 How do I say, good morning, America. Good afternoon, London and Abu Dhabi and good evening, China and Taiwan. Welcome to SAAS, right? Before we start in earnest, let me guide you to the simultaneous translation that is available to you. We'll be speaking English today. So if you will prefer to listen to the event in Arabic, go down to the bottom right of your screen. Look for an icon that says interpretation, click on it and you can access Arabic interpretation there. Now in Arabic, now in Arabic. Why do people like to listen to the conversation and the action in Arabic? It is possible to use the forward translation for this action. So it is possible to look at the screen, at the icon, at your right hand, you will find a picture, in the form of an earth ball, written under it, interpretation. It is possible to press on this picture, and you will find instructions to use the forward translation in Arabic. So welcome everyone. Today we have Dr. Ali Ben Tameem, who is the chair of Abu Dhabi Arabic Language Center. The Arabic Language Center of Abu Dhabi also oversees the Sheikh Zayed Book Award. He is here to say a few words of welcome and say a few things about the events and the Sheikh Zayed Book Award. Please welcome Dr. Ali. Please, the floor is yours, Dr. Ali. Thanks. Actually it gives me a great pleasure to participate in today's panel that addresses a very important topic, the power of Arabic literature in the West and beyond. I am delighted to be among this impressive assembly of scholar and experts, lead by Professor Wen-Chin Ho-Yank, moderating the panel. Professor Michael Coperson, our winner of translation category of the Sheikh Zayed Book Award last year. Nafkhar Bihi, Robert Erwin, the Arabist author and the Middle East editor at the Times Literary Submarine, and Dr. Kuda Fakhredeem, literary translator and associate professor of Arabic literature at the University of Pennsylvania. Saeedoona Bekom Haqiqat. The Abu Dhabi Arabic Language Center, ALC Eames, to support the Arabic language and general strategies for its development and advancement, scholarly, educationally, culturally and creatively through various programs and initiatives. Mainly the ALC published Al-Mirkaz, an internationally renowned open access academic journal in the field of Arabic studies. Alexicon and dictionary Kaleema, a leading book translation and publishing initiative in the Arabic speaking world with the aim of reviving the translation movement in the Arab world. ALC has also teamed up with the Arab World Institute in Paris to support and promote the Arabic language and enhance its position globally through promoting SEMA, Arabic Language Proficiency Exam. We are delighted to work with Saeedoona on this inspiring series of discussion and in bringing Arabic literature to the global stage through the university's key networks. The collaboration with Saeedoona is the latest in the series of the partnership established by Sheikh Zayed Mukawal with esteemed cultural and academic institution which promote the award internationally and in his is its reputation with the intellectual, academic and writer around the world. Thank you very much for this intellectual gathering. I will now hand over the Professor Wen-Chien Huyang for what I believe will be a very stimulating discussion and look forward to a great discussion. Thank you very much. Thank you so much, Dr. Ali, for your kind words. And we welcome here and I hope you will enjoy the event. Let me now start today's event in earnest. This event is brought to you by Saeedoona and Sheikh Zayed Mukawal. Sheikh Zayed Mukawal is one of the words leading prizes dedicated to Arabic literature and culture since 2006. The award has brought recognition, reward and readership to outstanding work by authors, translators, publishers and organizations around the world. In 2018, the award also launched a translation grant to help produce more quality Arabic books in translation outside the Arab world. SAWAZ is of course famous for its global reach and its commitment to the global south. SAWAZ is a world leading center in the study of the Arab world with a high profile in cultural, literary and translation studies. There will be a series of four events in April, May and June coinciding with the award announcements in May. In these events, we will bring together creative writers, translators and researchers to talk about the role and place of Arabic culture and literature in today's ever increasing global connections. These events are advertised already but you can also look them up on the SAWAZ website keyword, Sheikh Zayed Mukawal. In today's events, which is the second of the series we're focused on Arab literature and culture in the West and beyond. And I like to emphasize the word beyond here. Last week, we started with the idea that translators are cultural ambassadors and thought about translation, why we translate from and into which language and what and how we translate. We reflected on the choices we make in relation to genres. Such as poetry, fiction, cookbooks or philosophy and our approach to translation and the styles we adopt. We also talked about the thrills and perils of the word of translation, the field, the market and translation prices, believe it or not. And of course, what translation can do to promote culture exchange and global understanding. Today, we extend our role as culture ambassadors and look beyond translation. So not excluding it at scholarship, editorship, creative writing in both Arabic and other languages and public engagement as part of our commitment to promoting Arab literature and culture beyond the Arabic speaking world and also beyond Europe and North America. We have with us today three distinguished panelists. Let me introduce them very briefly and then we will start our discussion. So we have Robert Irwin, Wave Robert, is a novelist, historian and editor of the Middle East section of the Times Literary Supplement. His book, The Arabian Knights, A Companion, is widely known. He was one of the editors of the Daedalus Books publisher of literary fiction. He has published nine novels and 11 books most of which are on Arabic and Islamic subjects. Michael Cooperson, please wave, Michael, is a scholar and translator. He is a member of the original editorial board of the Library of Arabic Literature base in NYU Abu Dhabi. He translated Abdel Fattah Kilitos, the author and his doubles. Last year, he received a Sheikh Sa'id book award for his translation of the Maqamat of Al-Hariri and I can't wait to hear more about it. And then Huda Fakhreddin, Wave Huda, is a scholar, editor and poet. She has written on the continuity between classical and modern Arabic poetics, translated Arabic poetry and published her own poetry. She is also co-editor of Middle Eastern Literatures which is a journal dedicated to publishing academic works, scholarly work on Middle Eastern Literatures. And she's now a member of the new editorial board of the Library of Arabic Literature. So in today's event, we will follow an interview format. I will ask questions and I'll turn to panelists for their answers and contributions or responses. We have about an hour, but we can go beyond to about 75 minutes if there is a need, right? So, and so sort of like, and the questions will focus on editorship, public engagement and creative writing. The penultimate questions will be on translation. Finally, if it is possible, I would like to give attention to beyond the West, right? I'm keen to go beyond the West and think about global humanities through the prism of multilingualism, translation and engagement, right? So before we go there, right? Housekeeping, right? As I said, you can access simultaneous translation, interpretation, if you prefer to listen to the events in Arabic, right? And please use the question and answer, right? To post your questions. I don't think you'll be able to speak to us, but if you write down your questions, right? If you access the question and answer box, we, I will be able to read them and come back to you and our panelists will be able to answer your questions, right? More importantly, the recordings, right? We'll be ready and we'll be posted on both the Shiaz and Shiazé book award channels later, but I don't know when yet. So keep an eye out for them, right? So let's begin, right? Let's talk about, you know, I want to start by talking about our aspirations as public intellectuals, right? And I think an academic, right? Someone who is employed in an academic institution is a person who potentially combines three roles, if not more, when it's academic. And I'm thinking of those who climb up the academic ladder to become provost, deans, head of departments and so on, so forth. So that's one area of our work to be a scholar, right? And as a scholar, we publish scholarly works, right? These are books and articles and book chapters and so on and so forth, and as a public intellectual, right? And many of us, many of you are creative writers, right? So let me go around. I'm going to start with Robert, right? And let me ask you about why you are keen. For example, you have been keen to take on editorships of journals or newspapers, right? Or I don't know what to call times literally supplement, right? Magazines, newspapers or book series, right? Start editing book series or do translations or edit translation series, right? So there's a part that we feel that our published scholarship, right? We cannot do, right? So we do these things. At least that's from my experience. So can I start with you, Robert? Tell us about your work, right? For the times literally supplement or more. Anthologies, for example, things like this. Some of the, I never thought, back in the 1960s, the phrase public intellectual, I don't think existed. I'm rather surprised to have found that apparently I've joined whoever the gang of public intellectuals are. Also, I haven't really thought for myself as an editor until you warned me that you would be asking me about editing. And I thought, oh, Blimey, yes, I have done rather a lot of editing, in fact, of very different kinds of very different implications, the kind of work one does. And for the times literally supplement, I need to be aware of what's coming out, what's new, what's theoretically important and exciting. It was helpful that I used to go to the Frankfurt Book Fair every year for about 15 years. So I could see what the Americans and the French and the Germans were doing. I needed to be in touch with people who could advise me who would be an expert on the July Red Dynasty or the economics of Gaddafi's Libya. So I could ask them. And then get in touch with the potential reviewer. And then when they come back to me with the review, the first things I have to do is to deacademicize it. That is to say, I have to get them to remove the transliteration marks, the diacriticals, remove footnotes. These are not times literally supplement house style. There are various other bits of times literally supplement house style about numbers and quotations and so on. All that has to be sorted out. And then I have to point out to the reviewer that the average reader of the times literally supplement doesn't know what a madhab is or a mamluk or a hadith. Could they explain or remove the expression? And then I'll pass it on to other editors who do some more in-house stylistic editing. And then quite often I've got to deal with reviewers who are expecting they've done their review. It should be in in about two weeks time. Why isn't it? In fact, it's quite normal for a review to sit around for three months or six months. It's not like reviewing to the Sunday times or something like that. That's one kind of reviewing. But there are other I reviewed. I edited the New Cambridge History of Islam volume four, Great Fact Home. And that was a bit like herding cats. Very, very difficult to get people to deliver. But much less hard work. I didn't have to bother too much about, I assume they would know what a math potential reader would know what a math is or was. And they'd also be able to look it up in other volumes of the company. And in present company, I'd like to say that I thought the best contribution to volume four was that of Michael Cooperson on Muslim biographies. I thought that was very good indeed. Then there was those editing, I mean, yes, I edited the Penguin Anthology of Classical Arabic Literature. That was tricky. It was a very tight budget. Fortunately, the Royal Asiatic Society and the Cambridge University Press were generous with permission so they were free. But at that point, I tried my hand at translation. I did a few translations myself. There was no budget to pay for translators. And I learned that, yeah, I can translate from Arabic, but I'm not a born translator and I'm never going back to that one. And I've done other kinds. Oh, yes. Then there was the editing of the Penguin Arabian Knights. That really was more a matter of setting the project up in the first place. And then getting the translator, the great late, great Malcolm Lyons, not to put in diacriticals, which had been a killer for the people setting the practice of Penguin and also a commercial put-off. And then minimal, I did minimal annotation. People who want more detailed annotation will simply have to go to the French Playout Edition, where you get a thorough identification of famous poets and caliphs and bits of areas of Cairo and Baghdad and so on. It's very minimal. And then more recently, there's been the annotated Norton Arabian Knights where the editor doesn't really know much about Arabic literature or Arabic language, but is quite an intelligent commentator in the story where it's going and how it works or doesn't bite itself. So there's editing and there's editing and there's editing. Yeah. So Robert, I mean, I feel very fortunate that my books have been reviewed in the Times Literary supplement. And I thought that was such a good way of taking me out of the Arabic studies silo and reach a much broader audience, right? And at SOA, so sort of like colleagues from other departments will come to me and say, oh, fantastic, I can't believe it. You got reviewed in the Times Literary supplement, right? So in a sense, you know, there's something that you're doing for us in the service of Arabic literature on culture and our disciplines that takes us beyond the academic sort of like silo. But let me turn to Huda now because now Huda has sort of two roles here. One as one of the editors of Middle Eastern Literatures, which is a journal that comes out at least three times a year and it's a lot of work. And the other one is now the Library of Arabic Literature and I'm going to ask Michael to come up because he was one of the first generation of the editors to talk us through the vision. So let me come to you about taking on these huge but thankless jobs. Yeah, Huda, I want to say a few things about it, about the aspirations. Aspirations, yes, they are huge and thankless, but also extremely gratifying and rewarding because I think editing in my experience or in my mind is a form of activism in our field because going back to your introduction to this question about the very narrow paths that academics have in front of them climbing up the dark and winding ladders of the academic institution. Editing is a way where we feel we can really actually make a difference even if small or even if in the lives of one or two of our junior colleagues. So in Middle Eastern Literatures, I am very honored and proud to be continuing your legacy mentioned in what you have built in this journal and the new editorial board, Nora Parr, Keras Olsock and Adam Talib and myself are committed to taking MEL as you did beyond the Euro American Center and to support independent scholars in the so-called Middle Eastern North Africa and the global South at large and academics in these areas as well and to place the study of the literatures of the Middle East at the center of the humanities without burden Arabic or Persian or Turkish or Hebrew with the political and anthropological historical imperatives that really govern our field and our field is a silo. It's very suffocating really and you feel you need to do something and editing is one way and then those are our hopes and aspirations for MEL and we're very optimistic. With the Library of Arabic Literature, I was a longtime fan of Al-Awaleen, including Michael Cooperson, the founding editors on the first editorial board. I from a distance watched what they did and I was in awe of this project. I was elated to be invited to the board. I think this is a project whose consequence and influence and contribution will only be fully recognized in the long run. This is a project, the Library of Arabic Literature, that is inviting us to participate in presenting the Arabic Literary Tradition as dynamic and alive. And that is a huge thing. This is something that goes against the reputation and the false image of the Arabic Literary Tradition as a rigid solid institution that's archaic and that needs to be graduated away from. The Library of Arabic Literature invites us to discover the live core of this tradition and to participate in keeping it a project that's in progress. And I've been, I've learned a lot from just the first few steps that I've taken in this journey. It's humbling because most of what we do, we do collaboratively. So you work with somebody else. You have to let go of your ego when we all have those. And you learn from your co-translator, your co-editor, the board when they meet. And most of all, you remember to remain a student of the Arabic Literary Tradition. It's a vast and generous tradition that is urgently needed. We need it more, much more than it needs us. And the Library of Arabic Literature keeps reminding us of that. So that's another editing journey that I'm just embarking on and very hopeful and excited about. Thank you. I'm coming to you and not Michael because I remember, I think we attended the first meeting that Philip called us. So there were a few things that he said I don't mean to sort of like, the intention is not to redefine Arabic canon or literary canon, whatever, but this is not that. But the other part is really about, you know, not just editing the Arabic text, but also translating the literary works in such a way that the English translation would not be, let's put it this way, academic between quotation marks, but literally and much more accessible to a wider audience. So let's talk about this vision and the wider audience. Michael. Thank you. First, I'd like to thank the sponsors of this event and to greet Dr. Ali bin Tamim. It's always great to see you. And also my fellow panelists, I've learned so much from all of you and it's really an honor to appear together. As you mentioned, the project, the Library of Arabic Literature project began with the idea that we would try to produce a set of edab works that would be accessible to readers outside the academic world. I remember the part of our mission statement says that the goal is to put works of Arabic literature into modern, lucid English, which I thought, well, that's quite a challenge since many pre-modern works, well, by definition, they're not modern and some of them are deliberately not lucid. And so it's been an adventure watching how different translators coming from very different places with very different interests have responded to that challenge. I'm just gonna mention the works that I happen to have served as a volume editor because I think they represent the variety of works that we've tried to include. And I should say that as Professor Hoda has pointed out, we did not intend to create a second canon, right? We intended, in fact, to open up the canon. And part of what's happened deliberately or otherwise is that we've, I think, shown the world how many different things are a part of that canon. So for example, in order, I've served as volume editor on, first, a Saq al-Assaq of Ahmed Farris al-Shidiyaq translated as leg over leg by Humphrey Davies. That was the easiest one because he was so good, alaihi hamu. I would just sit and read and be amazed. And every 20 pages or so, I'd feel obliged to make some comment, but mostly he would shoot back and say, no, no, no. And so I would withdraw my comment. And so that was an easy one. And the book I'm very happy to say has been read by people in all sorts of fields outside our own. I mean, we are now really looking at the beginnings of a global understanding of the 19th century. When I think of Shidiyaq, I think of Herman Melville. And now it's possible for people who work in American literature to put those together for themselves. The second one, and the board resisted a little bit when I brought this up, but I happened to know a former restaurant reviewer for the Los Angeles Times named Charles Perry who happens to know Arabic very well. And he's been translating cookbooks for quite some time. And he, well, I went to him, I can't remember, I went to him. He came to me, I can't remember, but he wanted to translate an anonymous, a Yubid period cookbook called El Wusla El El Habib, which came out in English as sense and flavors, the bank-witter savers. And it's a recipe book. And the manuscripts have food stains on them and they're torn and so on. And he did a fantastic job. People have actually cooked from the book. And this is not what I think any of us expected when we came into this, that we would be producing cookbooks, but it turns out it's probably the earliest known cookbook. If we exempt one or two very early, I think there's something in Assyrian that may be possibly a cookbook and there's a few similar things in Roman literature, but essentially this is perhaps the first. So it's a contribution to Arabic literature, that to world literature made by Arabic that most people don't know about and I certainly didn't. Then it was Kitab Fadail Al-Arab by Ibn Qutaybah, which came out as virtues of the Arabs, translated by Sarah Savant and Peter Webb. And that one is a fascinating window into relations between Al-Arab al-Mawali, the Arabs and the non-Arab Muslims. Because Ibn Qutaybah, who is himself a non-Arab Muslim, is trying to negotiate how these people are going to fit into a world governed by Arab values. And it's a fascinating read and beautifully translated. Some bits of it are incredibly hard. I didn't understand them until after I read the translation. And I'm the one supposed to be checking it. So that one was a real learning experience. And finally Kitab Assyaha of Hanna Diab, who has been very eagerly awaited by folks in all sorts of fields because it turns out he's the guy behind the Thousand and One Nights, meaning that Galon, as we know, at some point ran out of stories and started finding more. And one of his sources was an Aleppin who was visiting Paris at the time, who told him stories. And it so happens that Hanna Diab stories are the ones that became the most famous later. So it's Al-Ad-Din, Alibaba. So it's that sort of formerly marginal corpus that turns out to have been the most popular. And what this project has shown the world is that it wasn't really Galon who made these famous. It was actually Hanna Diab who turns out to have been a fantastic storyteller as we learn from this memoir, which was edited by Johannes Stefan, which is an amazing feat because it's written in 17th century Aleppin dialect from beginning to end and translated beautifully by Ilyas Mohanna. So I would say that it is wonderful to think about what effect we can have on global audiences, but really for me, at the moment I'm sitting there working with these texts, what I'm really focused on is how much I'm learning. I've learned so much from this. I used to think that I had some grasp of the Arabic literary tradition and now I realize that I'm just getting started. These books are so rich and I had so little idea of what was in them before I started working with them. So I just wanna second what Huda said about how this has really been a learning experience for everyone and I hope for others, but ultimately this is something that's gonna happen over a long term, right? I mean, it's nice to have reviews in the popular press from time to time. It's nice that people are paying attention, but ultimately this is for the agents. Yeah, yeah, okay, yeah, I know it's time will tell, right? But I mean, are you beginning to feel some perfect because like, for example, Mari is sort of like read now outside by people who are in comparative literature and so on and so forth. But I'm not going to dwell on that, but I'm going to pick up the threat from what you say about reaching a global audience and let's talk about that through other forms of public engagement, right? Robert, I know writes TLS, for the TLS, I know Robert appears on the BBC, I know Huda writes for the non-academic outlets and all of you, I believe, have published with Arab Lit, which is an online non-academic program. You have written for Zhadaria and so on, so Bonnie Pauli, one of them. So can we talk about somebody sort of like, I know I'm sort of ambitious that way. I want to reach, you know, think about global humanities, but I'm sure all of you have some dreams about that to be able to reach out, right? Somewhere, right? So can we come to you, Robert, about going on the BBC, you know, TLS? I was thinking rather that probably I reach most people through being translated. It's a rather passive process as far as I'm concerned. But I mean, the Arabian nightmare, my first novel, this is an Indian English language edition. That's the latest thing to appear. It's, I think, the 22nd or 24th translation. That's how I get my name spread about. The Arabian nightmare is exceptional in being translated that many times and coming out in several successive Russian and German editions, very popular there. And then my book on even Khaldun has been translated into several languages. And so I think it's the history of the Bahri Mamluk Sultanate. So that's how I spread it. I don't know how much I get listened to on the radio. I mean, I've done that program with them. No, of course, my brain's going. Melvin Bragg? Melvin Bragg, in our time, yes. I've done several of those. I've also lectured in Paris a bit, certainly, as you are, but I haven't also been called d'ésotitude en c'est social and in French, which was a pain for me, but not as painful for me as it was for them. But no, I just, I really, obviously, I'm targeting an English audience in the first thing. I can't really imagine what somebody in South Africa or Hanoi would want from me. But if they want to pick it up, that's fine. Yeah, and we'll come to your creative writing in a moment, but let me go through sort of the pal of first. Huda, what about you, Huda? Yeah, so as you mentioned, I think there's something immediate of publishing in Vanipal or Arablet or Jadalia, you know, you don't have to wait for the six months or a year. And do you feel like you're engaging in a conversation that's happening in real time and reaching an audience beyond the specialist? For me, the audience I'm always thinking about is writers and readers in the Arab world. So I make an effort to publish in Arabic newspapers. I think it's another very important learning experience for me to engage with editors and Arab publishers and newspapers and platforms. And for very personal reasons, I live in translation in this country, the language I speak day to day, the language I work in and write in. So it's a relief and don't get me wrong, there's so much to be learned from translation. It's a very satisfying intellectual endeavor, creative and critical and all of that. But there's always, there's a relief about being able to write in Arabic and participate in a conversation happening over there. It's about who I think I am or still want to be. It's a very personal thing. I'd like to imagine that I still think and dream in Arabic and it's my first language. So that's one of my personal goals to remain in touch with the literary scene and the publishing scene in the Arab world. When it comes to translation, I was very surprised that the translation of my book, my first book, Meta Poices in the Arabic Tradition into Arabic by Eda, which is a Saudi based publisher, received so much attention. And suddenly the book, which was a brilliant publication that sat on bookshelves for years and years, suddenly there were people reading it and reviewing it in Arabic newspapers. And that made me very happy, but also kept me on my toes. Finally, somebody's actually reading. So I should re-read the book and brush up and see what I have to say about it. But so that's an audience. The beyond, as you said, I'm very much interested in the beyond. So beyond the very narrow reductive binary of Arabic or Arab and the West, breaking through to the beyond, that is something that I hope we all get to do. And I think the one avenue or way to get to that is to think of our work as participating in the humanities. And again, going back to silos and ghettos and area studies, break out of that system that keeps our work on the side in some dark corner, waiting for somebody to discover us and write about us in some mainstream publication. But to approach our work with that attitude that we are really at the center of the world. Each one of us, every text we're working on can be the center of the world and maybe create a network. Michael, what about you? I mean, I love your translation of Kirito. And I think of Kirito as someone who has a huge reach and his work. And I've been reading him extensively recently. And I think he writes in a genre that we don't talk about this essay, right? Most of it, even his book chapters are essays, these very creatively written essays that are challenging intellectually. So I think he has a reach, but I don't want to sort of steal your thunder. So I'm going to sort of let you sort of like tell us about your dreams of being, I don't know, global. You're muted. I have to follow up on what you said about Abdel Fattah Kirito because I've learned a great deal from him as well. And I think one of the reasons for his success is exactly what you say. He writes in a childlike, simple narrative style that disguises an enormous theoretical sophistication. But unlike most of us, he feels no need to show that off. He simply tells the story as simply as he can. And by the end, you have discovered that the familiar figures that you thought you knew have been completely reversed in your mind. And I suppose that's something that we should all hope to be able to do, to write that clearly. I think Robert does, I think Huerta does. I'm not sure I have learned that yet. You know, one never knows what an audience is going to like or to find appealing. I, at one point I wanted to remove all of the footnotes and commentaries from the Maqamat translation because I thought we wanted to get away from, this is not supposed to be an academic book. This is about the pleasure of the text. I don't want any historical, sociological, anthropological, political relevance to be extracted from it at all. And then the press said, no, no, no, keep those in. And so I said, okay, I always listen to the press. I've learned that they always know better. And in the end, I've gotten many comments from people saying how much they enjoyed reading my boring footnotes. So there's no accounting for taste. I've, my father tells me that translations of Yiddish, of Yiddish literature are especially popular in Japan. I don't know that for a fact, but that's what he says. So, you know, one never knows what people are going to like and all one can do is I think do one's best. Try to write as beautifully as Abdu'l-Fatah-kel-Ato and hope the market finds a way to your door. But on this note of community, I do think that it's one of the things that this work enables us to do is to find like-minded individuals in other silos. I've given something like, I must be 20, 30 talks on the Maqamat since the prize. And in a way though, the most gratifying and enjoyable experience I've had as a result of it was that I became a member of the American Literary Translators Association and attended their online meeting. And it was fantastic. It was, you know, dozens of other nerds. You know, all the people just like me, the fact that they work with Chinese or German or Spanish or French or Czech or Polish, it didn't make any difference. We're all the same person really. And just to find them, you have the feeling that some of these walls are coming down. We could all speak to each other as if we'd known each other forever. And that's really been a gift. So in a sense, what I'm hearing, right? From Robert to Huda to Michael is that creativity that underpins all kinds of works that we do from scholarly work, public engagement and translation is really what you think the means to reaching a global audience. So let me come to that question right now and think about the creativity in your writing, whether in Robert's fiction, right? In Michael's translation and in Huda's poetry or translation. So I'm going to invite you sort of like and also let you have an opportunity to reach out to our audience, whether today or beyond and our focus is beyond through your thinking about creativity, your creative work and what you think about when you sort of like write creatively, do you think of anything at all? And then invite you to share, right? Your creative work, right? Whether Robert's fiction or Huda's poetry or translation and Michael's translation and Hariri for example, which I hear is very, very creative. Yeah, so shall we start with Robert, right? Your fiction and Arabian nightmares. Well, what should I say about that? I think I'm going to have to make a shocking confession that when I wrote Arabian nightmare I had never read the Arabian nights. I'd not read it as a child. I hadn't read it as a student school of war and African studies. I spent five years teaching in standards. I still hadn't read it when I started writing the novel and when I later proposed to Penguin that I wrote a guide to the Arabian nights. All I had read was a rather good book by Mia Gerhard called The Art of Storytelling which is a study of the Arabian nights and she had read through more, she was Dutch but she knew no Arabic and she used the German translation of Litman. An inspiring book and it helped inspire my novel. I still hadn't read the Arabian nights but I went to Penguin and said, I'd like to write a guide to the Arabian nights and they thought this was a very commercial prospect and they didn't want to publish my novel. They eventually did. But so I got onto that and eventually I found myself sitting in the garden working my way through all of the Arabian nights. Thinking I'm sitting here in the sun reading fairy stories. Isn't this nice? It's actually getting paid for it. And after a while, oh God, not another one of these bloody stories. I've had enough of it because the same kind of story cliches come round again and again and again. And anyway, they're not strictly speaking fairy stories but eventually I came out knowing about the Arabian nights and then it was a game of the guide to the Arabian nights of playing the stories and what I knew about the history of late Medi, Egypt and Syria and I have the two commented against it with each other. Unlike Go-Heart, I knew a fair bit about other Arabic literature and I knew about the times which these things were produced and the original language and particular terms that would be being used. So I was using the history to comment on the fiction and the fiction to comment on the history and I think in the end that worked quite well. Is there anything you'd like to read from the Arabian nightmares or your work? The page and a half, the opening page and a half. So I mean, this is a part that you don't have to translate. I got fed up with, I got bored with teaching European history in the University of St Andrews. So I walked into the first one day and said, I'm going back to London. I tried to suppress a look of relief because you could not point somebody grander to replace me. And I went straight to the university library and I started writing this novel. For a long time, I used to go to bed early. Though the art of reading is not widespread in these parts, I confess myself to be a devotee of the practice and in particular of reading in bed. It is peculiarly pleasant to have found to lie with the book propped up against the knees and feeling the lids grow heavy to drift off to sleep, to drift off in such a way that in the morning it seems unclear where the burden of the book ended and my own dreams began. A narrative of the manners and customs of some exotic people is particularly suitable for such a purpose. For a long time too, I've meditated writing a guidebook to these parts or a romance, a guidebook cast in the form of a romance or a romance cast in the form of a guidebook. In any case, a narrative designed to be read in bed. The writing of a book in which the heroes and villains of the adventure should tour the territory I wish to describe will be a feat difficult, but not impossible of achievement. I no longer go to bed early and when I do unaccountable fears keep me awake but as I lie in the cold and the dark the form my narrative must take becomes clearer. The city of Alexander is relatively well known to Western travelers and readers. Cairo is different and in the Cairo I know more than in any other place the stranger needs a guide for the city's principal monuments are obvious to the eye as diversions are transitory and less easy to find and though the inhabitants may welcome the foreigner with a smile, beware for they're all charlatans and liars they will cheat you if you can, I can help you there. Moreover, I shall show how a city appears not only by day but also by night and I wish to show how it features in the dreams and aspirations of its inhabitants. Else's guide were but a dead thing. It should be hot now, but I find it very cold. Cairo, the dragonman pointed ahead with obvious pride. Thank you Robert. Can we turn to Huda first? And I think Huda you'll read in Arabic and share your English translation and if you want to profess by saying a few things, please do. Yeah, when you asked us to prepare something I prepared an excerpt from a translation because once you and I hesitate to call myself a poet you've called me a poet three times now thank you very much for that. I think you are, yeah. I dream of being one. I write texts that aspire to be poems but I wouldn't call them poems. I pretend to be a poet when I translate poetry I'm very happy doing that. So, but I do have this book if we're holding up books. This is the book that I'm referring to Zaman al-Saghir tahta shem sinthanya we deliberately did not give it a genre label not poetry, not prose. It has been referred to as memoirs although I'm not sure. I've lived a life worthy of a memoir yet. I can read an excerpt from it to show you what these texts are. Maybe because I wrote this book on the prose poem I now hesitate to call it a poem. Maybe I call it poetry. What's the difference between poetry and poem? That's a conversation for another day. But I'll read, this is one of my favorite sections. It's about running in the cemetery in West Philadelphia. So I'll read an Arabic thought that you don't have to translate. But then I'd like to say something about the translation if we have a minute. In a few days, after a few months, I'll be able to find a way to get to the cemetery. I'll be able to find a way where I haven't reached the end of it yet. I'll be able to find a way to get to the cemetery where I haven't reached the end of it yet. I'm not alone here. Others will come and stay in the cemetery. So something like that. But where I really feel that I might strike a poetic chord is when I'm translating. In one example, so my most recent published translation is a selection from Celine Barakat's works, translation is a selection from Salim Barakat's works titled Come Take a Gentle Stab, co-translated Jason Iwin. But that's not the one I'll read from. My White Whale and my favorite poem of all time is Abu Tammam's poem that opens with the description of spring. And when you ask me what is poetry, the first example that comes to mind are his lines on rain. So I spent a lot of time retranslating and retranslating this poem. One version of it has been published in the Journal of Medieval Worlds, but I'm not happy with it. But the story I'd like to tell and I won't take too much time is that Abu Tammam has allowed me to rediscover poets I know very well, but in his wake they become entirely different. And two specifically, Seamus Heaney and Philip Larkin. Reading them provided me with friends, allowed me to imagine that English can open up and create a space for Abu Tammam's poems for this poem where he's not a stranger. And if English were a place and Abu Tammam needed somebody to show him around, it would be Seamus Heaney and Philip Larkin. And when I say that, I don't mean that there are direct quotations or references in my translation to them, but they were my companions as I imagined Abu Tammam speaking in English or speaking. Michael knows more than I do, finding voices for a text, many voices for a text in another language. And to my delight, I then came across Philip Larkin's amazing poem, Trees, which opens with the trees are coming into leaf, like something almost being said. He proved to me that he is a disciple and a student of Abu Tammam, because what then comes to mind is Al-Buhtari's line, As if Philip, without even knowing, Philip Larkin plays the Buhtari for Abu Tammam, giving me such great joy and reassurance that, you know, I've, this gang, these guys are actually really friends. So I'll not say, I would have loved to read Abu Tammam's poem for you, not my translation, but I'll leave it at that. Were you going to read the translation or no? I mean, there is a version published online in the Journal of Medieval Worlds, I can share that link. Okay, can you share that link later? Okay, how about Michael? First, I have to say that that was fantastic. I dispute your disavowal of being a poet, I think you've proven that you are. I know. And I could hear the echoes of the classics in your very modern poems. Yeah, and I agree with you on Seamus Haney, I think that's a fantastic image of guiding Abu Tammam around the cemetery, in any case. So this, you know, I think we have to respect the distinction between poetry and verse, I think what Huda was talking about was poetry, and I think what Al-Haredi produces is verse, which is something that I can do. I can't write poetry, but I can produce doggerel by the yard. And Al-Haredi isn't famous for being a poet, he's famous for performing fantastic verbal acrobatics. So in, I'll just read a short passage, as you may know, well, let me read an Arabic first. So this is Abu Zaid in one of his innumerable laments of being in exile, which is a trope. It's a trope repeated in Arabic literature and especially in the Maqamah, where it appears in almost all 50 of them. So the trick for Haredi is to say something fresh each time. That's really what I think that's about. But in a world full of refugees, I think now many of these laments take on a certain poignancy and a certain significance and dimension that they didn't have before. So here, Abu Zaid, who's been driven from home by the crusaders, is talking about living in exile. And he says, The translation is deliberately cast into 50 different styles of English to match Al-Haredi's playing with Arabic. And in many cases, I deliberately emphasized the obscurity of many of his, of many of the words he uses. So here, Abu Zaid, who's been driven from home by the crusaders, is talking about living in exile. And he says, The translation is deliberately cast into 50 different styles of English to match Al-Haredi's playing with Arabic. And in many cases, I deliberately emphasize the obscurity of many of his, of many of the words he uses. In this particular case, I chose this particular Maqama is translated into the language of beggars, thieves, and con men documented in an 18th century work by Francis Gross called Gross's classical dictionary of the vulgar tongue revised and corrected with the addition of numerous slang phrases collected from tried authorities. And so it's a kind of thieves camp, essentially. So putting that, putting this poem into that language resulted in the following. I was born in Saruj in Swell Street snug as a kinship mort, but for slanging dues concerned that took every joy of my heart. The baggage threw me a bell of bristles and made me a night of the road. I'm never at rest and across the pond, I've been lagged and swallowed the toad. I wear the bands and the stomach worm gnaws, cold charity cants me my grub. Today in Damascus, tomorrow in Najd, sleeping in the rough. Oh, bitter days, all stiver cramped, pay tip me a tester bright. I have a bill on the dam of Madib from living the flash cant life. If you didn't understand that, you're in very good company. That was the point. I just wanted to hope that enough plain language creeps through here and there that at least the idea is clear. That was the purpose. So I mean, guys, believe it or not, we're running out of time is 57 past two already, but we can go beyond a little bit because I think we have some questions. I may not be able to come to my last question, but I want to throw it out anyway, because from what I'm hearing, these creative, creative works, creative, even within the kind of creative works that you guys do, whether through your own composition, your own writing, Robert, your playful translation using multiple registers of one language. What we're seeing is really the coming together, knowingly or not knowing of sort of like different literary sensibilities or different poetics, but similar sort of like literary sensibilities. This is what we're seeing. And in a sense, we're lucky that we are in the US and the UK. We write in English, we communicate in English, and we have the Arabic and these two languages make us help us to reach an audience that is beyond the US and UK or the Arab world. If you think of Arabic in India, Arabic in China, and so on and so forth. And I'm lucky enough to have Chinese as well. So can we sort of talk a little bit about beyond, right? You know, creatively, you know, think about beyond, you know, and what our aspirations and we can be quick about it because I can take questions from the audience. I think I see three of them. Yeah. So Robert, shall we start with you? Just a quick word. What are you exactly asking? Beyond, ambitions beyond the US and the Anglophone. Translation. Get published in English. I know that I really do target an international audience. What I'm conscious of though is that when I started to write about Mamluk history, there were three Israelis who did it. They all were slightly nutty in different ways, quite good scholars though. But now my god, I'm part of an international community and got a lot of people in Chicago and surprisingly a lot in Japan. Japanese working on the Mamluks and a lot of Japanese working on the Arabian Knights as well. It's very surprising and quite difficult to keep up with. It's impossible not to keep up with Mamluk studies or Arabian Knights studies. Arabian Knights studies has been, when I wrote my guide, it was practically the only thing around, apart from going go-hards, but now there's the encyclopedia of the Arabian Knights and there's school of people working on these things. I'm just part of a much bigger international community and I'm trying to learn from them. I do hope to write about the influence of the Arabian Knights on popular literature worldwide, which is surprisingly worldwide and surprisingly early. You can find snatches of the Arabian Knights. Story elements or story episodes get as far as Iceland in the same centuries. It's like that. It's quite amazing. Huda and then Michael very quickly so we can take questions. You're muted, Huda. Yes, very quickly. One of my aspirations for the beyond and it's not a very distant beyond, very close, is Persian. So I'm interested in the study of modernism, modernism, and we're always measuring Arab modernism against French and English. But there are parallels that might be closer and much more illuminating in the Persian tradition and the Turkish tradition, but especially Persian. I mean, where the prose poem sits, where something equivalent to the tafayla poem happens or pervers, and what are some of the collaborations and translations between Arabic and Persian. My Persian is very elementary, but I look forward to exploring that conversation, looking in a different direction when examining the beginnings of ideas of modernism in the 20th century without going beyond in poetry. Very briefly. Very briefly. Michael, unmute yourself. Actually, Huda, Levi Thompson at Colorado is working on that. Let's see. Audience is outside. The thing about the maqamah is that they crop up everywhere. Turns out, I didn't know there's a whole genre in Nigeria of writing maqamah now. There is a new Chinese translation of, I believe it's Hemadani by, is it, Eileen Tian has come out. And I've heard her work and with the maqamah, the tests, you don't have to know the language, you just have to hear it read aloud, right? Does it have that swing, right? And it does. I mean, so she she read a bit for me at Mesa one year from her phone and it was just beautiful. So I think that, you know, Arabic literature has been incredibly exportable historically. And I think we need to just go with that. And I hope that that our project can extend into places like India and Nigeria, where we haven't been translating enough. We need to start, we need to get to that. It's not just the Arab world, right? So that's that's the next step, I hope. Great. Okay, questions. Are you guys ready? So we have a question from Nora Moussa. The discussion drew my attention to the question of the Arab cultural marketability. Taste and preferences vary and only the publishing services would offer the actual interest in numbers. Yeah. Okay, so does any anybody and speaking of Eileen, Eileen is here with us Eileen Chen, right? So that's question number one. What I could do is go to Eileen's question or comment. I want to make a comment that Dr. Irwin's Chinese translation of Ibn Khaldun, an intellectual biography, got eight out of 10 at Tauban, right? This is okay. The Chinese version of Google read a very high score for the Mamluk studies, right? Thank you very much, Dr. Cooperson. Okay, so so your book on Ibn Khaldun has been translated into Chinese and I know Robert knows this one, knows this one. Okay, marketability, cultural marketability versus numbers versus tastes and preferences. Any comments on that? Anybody? Shall I go? Shall I pick on you, right? So shall we start with you, Michael? Well, I mean, we have to deal with the fact that the most popular works from our part of the world have thrived in English only after being changed substantially. So I'm thinking of I'm thinking of the thousand one nights, I'm thinking of there's so many examples of aggressive transculturation. And you know what? I think if it works, we should go for it. Because probably, you know, even if people's understanding of Rumi and Hayyam is probably quite different from that of people in Iran, at least we got a foot in the door. And so I don't mind pandering a little bit, frankly. And yeah, I don't really know if I have any brilliant thoughts on marketing strategies, but but what seems to sell right now is something that has been naturalized or transculturated to a significant extent. And we have to live with that reality and maybe even contribute to it a little bit. But if I may jump in, yeah, we might not have a choice, Michael, to pander initially, because, you know, the space is very limited. You know, the quota of things that are translated from our languages is very little. But the next step is then to build a tradition of translation. So once you have one that is popular and read and whites widely circulated, then that's where the real work begins to build on that and then translate or offer present new other translations and try to build a tiny, slowly growing tradition of translated texts of translations for the same text. And maybe we won't have to pander so much anymore. But that's our aspiration. And of course, before I call on Robert, I want to abuse my position as moderator and chair, but I want to jump in and think about mistranslations and quotations, adaptations. I mean, these are for me signs of the presence of a culture in another culture, a language in another language. And I don't see why, you know, we we need to think of these in terms of pandering, right? Because I think that's that's what makes something from our culture equally valuable in another culture. Right? So I think, you know, there was a Dr. Jean, for example, in Arabic, and it's it's misunderstood misuse. But yes, it's so important is about the presence of Chinese in Arabic. And the same thing. And we have the other work that I was thinking of is high ebonyakaban as well. Right? So that's, you know, all these possibilities, you know, small bits of aesthetics from Arabic that goes into the aesthetics of, you know, French poetry or forget about Persian Chinese poetry, that's equally good. Who wants to say something? Before we go to Robert, that would be great if the relationship is equal. I wouldn't worry if French is mistranslated into English as much as I would worry if Arabic were, because, I mean, there is a political ideological misrepresentation that then is built on to, to make some more dangerous generalizations and statements about Arabic and Arabic culture. So mistranslations can have more dangerous consequences in this relationship that is not as balanced as others. And because we're always, you know, working in resistance, there's a hegemonic culture and are trying to break through this is where mistranslations can become dangerous. And yes, not only aesthetic, if had they been, it would have been brilliant. But sadly, they aren't always. So before I turn to Robert, I want to say something. Thanks for this wonderful meeting. This is from Tamar and Nusia Shvili. Very interesting. Just wanted to mention that there is an interesting translation of Makamat in Georgian language. I think you know this already, Robert. Yeah, I just wanted to say two things. One is that translations can actually act as veils concealing the real culture. Um, the, um, I am Rubaiat is such a case. It's a masterpiece of English literature, which must be great for it, but there's not a single line of that verse that can confidently be attributed to, oh my God, much worse is the case of the Casido Haji Abdu, which Robert Richard Burton presented as an Arabic Casida and has been identified as a great work of Sufi poetry. It's no such thing as an extremely bad work of Victorian agnosticism. Um, terrible business. The other thing is, uh, translations, translations into English, uh, and then for that matter, most West European languages, are very much a matter of fashion. There was a huge wave of, uh, there was a kind of craze for magical realism. Literature produced in Latin America and perhaps the Central America as well, centered on Marques and Yorza and one or two other people. And I think only Borges has survived intact with his reputation fully as what it was then. And then one got the Scandinoire phase quite a bit later, where various Scandinavian crime things and other grimaces. Again, with key writers, I think what needs to happen for Arabic literature to really take off in a big way in Britain and Germany and France is for some really leading writer to perhaps two or three to hit the jackpot and sort of lead the way for a lot of other writers to be translated. So it does come and go in waves. And in other languages as well. All right. I don't see any more questions. I think that's it for us. Anything, any last words that you'd like to say? You're all fine. Okay. If that's the case then. Thank you so much. All so much, Robert, Kuda and Michael for joining me today, for today's event. And I thank all those who are in attendance, right? Thank you so much for coming. And thank you again. It's been fascinating talking to you. All right. So thank you. Thank you so much. Yeah. Thank you. Bye bye. So we conclude the events and reminder, right? The recordings will be posted on Saras and Sheikh Zed Book Awards YouTube channels. So thank you very much. See you guys. Insha Allah soon. Thank you again.