BULAQ | بولاق

We talk about Morocco's most infamous secret prison; about fathers and sons; about survivors who tell their stories and writers who borrow (or steal?) them.

Show Notes:

Johanna Sellman “Memoirs from Tazmamart: Writing Strategies and Alternative Frameworks of Judgment” gives an overview of the survivors' writing about Tazmamart through 2006.

In 1999-2000, Mohamed Raiss published an account of his experiences serialized in Arabic. It was translated to French and published in book form in 2011 as Skhirat to Tazmamart: Return from the Bottom of Hell.

Ahmed Marzouki's Tazmamart Cellule 10 (Tazmamart Cell 10) came out in 2000. There is also a more recent interview with him, translated to English, in Jadaliyya.

The account of Ali Bourequat, In the Moroccan King's Secret Gardens (1998), is out of print. In 2000 Medhat Bourequat, another of the Bourequat brothers, published his account, Mort Vivant (Living Dead).

Tahar Ben Jelloun's Cette aveuglante absence de lumière (That Blinding Absence of Light) appeared in 2001 and was apparently based on a three-hour interview with Aziz Binebine, who wrote an open letter saying Ben Jelloun pressured him to talk and disavowed the novel.

Aziz Binebine's own testimony, Tazmamort, appeared in 2009. The English translation, by Lulu Norman, appeared this spring.

Binebine's brother, Mahi Binebine, has written a novel about their father, who was a favorite companion and court “jester” of Hassan II, and who disavowed his son when he was imprisoned, Le fou du roi.

The Moroccan novelist Youssef Fadel features both the figure of the father/court jester and the prison of Tazmamart in his novels A Beautiful White Cat Walks With Me and A Rare Blue Bird Flies With Me.

We discussed the devastating Syrian prison memoir The Shell, by Mustafa Khalifa; and we talked about Morocco's years of lead previously in this episode.

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In this episode we explore the relationship between cooking and writing. With special guest Anny Gaul, we talk about the origins of national dishes such as couscous and koshary; medieval Arabic cook books; and representations of kitchens and cooking in Egyptian literature.

Show Notes:

Anny Gaul's writing and recipes, including the one on “bad translations” of hummus are online at cookingwithgaul.com. She wrote about Egyptian koshary as the dish we need right now for Eater. Her article on Abla Nazira's famous cookbooks is here. Her analysis of the depictions of cooking, kitchens and happiness in Egyptian writing can be found in the anthology Insatiable Appetite: Food as Cultural Signifier in the Middle East and Beyond. The essay on couscous from which she reads at the beginning of the episode can be found in the last issue of Arab Lit Quarterly.

Treasure Trove of Benefits and Variety at the Table: A Fourteenth-Century Egyptian Cookbook, ed. and translated by Nawal Nasrallah and Scents and Flavors: A Syrian Cookbook, tr. Charles Perry, are both out in paperback this year.

Many adapted recipes are available at Nawal Nasrallah's website, nawalcooking.blogspot.com.

The Library of Arabic Literature offers free Arabic-only PDFs of their works, including Scents and Flavors.

This episode mentions the Egyptian novelist Sonallah Ibrahim's Zaat, in which the kitchen is a site of mishaps, set-backs and middle-class aspirations.

Here are links to further recent writing in Arabic on food:

CIC Collective Workshop, Taste of Letters

A historical essay in the Al Jazeera Culture Section

Novelist Nael El Toukhy in Mada Masr

An essay on food in Ottoman era poetry

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We talk about a few new books — ones that provide a welcome escape, and ones that seem particularly daunting — and about how hard it is to write, read, think and imagine the future right now.

Show Notes:

Noor Naga's novel-in-verse Washes, Prays was published this spring. You can read more about it on Mada Masr and ArabLit.

Aziz Binebine's Tazmamart, Cellule 10 recently appeared in English as Tazmamart, translated by Lulu Norman. His brother Mahi Binebine's The King's Fool is forthcoming in Ben Faccini's translation in August.

Impostures is al-Hariri's classic Maqamat, many-Englished by Michael Cooperson and available now.

Mazen Kerbaj's coronavirus diaries are online at kerbajdiaries.com.

Alessandro Manzoni's I Promessi Sposi is a classic of Italian literature and recounts a 17th century plague in Milan.

There has also been a fair amount of quarantine writing, such as the NYRB's Pandemic Journal. The Point is publishing a series of articles on what we watch and read during quarantine.

Repression in Egypt continues even with covid-19. Alaa Abdel-Fattah went on a month-long hunger strike, Mada Masr editor Lina Attallah was detained and released on bail, and the latest to be targeted were a couple young (and apolitical) TikTok stars.

New Arabic Translation Challenges are published each Tuesday with roundups on Saturday. Details here or by following #ArabicTranslationChallenge on Twitter.

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In 1993, the Egyptian poet and writer Iman Mersal picked up an unknown novel by a forgotten writer from the 60s. And so began her long wanderings in search of Enayat El Zayat. El Zayat killed herself in 1963, four years before her book “Love and Silence” was finally published. Mersal's portrait of El Zayat is a remarkable work of research, empathy and imagination.

Show Notes:

This episode focuses on Iman Mersal's In the Footsteps of Enayat al-Zayyat (في أثر عنايات الزيات), published by Kotob Khan Books in late 2019.

The author Enayat al-Zayyat (1936-63) finished one novel, which was published in 1967.

Love and Silence ‫(الحب و الصمت) ‬ was recently republished and is available on Google Play.

Al-Zayyat was also working on a second novel, based around the German Egyptologist Ludwig Keimar; you can read Isolde Lehnert on Keimar.

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We discuss an acclaimed novel set during the first Palestinian Intifada and one inspired by a tiny, legendary bookstore in Algiers.

Show Notes:

This year, the International Prize for Arabic Fiction—which went to Abdelouahab Aissaoui's The Spartan Court—and the Sheikh Zayed Book Award—which had winners in seven categories—both had awards ceremonies on YouTube.

MLQ will also participate in the now-online Sant Jordi Literary Festival (April 23-25), having recorded discussions with Elisabeth Jaquette about her translation of The Frightened Ones (by Dima Wannous) and Sawad Hussain about her translation of Bab as-Saha, or The Passage to the Plaza (by Sahar Khalifeh).

Khalifeh's classic 1990 novel The Passage to the Plaza is newly out in English from Seagull Books.

Kaouther Adimi's Our Riches, translated by Chris Andrews, is also newly out from New Directions; it follows the story of Edmond Charlot and Les Vraies Richesses bookshop in Algiers.

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We spend most of this episode discussing the work and life of the Syrian playwright Sa'dallah Wannous, and how strongly it relates to repression, resistance and art in the Arab region today.

SHOW NOTES:

• A new Sa'dallah Wannous reader, Sentence to Hope (ed. and trans. Robert Myers and Nada Saab) brings together four translations of plays as well as essays by and interviews with the great Syrian playwright (1941-1996).

• Read more about reading Wannous in Syria in Matthew McNaught's essay “Yarmouk Miniatures” and about Arwa Salih and the Arab left to which he belonged in Ursula's “Lessons of Defeat: Testimonies of the Arab left.”

• The founder of Egypt's Dar Tanmia Bookshop and Publishing, Khaled Lutfi, was sentenced to five years in a military trial at the beginning of February. A statement of support for Lutfi has been circulating online, in Arabic and English.

• The Egyptian novelist Ahmed Naji currently lives in the US after serving two years in jail on indecency charges.

• The photographer we mention is Mohamed Abu Zeid – Shawkan – who should never have been jailed in the first place and is currently being held unlawfully beyond his release date.

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We talk about the Syrian writer Dima Wannous' haunting novel The Frightened Ones, translated by Elisabeth Jacquette. It's a book about fear, panic and anxiety -- in one's body and society, between generations and lovers -- that is also somehow a great pleasure to read.

Show Notes:

The Frightened Ones was shortlisted for the 2018 International Prize for Arabic Fiction; its English translation is now out in the UK and forthcoming in the US.

We discussed the work of Wannous' father, the brilliant playwright Sa'adallah Wannous, in episode 28, “Sentenced to Hope.”

We mentioned concerns over the spread of COVID-19 in Egyptian prisons. Political prisoner Alaa Abdel Fattah wrote an essay on health and prison before the pandemic.

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We take a look at a new book about the architecture of twentieth century Cairo, and discuss the Egyptian capital's past, present and future, and the way writers have shaped our view of it.

Show Notes:

Mohamed Elshahed's architectural survey Cairo Since 1900: An Architectural Guide is newly released from AUC Press, with a foreward by Mercedes Volait.

Elshahed's longtime blog, Cairobserver, is a must-read for anyone interested in the built world.

Another recent book that maps Cairo is Humphrey Davies and Lesley Lababidi's A Field Guide to the Street Names of Central Cairo; N.A. Mansour recently wrote about both A Field Guide and Cairo Since 1900 in “Two New Books Preserving Cairo's Urban Landscape.”

Tawfiq al-Hakim's The Prison of Life: An Autobiographical Essay, in which he describes his father's time as an amateur architect, was translated by Pierre Cachia. Other Egyptian literary works that feature architects include Reem Bassiouney's novel Mortal Designs, translated by Melanie Magidow, and Naguib Mahfouz's play The Legacy.

Also discussed in this episode are Hamdi Abu Golayyel's novels Thieves in retirement (trans. Marilyn Booth) and A Dog With No Tale (trans. Robin Moger).

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BULAQ is a podcast about contemporary writing from and about the Middle East and North Africa. We talk about books written in Aleppo, Cairo, Marrakech and beyond. We look at the Arab region through the lens of literature, and we look at literature -- what it does, why it matters, how it relates to society and history and politics -- from the point of view of this part of the world. BULAQ is hosted by Ursula Lindsey and M Lynx Qualey and co-produced by Sowt.

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We talk about the landscape and history of independent publishing in the region, our own experiences working for and launching publications, the conundrum of funding, and the magic of little magazines.

Show Notes:

This episode is partly inspired by an exhibition at the MMAG Foundation in Amman: How to Reappear Through the Quivering Leaves of Independent Publishing

The exhibition was curated by the publishing platform Kayfa ta, founded by artists Maha Maamoun and Ala Younis

Here is a review by Kaelen Wilson-Goldie of the same exhibition when it took place in Beirut

The exhibition featured the work of the Post-Apollo Press, among others

Some of the contemporary magazines mentioned in this episode are: Rusted Radishes, Bidayat, Qadita, Ma3azef, The Public Source, Raseef22, Nejma, Mada Masr, 7iber, as well as comix collectives: Skefkef, Samandal, Toktok, Garage, Fanzeen, Lab 619

The Moroccan magazine Souffles, published from 1966 to 1971, was a hugely influential experiment

Zahia Rahmani and other scholars at the French Institut National d'Histoire de l'Art have created an eye-opening archive of non-European critical and cultural magazines

City of Beginnings: Poetic Modernism in Beirut, by Robyn Creswell (2019) is “an intellectual history of Lebanon during the early Cold War” that focuses on the magazine Shi'r (“Poetry”)

Another Lebanese magazine, Hiwar, was (in)famously funded by the CIA.

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