Arab Press Freedom Watch

When the writer turns down a prize

By: Kamel Labidi
The Daily Star, Cairo

Sonallah Ibrahim’s dramatic decision last week to reject a distinguished prize at the Cairo International Conference for the Arabic Novel worth 100,000 Egyptian Pounds ($16,700), honoring him for his novels has revived the old debate over the role of intellectuals in society.

His well-staged gesture toward the Egyptian government at Cairo’s Opera House, accompanied by a highly acclaimed rejection speech, seems to have suddenly enhanced the image of Arab intellectuals, many of whom are often accused of turning their backs on their principles and competing with one another to win favors from governments and funders.

Gamal Guitani, an Egyptian literary critic, and one of the novelists short-listed for the prize, said Ibrahim “restored the value of the Egyptian culture in the eyes of younger generations looking for a role model, for a man capable of rejecting money to preserve his principles.”

“A man or a woman becomes an intellectual the moment he uses his awareness and knowledge for pragmatic purposes. The intellectual naturally finds himself in conflict with society, authorities and traditions,” said Ibrahim in an interview with The Daily Star. He added that throughout history, intellectuals have confronted their rulers and conservative forces and often suffered setbacks.
“But progress will prevail in the end and defeats suffered soon become things of the past,” said Ibrahim, who spent six years in prison in Egypt nearly three decades ago and emerged more determined to combat injustice and oppression and to pave the way for his literary success.

He added that despite repeated attacks on free speech, Egyptian intellectuals managed during the past two decades “to campaign for more democracy and to oppose political, cultural and economic normalization with Israel and to stand firm against Western hegemony and imperialist policies.”
“To date no Egyptian official can cross what we may call a red line and call for cultural normalization with Israel, due to the strong opposition from Egyptian intellectuals,” said Ibrahim.
He acknowledges this existence of “a wide margin of freedom of expression for writers” in Egypt due, according to him, to “the weakness of the regime” and also to “the declining impact of books on people’s lives.”

He said television “exerts a hegemonic role” while the Egyptian authorities “know that three thousand copies of a book would have no influence in a country of 70 million people.”
There are still major obstacles to distribution of books in Egypt and the rest of the region.
“But despite these obstacles, books often miraculously find their way to readers. I was surprised … to hear students tell me they had read my first novel, The Smell of It, written nearly 30 years ago and banned for over a decade,” he said.
“We should never underestimate the power of books, even if they look weak and thin,” he added.

He pointed to a copy of his novel Americanli, and said its price “equals nearly the price of 1 kilogram of meat,” adding: “Anyone with a limited income would naturally choose to buy meat instead of a novel written by an obscure writer.”

Ibrahim was among a small group of Egyptian intellectuals of different political trends who in March publicly criticized President Hosni Mubarak for the first time since he came to power in 1981. The group, which included Islamists and journalists working for the state-run media, expressed disagreement with Mubarak, who mostly blamed the eruption of the US-led war against Iraq on former dictator Saddam Hussein.

Ibrahim, whose novels mix fiction with historic and political events and refer to human rights abuses committed under Arab autocratic rulers including Saddam Hussein, said: “It’s the Arab street that will take the significant steps toward change in the region, and not the intellectuals. The latter will take their courage with both hands and play a leading role, only after the eruption of the popular movement.”

His recent novel, Americanli, portrays intellectuals as ordinary people. “We should not expect intellectuals to act like heroes or to perform mythological feats,” he said.
The neologism Americanli is reminiscent for Egyptians of the slang word Othmanli, which used to mean Turkish when Egypt was under Turkish domination. Its division into three words would mean in Arabic, “Once I was my Own Master” (Amri kan li).

Ibrahim is not the only Egyptian intellectual who draws a parallel between the domination exerted by the Ottoman Empire and the Turks over Egypt in the past and the current US political and economic influence in the country.
He says the fate of the “American Empire” will not be different from other empires which faded away throughout history, and the US hegemony in the Middle East “is doomed to end, just like the Ottoman Empire.”

“All depends on the will of the Arab peoples and the emergence of a new elite capable of governing this part of the world in the interests of its peoples. The change in the region is inevitable and we should keep in mind what happened to leaders who opposed change, such as King Farouk, the shah of Iran and President Anwar Sadat,” he said.

Asked why he rejected the Egyptian prize after nearly ten years of accepting a much more valuable prize from the “Awees Foundation” of the United Arab Emirates, Ibrahim explained the prize he accepted a decade ago came from “an independent person dealing in the business of pearls in the Emirates who loves poetry and literature.”

He added that the Writers’ Union in the UAE nominated him for the prize. “Independent writers with no link to the state or the government are part of the respected managing committee of this union,” he said.

Ibrahim said his personal experience as a visiting lecturer in the US, research and findings led him to conclude that boundless academic freedom is “a big lie,” adding that he documented the case of an American professor who was denied promotion and other cases of academics prevented from doing research on certain issues or simply persecuted for “crossing red lines.”

“There are naturally exceptions to the siege imposed on academic freedom in a society ruled by profit. Any new book, for instance, by a well-known writer such as Noam Chomsky who staunchly opposes the American system, would be promptly published and widely distributed,” said Ibrahim.

Ibrahim does not deny that young Egyptians still long to immigrate to the United States, which he depicts as an artificial, insecure, and fragile society, in some instances because Egyptians “face difficult living conditions.” He also admitted that the American media and US allies and friends in the region “succeeded in publicizing a dazzling picture of the American society.”
“It is still possible for one person out of thousands to become a millionaire in the US, but through a path full of crime, theft, rape and deceit,” he said.

Ibrahim says the integration of the different ethnic and racial communities in the United States into “the so-called melting pot is a mere illusion.” He claims that “contradictions between different communities are gaining ground and moral values are deteriorating. The moment the dollar collapses they will be at one another’s throat.”

He said the widespread opposition all over the world to “the arrogance of the US leadership in Iraq, which led peoples from the North Pole to the South Pole to take to the streets the same day for the first time in the history of mankind” gave birth to a “huge international force to be reckoned with.”

“It is the force of the international street. It’s an important source of hope,” he added.