In the first of a series on the six novels shortlisted for the International Prize for Arabic Fiction announced last week, Mona Anis talks to Bahaa Taher Sunset Oasis, Bahaa Taher's latest novel which appeared last year, is a work of fiction in which nothing is small or petty, and everything in it -- the theme, the workmanship and even the size -- is large. In it, Taher weaves in various strands from his previous works, as if in this novel he has "squeezed [his] universe into a ball, to roll it toward some overwhelming question," to quote Eliot's words from The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, a poem of which Taher is very fond. And what can that "overwhelming question" be if not a set of existential questions on life, death and the possibility of an afterlife. I ask Taher to sum up the main preoccupation behind Sunset Oasis in a sentence or two, and he immediately answers, "the meaning of life, or the lack thereof." Sunset Oasis is Taher's tenth book of fiction since 1972, when his first collection of short stories, The Engagement, appeared. Even a cursory glance at the dates of his published works immediately reveals that this is a highly self- conscious writer. To date, Taher has produced four collections of short stories and six novels, with an average of a five-year interval between each work, except for a brief period between 1983 and 1985 that saw the publication of two novels and two short-story collections. However, these four works of fiction, the one following swiftly on the heels of the other, came only after a hiatus of 11 years during which Taher published nothing. When his second collection of short stories, I had a Dream Last Night, appeared in 1983 it took the literary world by storm. The long short story of the title, firmly establishing Taher's reputation as a master storyteller, is a fascinating work that takes as its theme the catastrophic consequences of the various misconceptions that still abound between East and West. The theme of this East-West divide, recurring in many of Taher's works, especially since the beginning of his 15-year residence in Switzerland in 1981, is writ large in Sunset Oasis, the Egyptian protagonist of which is married to a westerner who seems to be so obsessed with deciphering the inscriptions on ancient temples that she has reached the point of being oblivious to any other consideration, including her relationship with her husband. I ask Taher if this focus on the chasm separating East from West does not reflect a personal belief in the difficulty of establishing meaningful dialogue between the two cultures. "Not at all," he says. "I don't see things in the racist light of the discredited notion of the 'clash of civilisations'. I am mainly interested in human beings, regardless of their ethnicity. But I am also interested in structures of domination and subordination. It doesn't matter if the protagonist is black or white. What matters most is how some people subjugate others." I point to the fact that in both I had a Dream Last Night and Sunset Oasis the relationship between an eastern man and a western woman ends in disaster, a curious comment on East-West relations given that Taher himself is happily married to a westerner, Stevka, who sits with us throughout the interview and to whom Sunset Oasis is dedicated. Taher laughs mischievously and says, "In the former work, the western woman commits suicide, but in the latter it is the eastern man who kills himself. Isn't that a sort of a draw?" Mischief aside, Taher is also a politically conscious writer who does not believe that art has nothing to do with politics. He says that while the meaning of life is the main preoccupation behind Sunset Oasis, the choice of the genre of the historical novel was a conscious one that serves a political purpose. "I wanted to deal with western domination in our part of the world," he says. "I was very much dismayed by the recent occupation of Iraq. We have gone back to classical colonialism, and that made me want to look back at the history of Egypt under occupation." Set in the late 19th century, a few years after the British occupation of Egypt in 1882, Sunset Oasis tells the story of a police officer posted to Siwa Oasis as punishment for his sympathy with the nationalist revolution that took place shortly before the occupation. His Irish wife insists on going with him despite the dangers this entails. Though her husband had not been one of the nationalist revolution leaders, he is not trusted by his British superiors; hence his banishment to the troublesome Oasis, where the previous two police chiefs have been killed by local people refusing to pay taxes to the central government in Cairo. "When I finished writing Love in Exile back in the 1990s, I believed it was my final testimony on contemporary Arab politics. However, I later discovered that I needed to write a second testimony, and I would like to think that Sunset Oasis is, among other things, a fulfillment of that need." A preoccupation with foreign domination notwithstanding, Taher's sense of history is acute. A graduate of Cairo University's History Department in the 1950s, he has long depended on material drawn from history in his fiction. In both the novel Doha Said (1985) and in the short-story collection I, the King, Egypt's ancient history is a source of pride and a heritage to be treasured. I ask if Sunset Oasis does not therefore represent a shift from Taher's earlier veneration of ancient Egyptian history, since it ends with the protagonist-narrator blowing up the remains of an ancient Egyptian temple in Siwa dedicated to Amon-Re (see the extract from the novel reproduced apposite). "That is your interpretation," he says. "I don't see it that way. What I wanted to express was a feeling of desperation at the way in which we seem to take refuge in a glorious past, rather than face up to the challenges of the present." Finally, I ask Taher if the novel's final description of blowing up the temple is not in some way an allusion to present-day suicide operations. "Absolutely not," he says vehemently. "Suicide operations target people. The target of my protagonist is history that blocks the road to progress." ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Bahaa Taher: Sunset Oasis Extracted and translated by Mona Anis I raced to the temple on horseback. Its columns stood out clearly in the light of the sun, which was now red and about to set. There are the entrance columns: a stone from them fell and smashed Ibrahim's leg. I gaze up at them, high above, but I cannot see any inscriptions on the columns. Those inscriptions. Deciphering them had so obsessed Katherine that she'd been oblivious to her own sister, dying in front of her eyes. But don't think of death now. Were they worth all that trouble? All that insensitiveness as the angel of death hovered over her sister? There's no time to waste. The sun is setting beyond the horizon of mortality, as Wasfi used to sing. It won't depart alone. I jumped off the horse, sensing the ghosts that haunt the temple. I could feel their presence even without seeing them: ghosts of the pharaohs, of palm trees, of murderers. Who told them to follow me? Was it Saber or Wasfi? Talaat, Harvey or Katherine? Murmurs and whispers fill my ears. A donkey's braying, the sound of horses' hooves, and of singing and drums beating. These are the voices of a small, closed world. I have to finish my work before I go insane. I have to settle accounts quickly. I clutched the horse's neck, and it turned its head to gaze at me with its dark, reddish eyes. What is it trying to say? That there is still time? That it can take me somewhere else, to another place, where I can do something else? I'm not destined to be saved. Had the price been to suffer pain and misery and the pangs of betrayal and injustice then I would have been saved with the others. Go. Go away. I took the horse's saddlebags off and nudged it, hoping it would go away. It didn't want to move. I chased it as far as the palm trees and left it standing at the beginning of the road. It just stood there, whimpering, beating the ground with its hooves. Let it be, at least now it's far enough away. I went back to the temple, the saddlebag slung across my shoulders. I stopped for a moment and looked up at the temple. So this is one of the glorious monuments the English want to excavate, the monuments that will show them how magnificent we once were, and how petty we have become. Our ancestors were great men. But their grandchildren are only fit for occupation. Wasfi is very proud of these monuments, which helps masters to remain masters. The nightmare has to end. I don't believe what Sheikh Yahia said about Malika loving these wretched ruins. I don't believe that she found them beautiful, or that he loved them for her sake. I don't believe it. I can't believe that Malika and Wasfi had anything in common. The sheikh imagines things. All the ghosts of the past must go. I reached into the saddlebag for the dynamite, placing sticks of it under the entrance pediment and inside the temple where the remains of columns mark other entrances, other corridors full of inscriptions, inscriptions of the dead. Never mind. I have enough dynamite. Some can go here against the wall. I must get rid of every trace of this temple. We have to do away with the stories of our ancestors, so their grandchildren can awake from delusions of grandeur that give them false solace. One day they'll thank me. I'm sure they will. I ran the wire between the columns, leading it out through the temple entrance and into the open space in front. The horse is where I left it, still whispering its frustrations. Never mind. What is that noise? The sound of the animal's hooves, beating against the ground? The hooves of other creatures? My hallucinations? It doesn't matter. I have to hurry. I lit the end of the fuse and stood there, waiting. Why isn't the spark moving more quickly? Go, holy fire, swallow up the temple, so we can rid ourselves of these stories! Nothing's happening. There are noises and the sound of voices approaching. The sound of an explosion hits me, and a shower of stone fragments hits the ground around me. I would have preferred a conflagration. What do you think, Katherine? Wouldn't those stones be useful to build a firm new stairway, or a new house? Maybe a new cemetery. Do what you like with them, but no more looking for inscriptions. I'll be damned if I'll leave you any more inscriptions. Forgive me, Malika. You were braver than I. Forgive me, Fiona, for not waiting any longer. Forgive me, Ibrahim, for heading off before you like I said I would. The stones fall all around me, barely missing my head. What am I doing standing outside? Am I losing my nerve? No, I'm going. I have to get inside. I trip and fall as I run towards the temple. And as I fall I see the building running to catch up with me. A stone hits me on the head, and sleep descends. When I awake, I reach up to my head and neck with my hand and feel blood, sticky and warm. A chunk of rock is stuck in my neck. I try to get it out with my weak hand in vain. There is no pain. Suddenly, a light shines within me. Yes, now I can see everything. Now I understand everything that I hadn't understood before. I try to raise my head, but can't. The light fades, and I sink into a heavy sleep. I hear a husky, melodious voice, as if weeping, calling my name. As I close my eyes, I whisper, 'Thank you for coming... too late.' The above extract is the closing chapter of Sunset Oasis. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ A Prize is born When the Emirates Foundation, an organisation established in 2005 with the declared aim of "improving the quality of life for all people in the UAE, through a variety of local and international projects that stimulate intellectual and social growth," announced its intention to launch an Arabic counterpart to the UK's prestigious Man Booker Prize last year, many Arabs were sceptical. The fact that the Booker Prize Foundation had pledged its support to this new literary initiative, accepting to become a co-sponsor of the venture, didn't seem to ally critics' fears, especially when a third co-sponsor was announced, The Weidenfeld Institute for Strategic Dialogue, which, they argued, was an overtly political organisation. The whole exercise, they suspected, would amount to little more than a public-relations campaign for the United Arab Emirates, an oil-rich country anxious to place "Abu Dhabi and the UAE among the most prominent cultural centres in the world," as Ahmad Ali Al Sayegh, managing director of the Emirates Foundation, said in an earlier press release. However, as the project took off, the sceptics began to think twice. The International Prize for Arabic Fiction (IPAF) initiative selected a Steering Committee of experts, publishers and journalists, which in turn chose a seven- member Board of Trustees "drawn from across the Arab and Anglophone worlds, and responsible for the overall management of the prize," according to a press release by the Emirates Foundation. The IPAF Board of Trustees comprises four Arabs and three Anglophones, with Jonathan Taylor, former Chairman of Booker PLC, occupying the chair. The two other Anglophones are Sasha Havlicek, Executive Director of the Weidenfeld Institute for Strategic Dialogue, and Margaret Obank, Editor of Banipal, a London-based magazine of modern Arabic literature. Arab members of the board are Marie-Thérèse Abdel-Messih, a Cairo University professor of comparative literature, Khaled Hroub, a UK-based Palestinian writer, Omar Ghobashi and Yaser Suleyman. With the organisational set-up complete, the Board of Trustees launched the Prize last April and selected a six- member jury to judge this year's inaugural Prize. The names of the members of the jury were kept anonymous until the shortlist for the Prize was announced last week (January 29). They are Moroccan writers Mohamed Bennis and Mohamed Berrada, Palestinian writer Feisal Darraj, Syrian writer and journalist Ghalia Kabbani, Iraqi writer and journalist Samuel Shimon (Chair) and British academic and translator Paul Starkey. The six shortlisted novels, announced on the same day last week in London and Abu Dhabi, were selected from 131 entries. They are: Sunset Oasis and Swan Song by Egyptian writers Bahaa Taher and Mekkaoui Said, respectively; June Rain and Walking in the Dust by Lebanese writers Jabbour Douaihy and May Menassa; The Land of Purgatory by Jordan's Elias Farkouh, and In Praise of Hate by Syria's Khaled Khalifa. Each finalist will receive US$10,000, with the top winner of the IPAF getting an additional US$50,000. The organisers will also sponsor the translation of the winning title into other languages. The top winner will be announced at a gala ceremony in Abu Dhabi on 10 March.
