An ode to books

Tales of triumphant finds and tragic quality control

by Tarek Atia

(cairolive.com, January 25, 2002) 

Time has proven that the best way to look for books is not to have anything in particular in mind. Meaning -- one usually tends to find books closer to one's real interests when one browses without preconceived plans.

A place like the Cairo International Book Fair is a great chance to test this theory's efficacy.

Usually I go to the Book Fair thinking I'll browse some of the major publishers' booths, check out Sour El-Ezbekiya's used selection, and catch a lecture or performance or two. And I'll leave holding treasures. For a book fair such as Cairo's -- with its dozens of halls and tents, thousands of booths and millions of books -- is bound to toss up something.

This year the first thing I came across was a script by Youssef Ouf called Haneen, about an Egyptian-American family who return to Egypt and discover its good and bad points. A perfect gift for an Egyptian-American I know. I had a hard time finding a clean copy of it however, and had to settle for a slightly damaged one at a discount.

Off I headed to the large hall whose top floor was occupied by Dar El-Maarif. Their Mohamed Hassanein Heikal section was bursting with patrons, all with a book in hand, imbibing. Nearby, a book caught my eye -- Popular Sayings, a virtual encyclopedia of thousands of "amthila", or popular sayings. But the copy on hand was damaged, scuffed and dirty. They brought another one out from the storage area. Again, it was cuffed.

From where I was standing, I could see the Al-Ahram space right below, bustling with books and clientele. The book I wanted was actually an Al-Ahram distribution imprint, so, heeding the advice of the Maarif salesman, I headed down there to see if they had a cleaner copy.

Indeed they did, and very easily found as well. I decided to browse the many neon-lit rows of Al-Ahram's display area. The focus -- aside from the organizations' own publications, was clearly on high quality reading material on a wide variety of subjects in English. A slick copy of McLuhan's Understanding Media struck my eye, and I picked it up along with the pristine copy of the Popular Sayings book.

The price differential between the two volumes I bought is worth noting. The encyclopedia -- not exactly high quality printing -- is a large size book of over 500 pages. It cost LE18 after the discount. McLuhan's magnum opus -- at just under 400 pages and in the slickest of imprints, was LE67.50 after the discount. Without getting into unnecessary details of each book's individual merits, let it be said that both books are equally precious -- and that the only thing nearly quadrupling McLuhan's value over the Popular Sayings was the packaging and PR.

That of course led to a sympathetic acknowledgement of the inevitable publisher's dilemma: Arabic booksellers probably know they need to move into slicker production modes, but there isn't enough of a market/audience to warrant it. Dar El-Sherouk, Al-Jarir and others are starting, but the viability of their more expensive books seems locked in the narrow consumer ranks of the elite at best.

 One thing all booksellers can do, though, in the short term, is take better care of their book shipments. At two of the places where I was purchasing books it was impossible to find a truly new-looking copy of the book. "What if I wanted to give this as a gift?" I asked the employees. A shrug -- and "Mahoo zayy il fool ahoo ya bey" was the usual response I got.

At Ezbekiya, walking through the rows of used booksellers, their carts overflowing with piles of dog-eared books, I found a battered copy of Robert Fulghum's Uh-Oh, Some observations from both sides of the refrigerator door. Here there was no point in trying to convince the saleswoman that damaged goods should be cheaper. That was the whole point. Still, I managed to take it off of her for a decent LE3.50.

After Ezbekiya I poked my head into a few of the literary and cultural tents that had been set up for the fair. Most featured young poets reciting their verses to rather minimal audiences, but one hall was packed to the brim with people watching an Egyptian troupe -- called Falouga -- performing a revue in sympathy with the Palestinians. The crowd knew most of the songs by heart and joined in the singing and clapping.

The audience was also having a good time in another tent I made it into, where I saw a few scenes of an amateur play starring four young people -- one a girl who didn't seem older then 14. Film Arabi it was called, and it was in the classic tradition of plays about ordinary citizens getting caught up in bureaucratic bungling, except for one twist -- the actors were constantly making fun of themselves and their roles, acknowledging that set-changes and their role-playing were all parts of the play. 

That completed my thoroughly-engaging two-hour visit to the Book Fair. Everyone should give it a try -- you might be surprised at what you'll find.



Browse previous Dardasha columns here.

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