August 2004
Alaa El Aswany
The dentist who shocked the literary world with his smash hit Imaret Yacoubian speaks out on literature, politics and gay bars
By Abdallah
WHEN ALAA El Aswany writes, he writes without fear. He makes no compromises, a quality he says that gives his writing depth even in describing the seedy or sadistic side of human existence. The best-selling author who took the Arab literary establishment by storm with his critically acclaimed Imarat Yacoubian (The Yacoubian Building) does not shy away from weaving sordid tales of political corruption, sexuality, and torture into his stories elements that could have potentially seen the book banned.
Yet El Aswanys debut novel, a tale of life in a downtown Cairo apartment building that delves into a mix of power, corruption, sex, exploitation, poverty and extremism managed to become one of the best-selling Arabic-language works of fiction in recent decades, receiving accolades for lucidly capturing the varied aspects of Egyptian life: straight, gay, rich, poor, powerful, powerless.
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We have hit zero. The zero we received in the Mondial is a fair result, very fair. The Egyptian government should get a zero in all fields, not only in soccer, but in health and education, in democracy in everything, really.
I see literature as an expanse of freedom, he says. Literature should examine the areas that people dont talk about, to show us things we could be feeling but not seeing. Its function is to teach us we are different, that we should be forgiving, and that we should not look at human traits as being either wrong or right. The issue is more complex. For example, I tried to present the homosexual as a person. It is not something to make fun of or to look at with disgust, and not all evil is concentrated in him as a person. He is a human being who has a different lifestyle. He may be happy with it or he may not.
A novelists work is similar to researching a PhD thesis, says El Aswany, who frequented a number of small bars, taking note of the atmosphere that he recreates so colorfully in The Yacoubian Building. One day, he says, the police came.
The police officer came to me and said, What brought you here? You are a doctor, recalls El Aswany, whose national ID card identifies his vocation. You should go to the Meridien to drink a beer. You shouldnt come here. These places are full of thieves. El Aswany eventually got a wasta at the police station, so when he was at a bar during a raid, the officers would know him, wave, and leave him alone.
Born to well-known writer and lawyer Abbas El Aswany, who was awarded the state prize in literature two decades ago, Alaa credits his father with instilling in him a powerful love for writing and literature.
Ashraf Talaat/Egypt Today 2)
Best-selling author of The Yacoubian Building Alaa El Aswany writes only three hours a day and spends the rest of his time at his dental clinic.
For 30 years until his death in 1977, the first floor office in the YacoubianBuilding housed the elder El Aswanys law practice. When his law partner died, the heirs sold their half. Later, Alaa El Aswanys dental clinic would share the space with a shirtmaker and an accountant before moving to an office on Garden Citys Diwan Street.
A single episode inspired the idea behind the novel. El Aswany was walking in Garden City when he saw an old building being demolished to make way for a garage. The building was being torn down in longitudinal sections, making its many separate rooms visible. Those rooms had life. There was someone studying, someone who was in love with the girl next door, a newlyweds first apartment, recalls El Aswany. It had people who lived and people who died. The idea stayed with him for eight years until he finally sat down and began writing the novel in 1998.
The 47-year-old novelist is now the author of four literary works, the most influential being The Yacoubian Building, which has gone through five printings in less than two years the first completely sold out in six weeks. He published his first collection of short stories in 1990. His latest, Niran Sadiqa (Friendly Fire), is a collection of 10 stories that candidly and provocatively explore what it means to be Egyptian.
El Aswany thought of majoring in literature, but concluded that being a novelist in Egypt wouldnt earn him a living. After all, even Nobel laureate Naguib Mahfouz remained a civil servant until his retirement. Instead, El Aswany enrolled in the faculty of dentistry at CairoUniversity.
In his early 20s, he married a colleague from the faculty, but the relationship soon broke up. He remarried at age 37 when he felt he was more mature. He has a son, Seif, now an electronics major at AUC, from his first marriage, and two girls, Mae and Nada, from his second.
El Aswany was later accepted to a masters program in dentistry at the University of Illinois in Chicago. he spent three years starting in 1985 studying, traveling and exploring American culture and society. Although he still practices dentistry, he writes for three hours early each morning.
Egypt deserves better than this. It deserves a true democracy, that there be human rights, that our people have the democratic right to choose their rulers. It deserves a system that allows the talented to reach their natural place. Anyone with ability in Egypt is pushed aside.
While the novel is a few years old now, El Aswany still receives calls and letters from readers around the world. He is often invited to participate in forums, and has been interviewed on tens of television programs. The film rights to The Yacoubian Building have been sold, and screenwriter Wahid Hamid has already penned the script. An English translation of The Yacoubian Building is also due out in the fall from the AmericanUniversity in Cairo Press, and French and Italian translations are in the works.
So how many copies of this best-selling novel have actually been sold?
Only God knows the answer to that question, El Aswany says with a shrug. Publishers, not keen on doling out royalties to their authors, keep the actual sales figures a secret. They give you a number. You multiply that number by two or five depending on your trust in the publisher. If you trust your publisher very much, you only multiply that number by two. But honestly, I dont trust the publisher very much, so I multiply by five.
The first run of The Yacoubian Building was printed by Merit Publishing House. The two sides had a falling out because he wanted a low-cost edition to garner a wider readership. Not everyone can afford to purchase a book for LE 20, he argues. So he took his book to the Madbouly Publishers, which has handled the remaining printings. Much to his dismay, they also sold the book for LE 20, exactly as Merit had done.
The YacoubianBuilding earned El Aswany only about LE 4,500. And the publisher, using his own numbers, has made at least LE 150,000, explains El Aswany. It is not the fault of the publisher or me. It is the fault of the system that fails to protect writers in Egypt. Some publishers are surprised that you want money at all. Fiction seldom sells as well or creates a stir; writers are granted little, and that includes greats like Mahfouz
المزيد
