Arabic Literature and English-Language Readers

Arab Literature and English Readers

Arab culture enjoys great obscurity among other cultures in the world. The achievement of this obscurity is not primarily due to the local nature of this culture, nor to a weakness in the level of Arab literature and expression written in Arabic, nor to a fundamental rejection from the West of this culture and its aversion. Rather, it is due to entirely different reasons that manifest in the absence of books written in Arabic, juxtaposed with the absence of any serious Arab project to translate Arab literature into other languages. A multitude of significant reasons lie behind this.

At a time when powerful and effective nations are making great efforts to translate the works created by the genius of their novelists, poets, and thinkers into various languages, including Arabic, and are devising project after project to achieve this, capable Arabs (and here I specifically mean their official cultural institutions, without forgetting the private ones) do not move a muscle. The boastful Arab cultural institutions, day and night, about serving the nation and its heritage, make no effort to transfer Arab culture into other languages, neither the traditional nor the contemporary.

This extraordinary woman, under harsh circumstances, managed to publish this journal for seven consecutive years at her personal expense, and without any significant assistance from British cultural institutions, providing valuable services to modern Arabic literature that its own proponents failed to deliver.

It is most likely that the reason for this reluctance is the Arabs' lack of a genuine, free, and courageous dialogue project with the other, far from the complexes of inferiority that have entrenched themselves in the Arab self and have sometimes manifested as submission to everything Western, and other times as an empty arrogance that champions its features as immortal.

The belief in the necessity of penetrating the consciousness of our contemporary other, alone, is capable of generating the urgent need to establish Arab projects aimed at transferring a part of modern Arabic script to various languages, especially English, in an attempt to place Arab literary and intellectual achievements under a wider light, and thus build a bridge over that terrifying gap of ignorance about Arabs in a world where it is no longer possible for people to ignore culture and thought.

Despite all the reasons and justifications we can offer, it is likely that none of these projects will soon see the light, despite all that is afflicting Arabs and the overwhelming changes perhaps deeply affecting their destiny in the existential sense as a nation, and their future as an ancient culture with a real connection to the literary and intellectual development happening in the era, which prevents the creation of a better understanding between Arab culture and other cultures. It is tragic and strange that a culture of a language spoken by more than two hundred million people continues to be unknown.

In English, the most dominant and present language in the world, what has been translated from Arabic into this language is almost zero compared to what has been written, for example, in Greek, a language where what is written in it in our present day often surpasses in its creativity what Arabs write in their language. At a time when we find many newspapers and periodicals published in English in India, Pakistan, Turkey, and poor African and Latin American countries, addressing English readers, we do not find a single Arabic periodical in English that focuses on literature, for example.

This serious publication has encompassed the best of Arabic poetic, narrative, novelistic, and intellectual writing. It has succeeded in painting an advanced picture of the Arab world, surpassing what the Arab periodicals themselves offer.

One of the great ironies is that the only exception to a magazine published in English and dealing with Arab literature is "Banipal" magazine, published from Britain by an English lady, Margaret Obank, the daughter of a famous British journalist. This extraordinary lady, under difficult circumstances, managed to publish this magazine for seven consecutive years at her personal expense, and without any significant assistance from British cultural institutions, offering tremendous services to modern Arab literature that its own people failed to provide.

This serious publication has embraced the best of what Arabs produce in poetry, short stories, novels, and intellectual writing, and has managed to paint an advanced picture of Arab literature that, at times, surpassed in its level what Arab periodicals themselves offer.

The magazine has consistently opened files on literature in its various geographies – in Palestine, the Levant, Algeria, Iraq, and others – where established pens coexisted with new and creative pens, through a comprehensive vision that revealed a true knowledge of those responsible for the life of Arab culture, and the integrity of the advisors surrounding it and friends whose opinions were sought, allowing the English reader, for the first time, to regularly access excellent samples of modern Arab literature.

After seven years of its publication from London, "Banipal"'s experience has become a phenomenon to which Arab writers look to convey their experiences to another reader, and which English readers eager to know something else that Arabs create besides "terrorism" await. Furthermore, it has become a reference and a bridge for Arab literature adopted by European publishers interested in presenting this literature in the West. Last month, I had a meeting with "Banipal"'s editor-in-chief, Margaret Obank, in London, and we had a conversation full of ironies, a part of which I will convey to readers next week.

Through it, I will paint a picture of this brave lady who published the first magazine for Arab literature in English in an attempt to break the wall of silence surrounding Arab literature in the West.