JEDDAH, 29 March 2006 — The first two rows in the men’s half of the lecture hall were occupied by the anti-literature crowd.
Four Saudi writers, Abdu Khal, Hana Hijazi, Mansour Al-Ateeq and Hadil Al-Khedif, were participating in this last scheduled activity — a series of short story readings — of the 2006 Riyadh International Book Fair. A divider had been set up between not only the men and women lecturers, but also the audience. This wasn’t enough for this particular group of men.
After the reading, the men in the front rows asked the event’s emcee, the Saudi literary critic Hasan Al-Naami, to give them time to ask questions of the author.
Al-Naami responded by saying the schedule did not allow for taking questions from the audience. “It’s just a short story reading,” he told the audience. “Let’s just enjoy literature.”
Considering the several incidents that happened throughout the course of the book fair, Al-Naami politely asked the men to let this event happen without incident.
The men in the front rows were not convinced. “Give us only four chances to comment,” one of the men said, offering up sheets of paper he said were questions the men wanted to pose to the writers.
“That wouldn’t be fair to others,” said the emcee.
“OK, then let the sheikh speak only,” the man replied, referring to the religious scholar of their group.
The tension in the room increased as Al-Naami and the men in the front rows argued. Finally, Al-Naami ended the event and the male writers had to be escorted off the stage by armed security personnel.
Arab News had the chance to see the questions the men wanted to ask. The questions had nothing to do with the contents of the reading, or about the authors that participated. One sheet simply asked the moderator to give them time to speak to the writers and the audience. They didn’t seem interested in addressing the topic of the reading, but rather in the controversy surrounding restrictions on fiction writing.
Many incidents like this occurred on the sidelines of the book fair that ended on March 2, which raised questions regarding the decision behind having the fair in Riyadh.
Saudi poet Yehya Al-Amir, who lives in Riyadh, was another writer who faced similar harassment by men who appeared at one of his lectures. The topic of the lecture was media supervision. The conservatives who appeared at his event stood up to argue with the speakers, including former Information Minister Muhammad Abdu Yamani and Al-Riyadh Editor in Chief Turki Al-Sudairi. Al-Amir stood up to defend the speakers and, according to eyewitnesses, the poet was pushed to the floor. The men accused the poet and the speakers of embracing Western culture and abandoning Islamic principles by calling for an easing-up of media supervision.
Muhammad Al-Abbas, a literary critic from the Eastern Province, pointed out that having the fair in Riyadh with all of the sideline readings and lectures is a complicated matter. He said that the move this year to make the Riyadh fair the showcase literary event in the Kingdom was part of a broader continued effort to centralize all major activities in the country’s capital city. After all, most of the country’s banking, big business, and political leadership is headquartered in Riyadh.
Al-Abbas said that in all book fairs that he has been invited to — including smaller literary events that happen outside of Riyadh — there tends to be a great potential for having a distinct cultural and literary agenda. “Instead, invited writers spend their time in the hotel lobby chatting among themselves between lunch and dinner time,” he said.
He criticized the gender-segregation policies in Riyadh at the daily discussions that took place at the InterContinental Hotel lobby. While the male writers were allowed to meet together to discuss literary trends and the like, women writers were forced to stay away from interactions with their male colleagues.
Jeddah, on the other hand, seems more congenial to literary dialogue. The Jeddah Literary Club, for example, was the first in the Kingdom to open up a women’s section that allowed them a forum to debate on equal ground with their male colleagues. Indeed, the novelist Abdu Khal from Jeddah recalls a book fair that was organized in his coastal city in 2004, albeit smaller than the one recently in Riyadh, where he did not encounter any confrontation or harassment by the conservatives.
Khal would like to see the book fair relocated. But wary of the concerns over the perception of creating division among the people, Khal is quick to point out that moving the Kingdom’s book fair to a different location wouldn’t be an attempt to divide, but rather simply to decentralize the celebration of the arts and move it to where it can flourish with less intervention from citizens that take it upon themselves to act as moral police. “I’m not talking of some sort of a regional grouping,” he said.
As a city with a diverse mix of nationalities, Jeddah has long been considered the Kingdom’s most tolerant and diverse, yet also almost exclusively Muslim, metropolis.
But some authors think that having the book fair in Riyadh is a good idea because it faces the challenges head-on.
Al-Amir, the poet who was harassed for his discussion about media regulations, disagreed with the idea of moving the book fair out of Riyadh.
“By doing so we are only emphasizing the problem,” he said, pointing out that such a move would highlight regional intolerances. He said Saudi Arabia is one country, and that the struggle for tolerance should be met head-on.
Al-Amir criticized the conduct of the past five national dialogues (where political, academic and religious leaders have met periodically in recent years to address the myriad challenges the country faces for the future) calling them too detached from the general public to be effective.
“The last dialogue was merely a debate behind the closed doors that lacked a grassroots initiative that engaged regular citizens,” he said.
The same dynamic seemed to apply to the Riyadh book fair, which imposed various rules and conditions on the general public, the most glaring being that for six out of 10 days the fair was restricted to men only; the other four days were reserved for families. This policy was actually an achievement of sorts: Previous book fairs segregated days between men and women only. The 2006 fair marked the first time families could attend at all.
“It’s really refreshing to see the whole family shop for books together,” a woman visitor at the fair told Arab News at the time.
The case is different in Jeddah where smaller book fairs have always been open to men and women.
“I really cannot see what prevents men and women from going to the fair at the same time. They go to the shopping malls together, don’t they?” said Riyadh book fair visitor Ahmad Ali.
One male novelist who participated in the Riyadh book fair complained that he was prevented from entering the venue to shop for books, even though he had met the audience the day before.
“I was invited for two days, one of them was a family day and of course I was not allowed to go in,” said novelist Abdullah Al-Taazi. “What is the point of inviting writers and not allowing them from going in later and checking out the books?”
For a couple of years Jeddah had its own book fair but it was never declared as annual event. In fact, in 2005 the fair was canceled and it was explained by officials that it was done so to give more attention to Makkah fair, as Makkah was deemed the cultural capital of the Islamic world for the year 2005.
Riyadh-based poet Fawziya Abu Khaled, who was verbally attacked by badge-displaying members of the Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice for signing her books, also thinks the best way to attack the issue is at its heart. She said it was essential to continue holding the fair in Riyadh with the same activities.
“It’s better that such things appear on the surface so it can be looked at and discussed,” she said. “Some people stand in the way of social development and even if we have to pay a price ourselves we mustn’t quit moving on.”
