Seminars have been the most attractive side of the Cairo Book Fair but, asks Nesmahar Sayed, can they remain so, when the fair organisers have prohibited political discussions? Abdel-Wahab Elmessiri, scholar and author, expresses the concern that the Book Fair administration has for many years neglected to invite significant political figures. At first, he says, he thought it was a position against him personally, but then he realised it was something he shared with many others. It all matters, he believes, because "there is no substitute" for direct interaction between writers and their readers. A leader of the Kifaya movement, elected as its coordinator for a year, Elmessiri was all but wholly excluded from seminar invitations this years -- contrary to what has happened in previous years. The only seminar he was invited to was the discussion of Khaled El-Khamisi's book Hawadit Al-Mashaweer (Tales of Trips), which he "accepted directly" due to interest in the book. And he has the will to participate despite what he regards as the government's attempt to exclude him. American University in Cairo author, intellectual and economics professor Galal Amin was "hardly surprised" that intellectuals were excluded, one reason being the General Egyptian Book Organisation (GEBO) Chairman Nasser El-Ansari, who is by default head of the fair: "he wants to appease the powers that be, and there were signs that the government was impatient with some of last year's seminar topics." Another explanation is that, under heavier attack from the opposition, GEBO was eager to avoid the fair becoming a forum for that; a large, face- to-face gathering is potentially explosive. Amin also mentioned the power of the Muslim Brotherhood, towards which the government felt so vulnerable it thought it best to prohibit political topics altogether: "I feel the decision reflects the government's excessive fear." It follows, he adds, from the phenomenon of fair goers demonstration against the government on the fair grounds -- a function, particularly, of the last few rounds. For his part El-Ansari dismisses all such theories on the premise that the book fair is first and foremost about exhibiting books, not about politics. The cultural programme comes second to books, he says; the committee in charge put it together with a view to what is new in the world of books and their content. Elmessiri was excluded from a seminar about Islam and the West -- his forte -- El-Ansari accounts for by saying that it is necessary to vary the faces of seminar participants from one year to the next: "the issue is not who comes and who doesn't, but the books being discussed. It has nothing to do with the government or security." The book fair, he insists, is not a platform for intellectuals to spread their views; they can do so elsewhere. Nor does the fair's designation as a book event undermine "its freedom". Yet the question of excluding political seminars is not the only concern this year. Concerning political seminars in previous years -- among the participants were some of the biggest names -- historian Emad Abu Ghazi feels that this was but a reflection of the decline in cultural life; he agrees with Al-Ansari: "this affected the book fair negatively for many years and it's about time we paid attention to the principal function of the event -- publishing, writing, the readership." Ibrahim Farghali, too, feels that satellite television is a sufficient platform for political debate: the fair, like its counterparts all over the world, should be about books; politics should be discussed only insofar as they are the subject of books. That said, in terms of organisation and logistics, as Yasser Abdel-Latif, a young novelist and poet, points out, "the fair is going from bad to worse." The fish-market syndrome, whereby there are too many events and things on sale, completely unrelated to books, is disruptive and object-defeating.
