If not for the Arab world's guest-of-honour presentation at the Frankfurt Book Fair last October, writes Youssef Rakha, 2004 would probably have passed unnoticed in the chronicles of cultural history. Surprisingly, in contrast to the months-long, remarkably noisy hubbub surrounding "preparations" for the event, no sooner had the book fair ended than a curious silence beset the literary scene, as if both the official and independent writers, critics, academics, journalists, commentators who had taken it upon themselves to provide the perfect recipe for presenting Arab culture and "improving Western images of the Arab" had exerted themselves so much they no longer had anything to say. An upsurge in the translation of new works -- mostly novels -- and hopes for fruitful engagement throughout the next 12 months (the fair's guest of honour continues to preside over cultural activities throughout Germany for a whole year) are the most obvious results of the event; with a few, minor exceptions, no intellectual rights deals were made; yet young, independent publishing houses like the Cairo-based Miret found renewed energy with which to pursue the task of publishing new writing against all (financial) odds. And veteran conference participants returned looking refreshed and ready to do battle with censors, religious bigots, smooth operators and other forces of darkness. The "preparations" phase had followed a seemingly endless lull in cultural activity, though the usual Ministry of Culture events went on as before, beginning with the Cairo Book Fair and ending with the Cairo Film Festival, with any number of ill-organised Bibliotheca Alexandrina conferences in between. As always, political events like the death of Palestinian president Yasser Arafat and the renewal of George W Bush's term in office preoccupied the old-guard intelligentsia to a far greater extent than literature or art. The ongoing occupation of Iraq, the resistance and the casualties it has sustained, took on numerous guises on the pages of Cairo's principal literary journal, Akhbar Al-Adab : vernacular poetry, Iraqi heritage, political polemic disguised as literary criticism... At the same time, alternative venues like the Townhouse Gallery continued to pursue and expand their networking, evidencing a little recognised move towards conceptual art among a new generation of Westernised Egyptians alienated from the establishment... The "oriental jazz" band Wist Al-Balad, extremely popular throughout Cairo, have yet to produce a cassette or CD of their music. Yet aside from the occasional gesture of solidarity with Iraq or Palestine, the "independent scene" that has emerged in the last few years -- its centres include, apart from the Townhouse, the Diwan bookshop in Zamalek and the After Eight restaurant-disco downtown, where Wist Al-Balad regularly perform -- maintained its distance from regional life throughout the year. Since it contributes to the dissolution of class barriers and the assimilation of Western culture -- within a confined if not entirely impenetrable circle -- the increasingly confident growth of such a scene cannot be entirely discounted. But as yet there is no hard evidence with which to establish the benefits it imparts to Egyptian cultural life as a whole. More worrying is the gap that separates it from an institution like Miret, which, though similarly independent and unhappy with the status quo, wraps the banner of its ideological commitments round its head and jumps at any suspicion of "normalisation". That said, together with the Alexandria-based occasional magazine Amkena, Miret has done more for the literary and cultural vanguard than any state- supported or private-sector publisher. While the next issue of Amkena is unlikely to be out before the new year, through the year Miret championed such fascinating if as yet tentative literary developments as the emergence of a home-grown magic realism in the novel and the growth of vernacular poetry in prose. Never mind that the books still have no readership beyond their writers: the accessibility and interest of the new work promises a gradual breakthrough. Yet perhaps only the long-awaited opening of Al- Azhar Park -- an Aga Khan Foundation project begun in 1984 -- challenges the Frankfurt presentation to the position of cultural event of the year. The 74- acre area in Al-Darb Al-Ahmar in Fatimid Cairo is a tribute to the city: pretty, meticulously maintained and vast. At last, when the culturally oriented individual is frustrated with Cairo and all that it has to offer -- not an unlikely occurrence, after all -- he can at least look forward to the pleasures of a public park.
