All is Permitted in Beirut, which won the 2010 Ministry of Culture National Novel Contest, has been released this year at the Cairo International Book Festival. Written by Alaa Mosbah, who graduated from the Leadership for Education and Development (LEAD) program in 2010, the book is about a recent AUC graduate’s reactions to the 2006 Hezbollah-Israel war. Drawing on Mosbah’s own experiences at AUC, where he took part in political demonstrations and student-led activities, the story also documents the active student movement at the University.
“In the fall of 2006,” Mosbah said, “I was involved in Nusrah, a coalition of 30 AUC student groups that was formed to support the Lebanese after the war. Together, we raised around LE 1.5 million that we donated to the relief effort in Lebanon.”
A native of Mansoura, Mosbah was moved to write about AUC because of this experience. “I saw how active AUC students were and how much they cared about their brothers in Lebanon,” he said. “The student movement really affected me. I realized that students could be very active and play important roles, even better than governments. In my novel, I changednusrah (solidarity) to wihda (unity) so I wasn’t just copying reality, but creating a work of fiction based on my experiences.”
Highlighting why he chose to write about the 2006 Lebanon war in particular, Mosbah noted, “I was strongly moved by this war. It was the first direct Arab-Israeli war that my generation witnessed. It was ‘on air’ all the time on TV. I spent all day watching updates. As a journalism student, I wished I could be on the front lines covering everything myself and showing it to the whole world. I could not do that at the time, but I decided to write about it later.”
In All is Permitted in Beirut, the main character, Shadi, is known for his activism against American foreign policy. He led anti-American political movements at AUC during the 2003 Iraq war. “In actual fact, AUC students were the first in Cairo to demonstrate against the war,” Mosbah explained. “In the novel, I used stories of my friends at AUC who took part during the protests to write some of the scenes. I also used AUC student newspaper articles from that time, which provided a rich source of information.”
After his graduation, Shadi accepts a job at the U.S. Embassy in Cairo, in spite of his history of anti-American political sentiment. “At first, Shadi cares about his job, and he feels important that he is working at the embassy, even though some of his friends make him feel guilty,” Mosbah said. However, Shadi is soon forced to confront the tension between his political beliefs and his new job when a close friend is trapped and injured in Lebanon during the 2006 war.
“Shadi thinks back to leading demonstrations on campus against the American invasion of Iraq when he is working at the embassy, but he is trying to forget that part of his life and conceal it from his supervisors,” Mosbah said. “Eventually, he is drawn back into activism, which gets him into trouble at work. He ends up sitting in the office all day blogging and sending out emails against the war and the U.S. government. At the end, his boss begins investigating him, so he quits his job.”
Shadi and Mosbah have more than just student activism in common. Mosbah also interned at the U.S. Embassy one summer. “This book is fiction, but the characters are based on my personal experiences, as well as those of my friends. Each character is a mixture of details about all of us,” said Mosbah.
In addition to reflections on his time at the University, Mosbah also conducted research in Lebanon in the summer of 2009 to be able to write the book. “I collected stories from people who were trapped in Beirut,” he said. “I also took a taxi from Beirut to Damascus to retrace the steps of those who fled. During the journey, the driver told me stories about driving people to Syria during the war.”
Mosbah began writing when he was 8 years old, winning a national writing competition at the ages of 11 and 13. However, his parents were not keen for him to pursue a career in the arts. “The LEAD program changed my life,” Mosbah reflected. “My parents wanted me to be a doctor or an engineer, and I was supposed to join the Faculty of Medicine at Mansoura University. I applied for the LEAD program because I thought if I could go to AUC, I would be able to pursue my artistic interests.”
Upon his acceptance at AUC, Mosbah enrolled in engineering because of familial pressure. After one year, he transferred to journalism and mass communication, ultimately majoring in communication and media arts and minoring in film. “I decided it was time for me to do what I wanted to do, and now my parents are proud of what I have accomplished,” he affirmed.
Mosbah was an active student at the University. He was a member of the Model United Nations, Model Arab League, the Student Union and the Help Club. In addition, he wrote for several student publications, including Caravan, Dimensions and AUC Times. “Extracurricular activities supplemented and expanded what I learned in the classroom,” Mosbah said. “I mainly learned from my friends and colleagues, who are now shaping the country’s future. I also published my first articles in Dimensions, before I went on to publish in Egyptian newspapers. I had a biweekly column, which is where some sections of my first book, This is America, were first published.”
An avid writer, Mosbah published his first book, This is America: Diaries of an Egyptian Student, a memoir of his time as a study-abroad student in New York, during his junior year at AUC. In the summer of 2011, his second book, a travel diary titled, From Beirut to Wadi Rum, was published. At AUC, he won the Madalyn Lamont Literary Award in 2007 for a short story he had written.
Mosbah is also a filmmaker and spent the last year in Qatar participating in a short film program at the Doha Film Institute and working as a producer and co-curator for Harrer Harrer, an exhibition at the Doha Tribeca Film Festival of 50 one-minute films from across the Arab world about the Arab Spring. His short films Tariq and Last Seven Minutes have been screened at the Doha Tribeca Film Festival, and the latter was also shown at Cannes International Film Festival. His short documentary film about the Egyptian Revolution, Best Day of My Life, won the Best Documentary Award at the Cairo Cinemobile Film Festival 2012.
Read it on AUC News website
No comments:
Post a Comment