Beirut and Stuttgart are the subjects of two books by Youssef Rakha and Ibrahim Farghaly, respectively, writes Rania Khallaf, heralding what could just be a contemporary form of travel literature In a seminar held last week at the Kutubkhan Bookshop in Maadi, travel writing as a contemporary genre in Arabic literature came to the fore with a launch of two books published last year: Beirut shi mahal (Beirut, some place, Alexandria: Amkena Book) and Midad Al-Hiwar (The Ink of Dialogue, Cairo: Al-Ain), by Youssef Rakha and Ibrahim Farghali, respectively. Though low-key, the event brought to mind canonical travel literature, with several scholars in the third century of the Hijra making extensive journeys and producing reports: Ibn Fadlans 309 H journey to Bulgaria, for example, undertaken in response to the Bulgarian king declaring himself a Muslim and sending a message to this effect to Caliph Al-Muqtadir asking for instruction in the faith. Besides taking stock of political circumstances and social attitudes, Ibn Fadlan reported intimate feelings, though it was his geographical, anthropological, and ethnographic analysis that became a reference for subsequent travellers: Yaqoot El-Hamawy, El-Massoudy, Orientalists and Russian scholars. This, and other facts, are expounded in Fouad Qandeels Travel Literature in the Arabic Canon (Cairo: General Organisation for Cultural Palaces 1995). Today the Arabic bookshelf has precious little to offer in the way of travel literature, however, what with Diwan, for example, boasting only veteran journalist Anis Mansours Around the World in 200 Days and Farghali's slim volume in the category. So the opportunity to see two young writers one a journalist, the other a novelist embracing the genre seemed like a find. Still, very few people turned up for the Kutubkhan event. The two writers motivation differed in that, while Farghalis was the outcome of a Goethe Institute exchange programme involving six Arab writers in different German cities and vice versa, Rakhas was a largely personal initiative, later expanded to include Arab capital cities (a book on Tunis is forthcoming with Riyad Al-Rayyis). Farghali had a brief: to write at the end of every single day in his month-long stay in Stuttgart, much as a blogger might, taking account of his German as well as Arab audience (entries were automatically translated, and discussed in a biweekly seminar even as they were being written). The spontaneity was accompanied by stress, but by the end of the book Farghali has managed to construct a convincing portrait of the industrial city. More importantly, perhaps, he offers a sincere account of an Egyptians encounter with urban Germany: he seeks out a single beggar, in vain; finds out about a political demonstration; attends a football game; participates in the beer festival; tours the automobile plants. Born in 1967, and having spent sizable portions of his life in the Emirates and Oman, Farghali hails from Mansoura, a city of comparable size that was once almost as cosmopolitan; and his fascination with Stuttgart borders on infatuation; this is particularly true in the context of the running comparison he makes between German and Egyptian streets, a sort of implied competition in which Germany invariably and predictably comes out the victor. This acted to interrupt, and somewhat spoil, the lyricism with which Farghali describes his encounters Germany as a naked body split into north and south, for example. The comparison, the author insisted, was part of the task he set himself, undertaken as much for the benefit of Germans who know nothing of the Arab world: "I dont see it as blind infatuation, but rather an honest expression of the wonder of discovering something new something that might even be compared to early Orientalist responses to the East." This seemed but a frail excuse for foiling the flow of the narrative, however. Rakha's account of Beirut, though no less polyglot, is by contrast as critical of the destination as it is of the set-off point. His response to the Paris of the Orient is in equal parts rational and emotional. What proves disruptive rather is the well-known artist Mohyieddin El-Labbads layout of this even slimmer, magazine-like volume, incorporating Rakhas black and white pictures in bizarre arrangements and so further breaking up an already deconstructed text. How can such fragmentation help the reader make her way around a place, however, assuming that this is the aim of the travel writer, canonical or modern? All that can be said by way of justification is that it reflects the confusion and chaos that prevailed in Beirut at the time of Rakhas 10-day stay, a month after the assassination of Prime Minister Rafik El-Hariri: he arrived on 13 April 2005, just in time for celebrations-protests marking the 30th anniversary of the outbreak of Civil War. Comparisons with Cairo do occur but they are far less flat or systematic, and it is the authors curiosity and anxiety that frame the text. Quotes and epigraphs that Rakha uses highlight context, while Farghalis citations from Amal Dunqul, Herman Hesse and Abdel-Rahman Munif seem to play a more cosmetic role. The younger Rakha (born in 1976) lays into the scene with adventurous gusto: "On the main road we stumble on a kind of fair (exhibit?) Improvised stops, dealing patriotism. The commodities on offer are mostly imports marketed in the name of Lebanon. Pens. Cups. Little plastic cedars. Printouts. Cards. Banners of multifarious shapes and sizes. For me nationalism, make no mistake. The bodies are paraded with a purposefulness that transcends taboo breaking per se. All over Beirut, awareness of the body is such that it makes you very far from Europe, even though everything tries desperately to convince you you are there." Engaging madness. While Farghali is happy with the City Narrators stipulation that writers should have no knowledge of their host citys language "It helps with serious, civilised dialogue that makes no concession to stereotypes." Rakha, in line with all his work, delights in discovering Beiruts vernacular, which he contrasts with his own throughout, enriching the experience with a joyful sense of fascination. Rakha admits that he has an obsessive interest in Arabic dialects, expressing a discontent that borders on anger with the Egyptian failure to understand Lebanese Arabic, despite its linguistic and geographic proximity and centuries of uninterrupted exchange. "It is very odd that a word like shi in the title should cause you so much confusion," he responded to filmmaker Ahmed Abu- Zeid in a tone bordering on anger. "Egyptians do have this tendency to consider everything other than their own, however familiar or transparent, sufficiently alien to be ignored." Oddly it is in the photographs that Rakha reveals his growing awareness of Beirut, showing images, El-Labbad noted, that could not have been captured anywhere else. Much of the text is about Rakha's sense of identity as a post-Arab nationalism Arab nonetheless interested in Arabness, if in a less apolitical way. And it was in this context that novelist-poet Yasser Abdellatif asked Rakha about the sense of competitiveness between Lebanese and Egyptian intellectuals, and the question of whether Cairo or Beirut is the Arabs cultural capital. Rakha said the tension was there, just beneath the surface, testifying to a better organised and more "Western- like" mode of operation in Beirut, and linking the Lebanese penchant for marketing with the peoples origins as seafaring merchants, in contrast to the agrarian nature Nile Valley peasants. He also stressed the plurality of Lebanese society, something Abu-Zeid took issue with yet again, arguing that, in the light of the war, there was no reason to see it in a positive light. For his part Farghali saw cultural diversity from a different point of view, which he expressed in the form of an observation: "Everywhere in Germany, the windows are designed so that they can be opened, shut and left ajar. In traditional culture here, we dont have this third dimension; we only function in dualistic terms black and white, right and wrong, halal and haram something that narrows our perspective." When it came to the notion of frontiers, however, the two authors proved diametrically opposed: Farghali reported on an integrated Turkish community scattered all over the city, while Rakha stressed the East-West (roughly Christian-Muslim) divide in Beirut, claiming that he encountered not only Francophone snobbishness but downright racism (Egyptians can be significantly darker in terms of skin colour than Levantine people). Still, in Rakha's book the mix of political and personal makes for something far closer to a novel(la) than Farghalis more sober observation of society, which places it in the more clearly demarcated territory of travel writing. Interestingly, both reject the term as a description of what they have written, with Farghali calling it "a literary diary" and Rakha "reportage".
