun to translate in an email:

…The Mehlis Report revolves around the assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri in 2005, and charts the psychological effects of the series of explosions that rocked Beirut at this time. As a very palpable tension builds, the novel’s first protagonist, Saman Yarid, wanders through the city, ruminating on its past and the massive reconstruction projects undertaken largely by Hariri’s own company, Solidere. Yet this “surface” narrative is accompanied by a more fantastical one, as the voices of the dead quite literally begin to take over the text. A second Beirut emerges here, the Beirut of the dead that exists in the bowel’s of this turbulent city, and slowly begins to impose itself on the first. The detailed topographies of Beirut that emerge are one of the most remarkable aspects of this novel – the reader is left with the impression of having truly lived this place and this moment in time. Yet Jaber’s novel is also ultimately about people’s impossible needs for answers, for narratives that would explain all those unfathomable aspects of our lives and deaths. This desire is symbolized most directly by the impossible hopes Saman pins on Detlev Mehlis, the German judge appointed by the UN to investigate Hariri’s assassination.

And yes, ¡Viva la Revolución!

The entrance looked just like old times: Only the banner is different. Tickets are to the right, still just 1LE.

The area immediately inside looked very much like 2010.

Dar al Shorouk still has their prime spot right near the main entrance. (At the moment, it seems to be the only entrance.) In 2010, I was fighting for air and afraid my children might be crushed. This year, crowds were decent-sized near the entrance but not overwhelming by any stretch.

Searching for Hall 3. The boy in the orange sweater was not pleased by the fresh rubble. Father: "Oh, give me your hand, ya basha."

AUC Press has a much-reduced presence way back in Cairo-fairgrounds Siberia this year. Presumably, after the mysterious disappearance of $10,000 worth of shelving and such, they decided not to re-invest. Here, a small revolution display.

Our friends at Dar al Balsam were even deeper in Siberia, particularly since the Salah Salem entrance was closed. "It's very peaceful," publisher Balsam Saad said, a bit chagrined. She surmised that people were staying away from the fair until after January 25 (Part II) shook out.

Nope, no shortage of religious texts. Although plenty of secular ones, too.

I didn't go into the Saudia Arabian...castle. I did see lots of kids waving paper flags with the KSA flag on one side and the Egyptian on the other. Saw a few kids with flags that were green, orange, and white (Ireland?). No Tunisian flags that I saw (Tunisia is the guest of honor).

The Dar el-Ain booth seemed pretty quiet as well. Copies of Ezzedine Choukri Fishere's "Embrace at the Brooklyn Bridge" prominently displayed.

Hall 1 seemed to be for religious publishers.

The Azbekia Hall! Basically, the paper market excerpted and relocated.

Comics.

There was more foot traffic here than elsewhere. And, it seemed, a bit more buying.

Still, the Azbakia Hall wasn't doing great business. No one was, for instance, elbowing anyone out of the way. No one was even in my line of sight as I scanned titles.

If you head all the way to the back, you'll see this revolutionary mural. It's a little broken back here.

Things seemed a bit more broken than in the past. Or perhaps, with fewer people around, I had more opportunity to look at the grounds. More revolutionary muraling.

There was a children's art area hidden way in the back.

An organizer explained to me that on display here was the results of a competition called "Egypt in the Eyes of Children of the World."

The project was juried in 2010 (and perhaps in storage last year), thus held under the Suzanne Mubarak regime. One imagines that children's impressions of Egypt have globally changed since then.

Contrary to popular belief, there is an information booth. And while there are no maps (or schedules), the woman in the booth was supremely nice. (Although yes, she sent me off in the wrong direction.)

The food area smelled lovely. And lots of seats available this year.

Don't let it be said that government-owned Al Ahram didn't get a nice, fancy-looking tent.

The green spaces were none too crowded: Plenty of space for football!

Brueghel's Tower of Babel

In reading through the rich “Arabic double issue” of the journal Metamorphoses, guest-edited by Mohamed el-Sawi and Hassan & Nahla Khalil, I came across a re-translation of Dhu al-Nun Ayyub’s “A Pillar in the Tower of Babel” by Stephanie Fauver.

Fauver’s comments on the translation precede the story, and they spurred me to read her work with particular attention. This was because of two passages. First, Fauver asserts that a translation that “gives preference to the source language over the target language, and perhaps at the expense of a smooth reading experience, allows for peculiarities of the source to appear as stumbling blocks to casual reading and as pointers to the fact that a translation must be considered a place-holder, always pointing to the need to engage the original.”

And later: “A translation, which essentially can never fully substitute for the original but rather serves as a placeholder for it, always merits revisiting and reconsidering.”

Overall, the translation-as-placeholder seems a rather mechanistic view of the translator’s job, with none of the joy of creating a new object of beauty. Indeed, Fauver almost seems to suggest that a translator should go out of her way to be un-beautiful, that Khaled Mattawa has done us a disservice by rendering Adonis’s poems in such gorgeous English, and that the compliment “it was so lovely that it didn’t seem translated!” isn’t a compliment at all.

Surely I agree that translations always (or, well, often) merit revisiting and reconsidering. A fresh translation might bring out fresh beauties, fresh ideas, fresh felicities. Still, I would hate to have a new translation just for the purpose of throwing up more stumbling blocks and reminding the reader (again) that this is not the original.

Now, if Fauver’s goal was to make an un-smooth translation of Ayyub’s work, I don’t see that she succeeded: “A Pillar in the Tower of Babel” remains an enjoyable, satiric read. And if there are some sentences that are more difficult to parse, I am not sure how — as she suggests — this will “clue the reader in to the flavor of the source language text.” If the Arabic text was smoothly satiric for an Arab reader, shouldn’t the translator try to replicate this flavor?

I do think some of her fresh language choices work — it grounds the work nicely to have more specific religious terminology — but I’m afraid that thinking of one’s translation as a “placeholder” is probably not the impetus a working translator needs to spur her to a great, visionary translation.

The “Middle East / North African” literature club is an active part of the global GoodReads community with some 400 members. I asked one of the founders & leaders of the group, who calls herself “Nile Daughter” online, a few questions about this online book group.

ArabLit: What was the motivation to start this group? Who were you hoping would join?

Nile Daughter: First of all, I did not create the group, it was there in Goodreads for two years before I joined it. It was started by an American in order to gather reads from “the Middle East – North Africa ” (MENA) by native authors, and that was the definition of the group from the beginning. She left the forum, and when I joined there were about 60 members (multiple nationalities). There were no activities at all except for exchanging of some book recommendations.

I thought that was a good sign; I mean, these are people who do not belong to our region who are interested in reading our literature, trying to hear us and to understand us. I contacted the administration of the forum asking for a new moderator of the group and they assigned me. So with the cooperation of my friends that I appreciate much, we created a moderation team and moved on. We are three moderators “NG, Marieke, and I”: two Egyptians and one American. Now the group is trying to cover Arabic literature, also Turkish and Iranian, we even reached central Asia zone partially in our way.

ArabLit: What sort of reader(s) would you want to join the group? What do you think participants have gotten out of the group?

ND: We have just started the second year running this group and we have four hundred members now. We have Americans , Europeans, and Arabs, and that is the formula we hoped for. It is a group where members with different cultural backgrounds can read, discuss, and interact. After several reads, it was amazing how many non-native members indicated not only that they did not know much about us (socially, culturally or politically) , but that most of what they already knew was biased or superficial to some point. Besides they also have enjoyed our literature, for example: I Saw Ramallah affected a lot of readers, The Yacoubian Building was a shock, and Cities of Salt had the highest following rates in the group.

We are hoping that more diversified members will interact in the group and talk. Two-sided discussions (sometimes opposite ones) proved to be very productive, and the group created a positive communication area which is rare to locate in general—just to find different individuals exchanging points of view while reading the Middle East. That is the main benefit our participants get in our group.

ArabLit: Why an online reading group vs. one that’s in person?

ND: We never discussed how it would be as “in person group.” We could have never reached this number of various members or being internationally featured group if it was not online.

We have open threads for ever where members can join and post their comments at any time, we have official reads, corners for individual reads, and corners for music, movies and Oriental cuisines. We tried so much to achieve high level of flexibility and diversity that I wouldn’t imagine it possible in real life.

ArabLit: Has it been different from your expectations? In what way?

ND: Yes, It was different and there are several items that surprised me :

- I never expected the group would be that active: We are covering on average three books every 2 months, books are not always easy to find; yet members choose them through polls and do their best to find them or at least follow the discussions.

- At the first year, we were covering the region geographically, moving from a zone to anther exploring it. This year we had a different project: a historical tour. When Marieke suggested it, I was afraid members would not be interested as before, yet members followed, it seemed interesting to them to read history from the other side point of view and explore our heritage .

- I never expected that finding various options of Arabic books in several fields (mainly history) in English versions would be that difficult, that is why we had to read some books by non-native authors, which was tricky or a difficult task keeping in mind that our first read in the group was Orientalism by Edward Said.

ArabLit: Have you had any interaction with the authors of books you’ve read? Would you want to?

ND: Unfortunately no! because the authors of the books we read are not members in “Goodreads” and we have not tried to reach them by other methods, it was not an issue to think of at the beginning, we were only hoping that readers will increase in number and that discussions become richer among them . Now I think this would be a new addition to the group. But it is important to note that one of our policies is not to turn the group into a promotional device .

Some native authors already joined the group, also we have member authors who are not native , some of them lived in the region or just write about it from study or imagination – which is not the target of the group. Yet we made an exception that we read – and discussed with a non native author – an American memoir Fast Times in Palestine by Pamela J. Olson because it was requested by members after her interactions during “Arabic-Israeli conflict ” discussions.

Photo from @3am_Mina in late December. Tents going up for 2012 book fair.

Over at Ahram Online, Mary Mourad and Mohammed Saad have put together a short overview of the Cairo International Book Fair. I have added just a few items here and there.

1969: The first Cairo International Book Fair was held.

Early 1980s: This is when politics began to enter the fair, according to former culture minister Emad Abou-Ghazi (as reported on Ahram Online.) The followed the peace treaty with Israel in 1979 and the invitation of Israel to paricipate in the book fair.

1987: Israel excluded from the book fair, but demonstrations continued.

1980s and 1990s: Mubarak used the fair to promote and entrench his favored intellectual elites, according to Cairo University Professor Ahmed Zayed (from Ahram Online).

2000: Religious preacher Amr Khaled makes his first appearance at the fair.

2001: In May of 2000, at least 2,000 Islamists angrily protested Ibrahim Aslan‘s decision, as editor-in-chief of the Arab Horizons project, to re-print Haidar Haidar’s A Banquet for Seaweed. The government responded by firing a senior culture worker late that year, and, at the 2001 fair, journalists, filmmakers and writers protested that decision.

2003: Book-fair protests against the anticipated US invasion of Iraq.

2005: “On January 28 police arrested a number of activists at the Cairo International Book Fair and charged them with disseminating false propaganda against the government.” (International Freedom of Expression Exchange.)  A number of lectures were canceled, including those by regime critic Mohamed El-Sayed Said, and books, including those by poet Mahmoud Darwish, were banned.

2007: Al Ahram writer Hadeel al-Shalchi writes about visiting the fair for the first time in her life.  She’s surprised, somehow, not to find maps.

2008: Saudi preacher A’ed al-Karani, the author of the best-selling Don’t Be Sad, visits the fair.

Books banned at the fair reportedly included titles by Czech Milan Kundera, Moroccan Mohamed Choukri, Saudi Ibrahim Badi, and Lebanese authors Hanan al-Sheikh and Elias Khoury.

2009: The “cultural cafe,” where numerous writers and intellectuals had gathered, is shut down. Fair hours were also adjusted to thwart demonstrations.

2010: Algerian publishers boycott the Cairo book fair.

This was also the year that State Security confiscated Idris Ali’s last novel, The Leader is Cutting His Hair, reportedly for its criticism of former Libyan leader Moammar Ghaddafi.

Bestsellers at the 2010 fair included Youssef Ziedan’s Azazeel and his Arab Theology, Alaa al-Aswany’s Do We Deserve Democracy, and Bilal Fadl’s satiric A Chagrined Laugh. A number of religious texts were also top sellers, and the Egyptian Gazette reported that those books that “had a glossy cover and were reasonably cheap” did best.

2011: Moved. Delayed. Protests planned. Mubarak makes counter-plans. Cancelled.

Substitute fairs included the Tahrir Book Fair, the Culture Corner fairs, and the Ramadan Book Fair.

2012: Opens today. Ahram Online suggests that the book fair will not see (many) protests this year. They quote Helmy El-Namnam: “This year the fair will not function as a place for protests, since now every square in Egypt is a space for demonstrations”

Meanwhile, Shorouk reports that the publishers union has declared a refusal to censor books.

Well, perhaps it isn’t yet “so many.” When I tallied them up, I found: There was an early, mixed review in the London Review of Books that is not online. It was followed by reviews in The Metro (by Tina Jackson, four stars), The New Yorker Book Bench (by Alexia Nader: “Essential Reading of the Arab Spring“), and The Independent (by Robin Yassin-Kassab).

Perhaps this hasn’t quite made “Sarmada” the proverbial household word, but it’s better than the scant attention paid to most Arabic literature in translation. Perhaps some of the interest was timing—”ooh, Syria?!”—and some came because acclaimed author Rafik Schami staked his name on the book.

I have heard that “book reviews don’t sell books any more” and that the book review is “dead.” (The novel is also “dead,” by some accounts—its death even has an entry on Wikipedia—so perhaps the review’s death is rather a non-issue.)

In any case, I assume that reviews beget reviews, and that there will be more. Even if they don’t sell any books.

Posted by Hussein Allam at "Save the Books."

By Hussein Omar

It has sometimes been claimed that, like human rights and democracy, the protection of Egypt’s cultural heritage cannot be left to the Egyptians. Corruption, poverty, and ignorance, Egypt’s critics maintain, pose a serious threat to the preservation of artefacts of “global importance”.

Egypt’s own Antiquities Council, of course, claims otherwise. Attempting to demonstrate its commitment to safeguarding “national heritage,” erstwhile director Zahi Hawas waged a mildly successful international campaign to repatriate what “rightly belongs” to Egypt. In one case, a mummy returned from Atlanta, Georgia was given a farcical state-funeral, serenaded by singing schoolchildren and marching military bagpipers. Hawas, obsessed with ancient showpieces like the bust of Nefertiti and the Rosetta stone, has long overlooked the theft of Egypt’s non-ancient heritage. Ottoman deeds and Khedivial records that have mysteriously appeared in both private and public collections in the Gulf, for example, fell entirely outside the remit of his campaign.

Appealing to the tastes of package tourists and neglecting the interest of ordinary Egyptians, the Antiquities Council has long scorned what cannot be displayed in expensive vitrines and hastily photographed. Egypt’s post-”Islamic”— and particularly its 19th and 20th century— culture has therefore been ignored, if not actively denigrated, by the Council.

Most recently, the furore over the alleged smuggling and sale of Naguib Mahfouz’s archives has made more visible than ever the state’s failure to safeguard its “modern” heritage. Although Sotheby’s would eventually call the auction off, the patriotic Egyptian public was infuriated. It provoked the country’s preeminent newspapers to ask how the manuscripts of Egypt’s Nobel Laureate could be sold in the chambers of a foreign auction house, and why the state had not intervened to protect them. And yet, the Mahfouz sale further prompts the more important question: where and with whom should the private papers of public personalities be deposited?

For example, at his death earlier this month, Egypt’s celebrated novelist Ibrahim Aslan left behind a number of unpublished manuscripts. How could his heirs, should they so wish, make this material accessible to an interested public?

In theory, the answer is easy— either the National Archives of Egypt or the adjacent “Dar al-Kutub”. But in practice the logic by which both institutions operate makes this issue a lot more complicated than it first appears to be.

Essentially, the current National Archive is descended from a series of disparate document repositories cobbled together in the 1920s. This new centralized archive was designed to provide the infrastructure behind professional history writing, which aimed to forge a monolithic national (and more importantly monarchical) identity for the country. During this state-building period, documents that did not promote a certain view of Egyptian history, and the reigning monarchy of the time, were either discarded or destroyed.

True to its etymological origins, the National Archive of Egypt continues to be held within the state’s coercive grip. State security (amn al-qawmi, formerly amn al-dawla) plays arbiter. Despite the efforts of Egypt’s preeminent historian, Khaled Fahmy, it continues to viciously restrict access to the documents to all but a privileged few: These tend to be professional historians whose research is perceived as non-subversive to the state and its narratives, which are overwhelmingly nationalist.

These self-proclaimed gatekeepers of Egypt’s past are thus able to determine and drive most of the research conducted on the country’s modern history. Moreover, the Egyptian archive is notoriously unreliable; its self-proclaimed mission — to preserve documents pertaining to the history of modern Egypt — is consistently undermined by cataloguing problems, disorganization, and theft.

Elsewhere in the region, civil war, lack of funding, and often lack of interest, have resulted in the eradication of large and important collections of documents, both public and private. Research agendas, instead of being problem-driven, have often been determined by what material was available for study.

In a creative attempt to circumvent the difficulties posed by the “gatekeepers of the Egyptian past,” a younger generation of scholars has shifted the focus of its enquiry from the state to its subjects. The most important recent works of Egyptian history written in the West have thus relied heavily on periodicals or print material found in European or American research institutes, or in personal collections.

There is, after all, a wealth of material in private hands. Yet since 1963, when a precedent-setting court decision forced the family of Egypt’s nationalist icon, Sa’ad Zaghlul, to “gift” his diaries to the state, private collectors have tended to keep their troves hidden from view. That same year, the Ministry of Culture formed a new Committee for the Writing of Egyptian History, which was tasked with identifying documents of ‘national importance’. Those deemed worthy of the honour were confiscated from their owners and deposited in the National Archive. Rather than having the desired effect of bringing new resources out into the public, the Committee has encouraged owners— be it through inheritance or purchase— to hide away their collections and restrict access to them.

Between the restrictions imposed by the state and the precautions taken by paranoid collectors, the exchange of archival material has reached an impasse. With the exception of blind patriots and irascible polemicists, few have faith in the state as custodian of the nation’s (particularly modern) heritage. Only days after the Mahfouz affair, thousands of invaluable books were set aflame in the 19th c. Institut d’Egypte during an altercation between protestors and the Army. It was only by the intervention of ordinary citizens that the material was salvaged.

As its cultural identity is re-imagined in this time of revolution, intellectuals and the “public” alike are reckoning with what Egypt has been in the past, what it will become in the future, and the dreams and disappointments that the nation’s upheaval has unearthed. Egypt’s cultural and historical inheritance can no longer be treated as an accessory, a dispensable demonstration of an autocrat’s civility, to be paraded around the world in “blockbuster” exhibitions. Rather it will have to become a crucial component of the revolutionary process. As elected parliamentarians vie over Egypt’s post-Mubarak identity, independent intellectuals must continue to raise the battle cry that they have long sounded. More than ever, a deep engagement with Egypt’s heritage will allow them to engage in the important and political role of questioning the totalising narratives that the Egyptian state has long attempted to impose.

If the new Egyptian state is to become un-autocratic, it will have to relinquish the monopoly it has long held over all “culture”. No longer can “Literature”, “History”, and “Art” be cast as matters of National Security. Attempts to interrogate their meaning outside the framework of nationalism can no longer be viewed as heretical. Independent intellectuals and their audiences will have to turn away from the state, not towards it.

Egypt’s cultural heritage can really be left to the Egyptians. And if this heritage is to take the place it rightfully should in Egypt’s post-revolution landscape, it is imperative to encourage the efforts of “ordinary Egyptians”, those who have all along looked to build strong independent institutions outside the clutches of the ministries of culture and education. Only in this way will reassessments be possible — of the past two hundred years of literary, historical and artistic production — that will break the state’s cartel.

Hussein Omar is a history PhD candidate at Merton College, Oxford and the co-founder of the “Downtown Memory and History Project.”