The Bibliotheca Alexandrina's first book fair launches Hala Halim into some bibliophile musings Click to view caption Organised by the Bibliotheca Alexandrina, the First Book Fair (24 July - 6 August) was marked by two parallel series of cultural events, the "Celebration of the Muses" -- with each day devoted to a given muse and the art activity patronised by her -- and a series of daily lectures on "Issues of Electronic Publishing". As for the idea of the Bibliotheca's holding a book fair, this seemed potentially promising: by the time the annual Cairo International Book Fair moves to Alexandria every winter it is only the tattered leftovers that are shipped down and then unappetisingly displayed. That Alexandria is even more deprived of cultural events in summer than in winter made the fair and surrounding activities all the more welcome, although the question remained whether these specific, very hot weeks at the end of July and early August could make the event a commercial success. On Wednesday 24, after a certain amount of confusion about the time of the inaugural lecture on the Muses and the Mouseion (Akhbar Al-Adab newspaper gave it as 5pm: a guard at the door said it was at 7pm; his colleague suggested it was at 6.15pm, after the dignitaries had officially inaugurated the fair across the street) proceedings began. Those honoured at the event, by Ismail Serageldin, director of the Bibliotheca Alexandrina, were Samir Sarhan, chairman of the state publishing house, the General Egyptian Book Organisation and the man behind the Cairo International Book Fair, Salah Fadl, professor of Arabic literature and director of the National Library, Dar Al-Kuttub, and Ibrahim El-Moallim, the owner of Dar Al-Shorouq, the largest commercial publishing house in Egypt, and chairman of the Arab Publishers' Union. The choice of honourees, key-figures in the publishing and librarianship fields in Cairo, appropriate to the book fair theme, also seemed targeted towards securing good working relations between the Bibliotheca Alexandrina, as a nascent institution, and the capital. Serageldin was also keen on giving credit where credit is due for the Bibliotheca Alexandrina itself, namely to Alexandria University, specifically professors Lutfi Dowidar and Mustafa El-Abbadi, for initiating and fostering the project, before going on to laud the present governor, Abdel-Salam Mahgoub's efforts to revamp the city. In his speech, El-Moallim announced that the International Publishers' Union and UNESCO have designated Alexandria as capital of the book for several months to come. Then it was the long-awaited session of the Muses and the Mouseion. Taking off from the entomological origin of the Mouseion, the academy of ancient Alexandria, the topic of the muses, which elsewhere would be deemed innocuous, here borders on the vexed. It can lead to charges from some constituencies of paganism and finger- wagging exercises (of which there were a few in Alexandria recently, prompted by the proliferation of statues in public spaces); from other constituencies it can lead to the fraught, but important to plough, grounds of the extent of secularism and affiliated issues such as censorship and freedom of expression. These issues would, in due course, be tapped into, quite subtly if hesitantly. Introducing the session's main speaker, distinguished classicist El-Abbadi, Serageldin elaborated on the choice of the two parallel series of cultural events accompanying the book fair. While the "Issues of Electronic Publishing" was obviously dictated by the technology of contemporary librarianship, the theme of the Muses was meant to highlight a sought-after continuity with the Hellenistic city, for just as the Mouseion ensured the success of the ancient library, the new Bibliotheca Alexandrina's role will also be to foster creativity. Explaining that the Mouseion means temple of the muses, El-Abbadi's talk fell into two main parts: first, providing a genealogy of the way in which a range of cultures -- Egyptian, Greek, Indian, Arabo-Islamic, among others, as well as pre- Hellenistic cultural connections between Egypt and Greece -- conceived of the link between a divine or spiritual force and human artistic and intellectual production, second, addressing the structure, administration, activities and achievements of the Mouseion of ancient Alexandria. Thoroughly erudite, El-Abbadi's talk was enlivened by witty asides, as when he commented about an ancient source whose comment on the Mouseion was that it is so renowned it requires no description. But from other sources, such as Strabo, it is clear that while the Mouseion was headed by a priest, the post of director was given to another, non-religious figure. The character and achievements of the Mouseion, offered El-Abbadi, were owed in no small measure to the fact of its interactions with the world at large: it imported scholars from other parts of Egypt and centres of learning in different parts of the world, even as Alexandrians were sent abroad for training. In the discussion that followed, Serageldin observed that the internationalism of the Mouseion and its openness to otherness is one of the key points to be emulated; for Egypt, he said, is intellectually isolated, and even when intellectuals attempt to enter into dialogue with the outer world, they tend to address marginal if flashy issues such as Samuel Huntington's largely discredited thesis about the clash of civilisations. Salah Fadl, implicitly pre-empting any anxieties about paganism, mentioned a number of mediaeval and early modern Arab texts that tackled either the gods of Greece or the notion of inspiration which reveal that such divinities were read as symbols, and were not deemed in contradiction with religious thought. Architect and conservationist Mohamed Awad posed two related questions, one about the extent to which the Mouseion was influenced by Ancient Egyptian centres of learning, the other about the degree of the secularism of the Mouseion. In response, El-Abbadi offered that the fact that a priest headed the Mouseion is reminiscent of Ancient Egypt, but that whereas the form of the Hellenistic institution was religious, its content "was sternly secular", which a number of examples about the empiricism and freedom from orthodoxy of scholars in the fields of medicine and astronomy demonstrated. And of the book fair itself? With more than 200 publishers from 15 countries, according to official figures, it is held not on the pristine Bibliotheca Alexandrina grounds but within the Chatby campus of Alexandria University; this, in itself, might be taken as a sign of the commitment of the Bibliotheca to involving Alexandria University in its activities. However, the fair, open daily from 11am to 2pm, then from 5pm to 11pm, is held in a huge tent which does not help much keep out the heat. On two visits, both on Saturday, one at 1pm, another at 9pm, fair-goers were few and far between. Publishers spoken to (Egyptian and one French) had a number of grievances to air: first and foremost, the lack of publicity, the lack of cafeterias or even a bathroom, the lack of fans, the display cases and shelves which they found not up to scratch. The result, inevitably, has been meagre sales. Finding merit in the fact that publishers from different countries are represented, the woman from the Institut du Monde Arabe, Marie Llimas, nevertheless agrees with some of these grievances. She suggests that posters should be put up everywhere to announce the event, that perhaps June is a better month, and that it might help if the fair is held on the Bibliotheca grounds, because it is a cultural symbol that might draw many more fair-goers. Samia Youssef Naguib, an administrator from the Faculty of Commerce, who had purchased a World Atlas and a religious book, likes the fair, but thinks it is a pity there is nowhere to sit or have a cold drink; she also finds the scheduling of the fair ill-advised (exams of Arab Beirut University are taking place at the moment), and proposes that the fair should start at 9am rather than 11am next year, as it would then draw many of the administrative staff of the faculties around it, before they go in to their offices. A valid and promising idea, then, but one that leaves much room for improvement in execution next time round.
