My grandmother used to say during the Lebanese Civil War what is to the effect of that God is punishing the Lebanese because they “curse religion”. She died in 1988, at one hundred years of age. Had she lived for another two years, she would have seen the end of the war. When I was in Lebanon this month, I discovered that God continues to punish the Lebanese to this very day. After their obscene curses, they now blaspheme against their beautiful country, while trust among its people is absent, and everybody's hands are on the triggers with weapons aimed at one another. It was also thus that I found the country suffering from drought and wildfires, which were eating away at what is left of its greenery. But then when I returned to London, Lebanon was hit the next day by rain and storms that uprooted what was not burnt by the fires, and even blew away several training aircraft at the airport. Lebanon is a beautiful country no doubt, with its personal freedoms, mountains and beaches, the waterfront promenade and boutiques in downtown Beirut, universities and libraries, restaurants in Ashrafieh, and skiing and swimming, perhaps both in the same day. I have travelled all around the world, and say from experience that the Lebanese are among the best who master the art of hospitality. If you can afford something, anything, then it is yours, even if it were a rabbit out of a hat and you will get a “with pleasure” with it as well. The above was a historical review. Personally, I think that the best thing in Lebanon this month is the Beirut Book Fair at BIEL. It is all-encompassing and is easily accessible to all. The large turnout at the exhibition, including both Lebanese and foreign visitors, reassured me that when it comes to culture, we are all “people of the book”. I first went to the book fair alone, and then went again with friends who asked me to be their guide since I am a veteran of writing and publishing. There were pavilions from many Arab countries at the book fair, including a large pavilion for the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, Kuwait – and also one for Kuwaiti think tanks, the Sultanate of Oman and many other countries. I walked around in the Iranian pavilion which brought together a number of publishing houses. However, the majority of the books there were on religious subjects, or the current Iranian policy. I found a large number of visitors flocking to many other publishing houses that focus on Islamic themes. However, I have one complaint against all of these: I have been on a quest, which I started last year, to buy linguistic and religious references to keep them at the family home in Beirut, so that I do not have to bring anything from London where I live and work. I searched in vain for the ‘Fahrast [Index] of Quranic Verses'. I asked about it but did not find it at the book fair, although such a book would extremely facilitate the task for researchers, since it would be enough to look for a word mentioned in a verse to find the verse, its number and the chapter that contains it, preventing errors when quoting the Quran. This was a strange omission because I have two indexes of the Holy Quran in London which I had bought from Al-Saqi a long time ago. In Al-Saqi's pavilion, I found many translated works, which is in line with what I know about this publishing house by virtue of my residence in London. I was pleased to find that translation from English and French is alive and well in many other publishing houses, and I even found an Arab translation of the works of the English novelist Doris Lessing who won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2007. I had started with Dar Al-Nahar and Ghassan Tueni's book which I talked about yesterday, and continued with the Riad Rayes Publishing House, after I agreed with my dear friend Ghassan Charbel, the chief editor of Al-Hayat, to attend the signing session of his new book “Where I Was During the War” (it brought in the highest number of sales for political books). I was also pleased to see that my late friend Mahmoud Darwish was afforded a great deal of attention at the pavilion, and also Dr. Ghazi Al-Qosaibi. I bought two of his books as gifts to a lady who was visiting the fair with me; the books were “7” and “A Love Story”…And you never know… I was impressed by the pavilion of the Library of Alexandria. All that was on display there was exceptional, such as old musical and even historic recordings, books on the manuscripts of the Monastery of St. Catherine, on Nubia across history, and on the pioneering Bulaq Press. At the Beirut Book Fair, I also found what has managed to restore my confidence in the future of the nation: Two young men who said they were Saudis greeted me, and I estimated that they were less than thirty years of age. They turned out to be readers of what I write, which is not important. What is instead important is that they started a refined cultural and political discussion with me, and accompanied me in my tour of the fair's pavilions. I asked them what they were doing in Lebanon, and they said that they came specifically for the book fair. I asked: And what else? They said: nothing. They only came for the book fair, and they visit it every day; two young men from Saudi Arabia in Lebanon who are seeking books and not the temptations of the day or the night. The two young men asked me why I did not buy any books, and I said that I indeed bought a large number of them but that I had left them with the vendors, and that I couldn't carry any more of them on the way back to the hotel. They then insisted to carry the books, and to accompany me to the hotel to continue the conversation on the way there, and we ended up drinking coffee in the lobby of the hotel, which also happened to host the conference of the Arab Thought Foundation. The two young men whom I shall not embarrass by naming them in full (I will just call them Abdulaziz and Fahd), left me with some hope for the future of this nation. [email protected]
