This story was originally published in The Daily Star.

May 9, 2014

BEIRUT: For years, a startling statistic about Middle East literacy has made the rounds. On average, it suggests, Arabs spend six minutes a year reading – about six pages. This vague figure has been attributed to UNESCO, the Arab Thought Foundation and UNDP, but the source of the figure remains unknown. A 2007 study by the Next Page Foundation “What Arabs Read: A Pan-Arab Survey on Readership,” uncovered quite different results. Of the 1,000 Lebanese polled, 44 percent spent an average of 31 minutes a day perusing newspapers and magazines and 50 minutes a day reading online. They spent an average of 49 minutes about 12 days each month reading books.

Najwa Sahmarani was shocked when she read the six-minute stat in a 2011 Arab Thought Foundation report. A passionate advocate of reading for pleasure, she decided to do some research of her own. The Tripoli-based entrepreneur polled 550 students and young professionals resident in the northern city – half through an online survey spread via social media, the other half in person at the Tripoli Book Fair.

She asked respondents the last time they’d finished a book, whether fiction or nonfiction, for pleasure.

“Seventy percent chose the answers either: ‘I’ve never finished a book’ or ‘Before last year,’” Sahmarani recalls. Another 44 percent said they’d read more if part of a reading club or literary community, had easier access to books or received guidance on what to read. Continue reading →

This story was originally published in The Daily Star.

May 5, 2014

BEIRUT: As we troop awkwardly through the narrow streets of Khandaq al-Ghamiq, our guide gestures to the decaying facade of a once-stunning building.

The balconies are crumbling, their wrought-iron rails rusted. The masonry is pocked with bullet holes, window frames empty or fringed with jagged, lethal-looking shards of glass.

As if unaware of the devastation that has been wrought on the building, the guide orders us to take note of the beautiful architecture. The derelict-looking structure is occupied, he notes in passing, but the inhabitants in the area are forbidden to hang washing outside to dry.

Pointing out one building where residents have blithely ignored this stipulation, he complains that he has called the police several times but no one ever shows up.

The washing, he claims, ruins the area’s historic appearance.

“Watch Your Step: Beirut Heritage Walking Tour,” is an interactive, site-specific performance directed by actress and AUB theater studies lecturer Sahar Assad and written by Robert Myers, cultural historian and AUB professor of English and Creative Writing. Continue reading →

This story was originally published in The Daily Star.

May 10, 2013

BEIRUT: Lebanese novelist Hanan al-Shaykh has had a long and complicated relationship with “One Thousand and One Nights.” As a child, she recalls, she was “utterly smitten” by a radio dramatization of the tales. As time passed, she distanced herself from the epic fable of the storytelling Shahrazad, her murderous King Shahrayar, and all it evoked.

“When I was young I wanted to be so Westernized,” the London-based author admits. “I was brought up in a district in Beirut, Ras al-Nabaa, which was very traditional. … I think because of books and films I felt that I wanted to be somewhere else completely.

“I started changing my mind a little bit,” she continues, “because in the West whenever I published a book they’d say ‘The New Shahrazad!’ and I’d say ‘What is this cliché?’ Then I read a few stories and I thought ‘Hmm, not bad.’ … I was intrigued because it reminded me of the women in my family. I thought ‘Yes, I can see that – this is why they were cunning and crafty, especially my mother, because it is the weapon of the weak in such a society.’” Continue reading →