PUBLISHER / EDITOR Margaret Obank ASSISTANT EDITOR Samuel Shimon COVER ARTIST Jaber Alwan CONTRIBUTING EDITORS Khaled Mattawa Saadi Youssef Anton Shammas Peter Clark Fadhil al-Azzawi Sinan Antoon Paul Starkey Issa J Boullata Mona Zaki CONSULTING EDITORS Etel Adnan Roger Allen Mohammed Bennis Gamal el-Ghitani Marilyn Hacker Erdmute Heller Herbert Mason Yasir Suleiman Susannah Tarbush Saif al-Rahbi EDITORIAL ASSISTANTS: Corinne Sklar, Maureen O’Rourke, Shela Sheikh, Zuzana Kratka LAYOUT: Banipal Publishing

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Tel: +44 (0)20 8568 9747 Fax: +44 (0)20 8568 8509 editorial email: editor@banipal.co.uk subscriptions: subscribe@banipal.co.uk website: www.banipal.co.uk PRINTED BY Short Run Press Ltd Bittern Road, Sowton Ind. Est. EXETER EX2 7LW ISSN: 1461-5363 Photographs not accredited have been donated, photographers unknown All material © Banipal, authors, translators and artists. All rights reserved.

Banipal takes its name from Ashurbanipal, last great king of Assyria and patron of the arts, whose outstanding achievement was to assemble in Nineveh, from all over his empire, the first systematically organised library in the ancient Middle East. The thousands of clay tablets of Sumerian, Babylonian and Assyrian writings included the famous Mesopotamian epics of the Creation, the Flood, and Gilgamesh, many folk tales, fables, proverbs, prayers and omen texts. Source: Encyclopaedia Britannica

CONTENTS No 30, Autumn/Winter 2007

2 EDITORIAL 3 Remembering SARGON BOULUS (1944–22 October 2007) 12 Amjad Nasser – Eight Poems 20 Naguib Mahfouz – Excerpts from Morning and Evening Talk 26 Widad Benmoussa – Ten Poems 30 Raouf Mousaad Basta

Excerpt from the novel The Ostrich Egg [Baydhat al-Na’amah] 45 Khaled Mattawa – Seven Poems 52 Azza Rashad – Two short stories 59 Muwaffak al-Sawad – Two Poems 60 Samer Abu Hawwash – Three Poems 62 Mohammed Hassan Alwan – Three short stories 69 Rania Mamoun – Story The Thirteen Months of Sunrise 74 Adel Khozam – Selected Poems

LITERARY INFLUENCES 80 Lutfiya Dulaimi – A Thousand and One Nights and The Fruits of the Earth 93 NOEL ABDUL AHAD (1939–2007) – A Tribute 94 Elias Khoury – Excerpt from the novel Yalo 100 Abdelkader Benali – Poems Ibn Khaldoun in Hollandia Felix 105 Habib Selmi – Souad’s Tale – an excerpt from a novel 116 Gulala Nouri – Poem Are you sure you want to delete ...? 118 Elias Farkouh – Three short stories 126 Ibrahim Abdel Meguid – How clocks the watches stopped orWhy we heard only the verses of hell in the large tent – an excerpt from a novel INTERVIEW WITH A PUBLISHER 136 Michel Moushabeck – Interlink Publishing 1987–2007

BOOK REVIEWS 142 Susannah Tarbush The Lodging House by Khairy Shalaby 146 Mona Zaki Learning English by Rashid al-Daif 148 Tarek el-Ariss Being Abbas el Abd by Ahmad Alaidy 150 The Girl in the Tangerine Scarf by Mohja Kahf 152 Zuzana Kratka Maryam’s Maze by Mansoura Ez-Eldin 154 Volker Kaminski Das Geständnis des Fleischhauers by Hussain al-Mozany

EVENTS 156 London: Translation Prizes Award ceremony 157 Ledbury and London: Celebrating Lebanese Poets 158 Frankfurt: International Book Fair 160 CONTRIBUTORS AND TRANSLATORS

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BANIPAL NO 30, AUTUMN/WINTER 2007 1