Sayed Mahmoud finds out what makes the long forgotten literary salon popular again Literary-minded people on Facebook daily receive dozens of group and event invitations from writerly parties -- asking them to follow news or attend seminars, signings and salons. I had paid little attention until I attended, in Alexandria, the launch of several books published by Dar Al-Mahroussah in collaboration with members of the Alexandria-based group Al-Kull (All). Members of Al-Kull have deliberately avoided the more traditional term gama'ah (which has the sense of "party" or "league") in favour of the neutral magmou'ah (group), apparently to avoid the partisan, exclusive implications of the former term. At the launch, which took place in Café Clay, the vernacular poet Hamdi Zeidan spoke at length about the motives that drove writers in Alexandria to form groups since the late 1980s, when literary activity tended to revolve around the Ministry of Culture "palaces" -- where there was no space for innovation or rebellion and creative people had to abide by the lines set in advance by official parties -- giving rise to rebellious literary groups and often occasional publications to go with them. Important magazines like Al-Arba'a'iyoun and Khamassin date back to this period, so does Asil -- the literary group based around the Alexandria Nubian Club (where the writer Haggag Adoul was particularly active). Though also based in Alexandria, Amkenah, the occasional book edited by Alaa Khaled, dates from a later period and, in reaching out to non-Alexandrine, non-literary and non-Arab voices, transcends the logic of the group. Zedan claimed the 1990 Gulf War was the lynchpin: by disrupting and subverting ideas and states of affairs that had long been taken for granted, it drove authors across the country to regroup into forums (often associated with magazines). In Cairo Al-Garad, whose editor was the 1970s poet Ahmad Taha, championed a new, rebellious discourse that opened out onto the world at large. For Zedan the recent re- emergence of the literary salon in Alexandria is equally an attempt to break out of the hegemony of Cairo and the isolation imposed on hitherto unknown writers outside of it. As in the case of Al-Garad, he said, the marginalised missionaries of a new literary spring could only have been chased by accusations, whether of ignorance of verse metres or of anti-nationalism -- "charges that seem laughable in the light of globalisation". One irony nobody at Café Clay seemed aware of is the triumph of the individual author -- as against the literary school -- throughout the world; perhaps it is this that drove Al-Kull to choose the word magmu'ah over gama'ah. So, at least, says another vernacular poet, Abdurrehim Youssef. For the short story writer Maher Sherif, the architect of Al-Kull (who designed edited its books), the notion of the group is a direct response to the centrality of Cairo, yet Sherif insists that the work of groups should be regulated and their populist discourse cut short. "Our issue is no longer the cultural establishment, which we used to take positions on or fight with. Our issue is writing, the production of good texts that express ourselves. The emergence of groups is part of a more general current in independent culture in Egypt." Few are in fact aware that, over the last five years (which were also full of political protests and strikes), literary groups have emerged with unprecedented frequency throughout the country: Idafah in Mansourah, Afrass in Qinah, and several groups including Adam and Maghamir in Cairo. The phenomenon must therefore be deeply rooted, reflecting not only the failure of the establishment to accommodate new voices but also, crucially, a genuine need for alternative organisation. Sherif's statements are in line with Dar Al-Mahroussa's manifesto, written by the novelist Mahmoud El-Wardani, on the occasion of the Dar dedicating itself to work by literary groups: "Literary groups have emerged independently of official bodies and institutions, because these bodies are incapable of providing what creative writers need, whether because of their extremely low glass ceiling or because the writers need more freedom of expression." But is this a sufficient explanation for the phenomenon? This was one of the questions that seemed inescapable in the course of the penultimate round of the Conference of Authors from the Provinces, in November 2007, where a round table made up not of cultural officials but of older writers, notably the poet Amgad Rayyan in a paper he submitted at the conference, expressed strong rejection of the literary groups. Rayyan associated the literary salon in Egypt, whose last heyday was in the 1970s, with the modernists who needed to pool their efforts to face the traditionalists, concluding that such groups were they to exist now would have no purpose and no effect. In the present, post- modern moment, "the individual can set up a blog through which to speak to the entire world." In his paper Rayyan expanded somewhat on the context in which literary groups generally emerge, explaining that they were equally a response to lack of democracy and an attempt to allow the writer to make his rightful contribution to progress, with which modernism was closely associated. It was also an expression of the ability of writers and artists to plan and manage their affairs independently -- no longer necessary. But it is left to the French Arabist Richard Jacquemond, in his 2004 literary history of contemporary Egypt, to insist that the literary group has always been an essential instrument in the struggle to gain symbolic power and literary canonisation: in this context Jacquemond explains that, like its academic and political counterparts, the literary field is subject to an ongoing struggle between generations with the old guard usually having so much power that the new generation is incapable of penetrating without a fight, a process which involves the formation of groups that may or may not be homogenous but which creates a front with which younger writers might face the older generation and establish their existence. Jacquemond gives as an example the Generation of the Sixties, which presented itself as the vanguard, notably in the Gallery 68 magazine (1968-71), which was open to whoever wanted to write in it regardless of affinity with the founders on the premise that it promoted the new. Likewise the two poetic groups, Ida'ah 77 and Aswat: they declared all previous poetry, including the work of the great 1960s poet Amal Donqol, prehistoric. Thus does a younger, marginalised group of writers take control. Yet as Jacquemond also explains, a literary group seldom remains intact for very long, since a member who achieves some degree of fame or fortune will inevitably split away from the whole: Aswat, for the example, which formed in 1977, no longer existed by the late 1980s. Another factor that contributes to literary groups breaking apart is the antagonism to which they are generally subject from the regime and the cultural establishment. Perhaps it is in this context that we should read Rayyan's contention that literary groups are no longer significant. To Rayyan's mind a literary group must have a strong intellectual vision to survive; and it must have a position against the political establishment. Present-day groups, he goes on to explain, are of a different constitution, with neither a clear vision nor a position against the regime. Does this mean that they are merely satellites of the establishment? Such questions were on my mind while I listened to a short speech by the young short story writer Wassim El-Maghrabi, the coordinator of the Alexandria-based group Itlalah, during the seminar the group holds at Al-Balad Bookshop, here in Cairo, on the first Saturday of every month. El-Maghrabi told me his group is an unofficial, independent entity that does not express any intellectual line of thought. Managed and funded entirely by its young writer members, Itlalah aims to promote its members' talent and shake up the intellectual scene. The forum, as Maghrabi calls it, started in Alexandria in 2002, when it had seven books to promote; there are now 24 collections of poems and short stories to Itlalah's name, as well as an annual festival in Alexandria and five publications. Maghrabi takes issue with Cairo monopolising cultural activities and events, and he points out that his generation of writers have in no way benefited from state institutions; he mentions the Alexandria Library by way of example, which he describes as "a spurious idea from which only interested parties have benefited: buildings do not of themselves make culture". Maghrabi is dismissive of the notion that literary groups are not an organic part of society: "We haven't exactly seen demonstrations protesting our existence, have we." One academic at least, Haytham Elhag'ali, professor of literature at Helwan University, is interested in the phenomenon; so much so that he tried to persuade the Short Story Committee at the Higher Council of Culture to make time for group members. In a paper Elahag'ali submitted to the aforementioned conference, he asked, "Is there some kind of aesthetic integration among the writers who form these groups or are they simply demoralised and, like a group of penguins, have decided to huddle together to face a storm?" He is critical of the drive to "destroy language" -- evidenced in blogs as well as literary groups -- which has proceeded in parallel to such political movements as Kefaya and 9 March. Why, he asks, must they prioritise the vernacular to such an extent in the absence of technical justifications for it? Yet not all literary groups fall into this category. According to poet Ayman Mas'oud, the head of Adam (in an interview he gave Akhbar Al-Adab last year), "respecting social taboos" is an essential tenet of the work of his group; Adam even rejects the prose poem which, Mas'oud says, is not poetry but simply a prose form. This may come as a surprise to younger writers especially; since the 1990s literary production has gone hand in hand with the drive to break taboos and shock a society in slumber into greater consciousness; and the prose poem, in particular -- once the subject of heated debate -- has garnered the respect of the vast majority. As Mai Abu-Zeid wrote in Ahwal Misriyyah, however, the new literary groups are driven not by aesthetic, intellectual or literary commonalities that bring together their individual members but by the need to stand at a distance from the establishment and reintegrated into society at large, whose premises -- sadly -- reflect a general move away from the progressive and the transgressive and prioritise the past. Sayed Mahmoud finds out what makes the long forgotten literary salon popular again
