Business as usual

Yesterday President Mubarak inaugurated the 33rd Cairo International Book Fair, following which he met with intellectuals. Today and tomorrow crowds comprising readers (whether actual or "potential"), weekenders and a broad base of intellectual figures are expected to storm into the fair grounds, Nasr City, to undertake their own inauguration of Cairo's most popular cultural event. This year the General Egyptian Book Organisation (GEBO) has promised an Internet site offering a visitor's guide and a map, perhaps the first sign of a better organised and more reader-friendly fair. The statistics are, in Cairo Book Fair's time-honoured tradition, staggering: 578 Egyptian, 394 Arab and 1,793 foreign publishers; more than 85 countries represented. What is interesting about this round, rather, is that current topics like secular-Islamic sparring over censorship and the Intifada have been incorporated into the main symposium programme, which under the title of "Modernising Egypt" will deal with Egypt's economic, political and cultural future.
In the week preceding the inauguration, the GEBO offices were, as usual, bustling with high-speed bureaucracy and last-minute petitioning. GEBO officials lay aside their usual responsibilities at this time every year in order to attend to the logistics and the infrastructure of the fair and to cater to the press. While waiting for photocopies of the schedule to be made, one employee describes how she has been having dreams about the tents to be built by GEBO in the fair grounds.
GEBO chairman Samir Sarhan, too, must have been having book fair dreams, and for some time now: the fair is, after all, the organisation's highest public profile event.
"Critical questions only, please, questions that are over and above all the data that we've published in press releases," demands the harassed chairman. Which is perhaps all to the good since the intellectual and cultural dimensions of the fair are by far the more interesting.
But just how is the theme, Modernising Egypt, going to impact on the activities of GEBO itself? The comings and goings in the ante-chamber of the chairman's office looks particularly old fashioned -- not a photocopier, let alone a computer, in sight, just hordes of people flinging around piles of paper.
"Of course we need modernising here," concedes Sarhan. "And that doesn't happen overnight. It takes years, a century even," he adds ruefully. "And a big budget. It's been very hectic as you can see, but we've been managing. The machinery of the fair is in motion."
This is Sarhan's 15th fair, and through the years he has come to witness, as well as shape, the development of this annual event, which continues, he admits, to be run on a shoestring.
"In the time since I assumed this position, I've seen it develop from just a book fair to a whole cultural festival that promotes the concept of culture as an expression of the unity of the arts: not only the book, but the film, the performance, the seminar. I've also seen the book fair turn into the largest, most democratic forum of free speech in Egypt and arguably in the whole of the Middle East. The president began to inaugurate it in person some years back, and to hold his annual meeting with intellectuals. So the fair has become the greatest occasion for discussion, argument and critique; in a word, for democratic dialogue. And the president recognises its importance, how else would you explain the attention he pays it? We have added lots of cultural activities, something that I see continuing through future years. The fair also develops every year, naturally. Each year we have to face new world events, new local events, new trends, new phenomena that we must adjust to. That is the challenge that we try to live up to."
A democratic forum and a cultural festival: this dimension of the fair has been the target of critics who stress the book component, claiming that the fair's priority should be the business of reading and writing. Others, such as private-sector publishers, have emphasised the trade aspect of the fair, identifying its principal functions as those of exhibiting, trading and organising the publication and marketing of books. So what is the book fair? Ibrahim El-Mu'allim told Al-Ahram Weekly during last year's round. "It's an exhibition of books, this is ultimately its most essential function."
Has the growth of the fair as a multifarious cultural event hampered the publishing and trade dimensions, then? The Frankfurt book fair, one frequently cited example, is a far smaller event of much shorter duration in which trade is emphasised by making the fair exclusive to specialists.
"It's a book market too, there is no doubt about that," says Sarhan. "And we have been steadily expanding the business side of the affair. To reinforce the trade aspect, in fact, this year we've introduced a programme to discuss 12 books a day, allowing for meetings with the authors and for signing copies of the book. Publishers participate, countless publishers who engage in trade. Further expansion is also something for the future, certainly."
But Sarhan has a different and important point.
"We are in a Third World country where we have to educate the public and get them to like culture. This the book fair does by increasing their awareness of intellectual life, by engaging them in a many-sided cultural event. We are not in Frankfurt where exhibition and trade for specialists suffices; we have an obligation to the public. Our fair has a different concept altogether. For many, the book fair provides contacts with books, intellectuals and culture as a whole, as well as functioning like a forum for dialogue -- something else we must get people to like. The fair is intended as such: it is a fair for the public, for absolutely everyone, not just for publishers."
On a less passionate (if no less confident) note, Sarhan denied reports of a boycott to be staged by writers, artists and intellectuals protesting the recent banning of three novels published by the General Organisation for Cultural Palaces (GOCP), another division of the Ministry of Culture, and the sacking of GOCP chairman Ali Abu-Shadi.
"There is no boycott," Sarhan starts. Suddenly remembering something, he must interrupt the conversation momentarily to make a mobile phone call: GEBO's own wing in the fair grounds is looking terribly ugly, Sarhan repeats to his invisible interlocutor; something luminous, aesthetic, needs to be introduced. "Any thing, anywhere, please." He puts the phone down.
"We do not have a boycott. We have two or three people who are evidently not in favour of dialogue. The document [pertaining to the boycott] was signed by 16 people, only four of whom are in any way important. And all four came to the inauguration ceremony of the children's book fair last week. All the Arab poets are coming, too, with the exception of [Palestinian poet] Samih Al-Qasim. So there really is nothing to worry about, since all the parties that matter have opted in favour of conducting a real dialogue rather than just yelling in a rage. We don't care, we have no reason to care about the alleged boycott. We are untouched."
It is, so it seems, and perhaps not to anyone's great surprise, a question of business as usual.
Interview by Nigel Ryan and Youssef Rakha
Related stories:
Super-modernnisation
Book Fair Main Hall Seminar Program
Ministry of Agriculture Hall Specialised Seminar Programme
Floating bureaus18 - 24 January 2001
Back to the village 18 - 24 January 2001
A difficult silence10 - 16 February 2000
See Bookfair 1991 (I) 4 -10 February 1999
Bookfair 1999 (II)11 -17 February 1999
Related links:
Bookfair official website
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