By Ahlam Mosteghanemi All that may happen to a writer because of a book is splendid. Because of a book, one may be loved, hated, desired, imprisoned, acknowledged, exiled or honoured in a ceremony like this, and awarded an unexpected prize. In all these cases, you will realise that you are a writer, simply a writer, neither an insignificant writer nor a significant writer, neither a progressive writer nor a reactionary writer. To be a writer means that you are ready to have any of the above happen to you in return for a handful of words. That is why before I thank you for honouring me, I thank all those who sit behind their official desks in the Arab World, honouring writers by banning their books, by deporting them, imprisoning them and assassinating them. And also I extend my thanks to those who, without any guilty feeling, and without taking the trouble of reading books, legitimise the assassination of writers and demand their heads -- not because they have differences with them, but simply because they are different from them. I thank them all, since their tyranny has taught us to stand up for principles, refusing to disavow them, and thus the primal power and awe of the writer are regained. I single out with thanks murderers and assassins for honouring us: the more they take us by surprise with their knives, the more they make our blood one with our ink; and when they shoot us, their bullets raise us to the rank of martyrs. I thank them, because with every crime of theirs, we realise that at times we need death to grasp that we have been writers, and that literary prizes do not always make the grandeur of a writer. For this reason itself, I accept the Mahfouz prize as a tribute to all the admirable Algerian writers, journalists and intellectuals, who, when sitting to write, draw intellectual support from the 67 graves of their colleagues -- those who died slaughtered and victimised while the homeland stands unaware, those whose only tribute was the flag of my country which covered their dead bodies. Today my heart reaches for them, apologising to them for a tribute to which some of them are more entitled than I. This tribute goes also to colleagues of the pen, to brothers in sorrow, who persist in the tragic vocation of writing in Arabic, those who are steadfast -- with pride there and with patience here. They are like dozens of Arab creative writers awaiting their death in exile, dispersed on the maps of estrangement, dreaming of a revengeful homecoming: their return in boxes exploding with books in the hope that they will produce that bang, the bang of their collision with the homeland. Tributes to writers are often based on a misconception, making some believe that multiplying medals for writers or raising the financial amount of literary prizes would relieve the guilt complex of Arab regimes towards their creative writers, whereas creative writers continue to emphasise their need; in the words of Gibran Khalil Gibran: "Honouring a writer lies not in giving him what he deserves, but in taking from him what he gives." Perhaps because it is a creative writer's prize before everything else, the Naguib Mahfouz award sees that justice is done to creative writers: his prize does not offer them a fortune spent indiscriminately out of instant joy or, as is more usual, spent by others for them. Instead of wealth, the Mahfouz prize offers creative writers the opportunity to reach thousands of readers all over the world in more than one language. This is a privilege to which no Arab writer can aspire without an extensive network of relations and dozens of recommendations. Despite our conviction that the real reward of a writer comes from being read by his own people and compatriots, and that the greatest accomplishment for any Arab writer today, in our current situation, is to reach the hearts of all Arabs, with all their differences and oppositions, making us reach a consensus on a writer and agree even if on no more than a book -- despite this, and without any complex vis-à-vis the West which we have experienced for a long time, we are delighted to be granted the Mahfouz prize which will translate our works, with the intention of proving to the world that the Arabic language has engendered generations of creative writers and has endowed us with a writer of the stature of Naguib Mahfouz whose works in Arabic have been recognized as part of the legacy of World Literature, thus demonstrating that Arabic is able to keep up with each and every epoch, and to continually surprise others. Thanks, then, to the American University in Cairo and to the AUC Press under the direction of Mr Mark Linz for this truly splendid initiative. My thanks go also to the panel of judges, one by one, for honouring me, as through their tribute to me they offer moral support to Algerian writers writing in Arabic who confront unarmed the onslaughts of Francophony and its diverse temptations, while they stand patriotically against the dubious and divisive tendencies to which Algeria is exposed. Glory to our beautiful language! And long life and best wishes for our mentor and beloved Naguib Mahfouz. Translated by Ferial J Ghazoul Related Story: 1. Memory and desire
