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Bread on Uncle Milad’s Table by Libyan debut novelist Mohamed Alnaas was announced as the winner of the 2022 International Prize for Arabic Fiction (IPAF).
The novel, published by Rashm, was named as this year’s winner by Chair of Judges Shukri Mabkhout during a ceremony in Abu Dhabi that was also streamed online.
In addition to being awarded USD $50,000, funding will be provided for the English translation of Bread on Uncle Milad’s Table, and Mohamed Alnaas can expect to see an increase in book sales and international recognition.
Shukri Mabkhout, Chair of the 2022 Judges, said: “The winning novel is written in the form of confessions of personal experience. Its plethora of details is deftly unified by a gripping narrative, which offers a deep and meticulous critique of prevailing conceptions of masculinity and femininity and the division of work between men and women, and the effect of these on both a psychological and social level.”
He added that the novel, falls into the category of novels which question cultural norms about gender; however, it is embedded in its local Arab context, and steers away from trivial projections or an ideological treatment of the issues, which would be contrary to the relativism of fiction and its ability to present multiple points of view.
Bread on Uncle Milad’s Table is a unique story based in Libya. In the closed society of his village, Milad strives to live up to the definition of ideal masculinity, as his society views it. However, after all his best efforts, he fails to be ‘a man’, and after meeting his sweetheart and wife-to-be, Zeinab, decides to forget about this definition and be himself. Living at home, he performs the tasks which his society reserves for women, while Zeinab works and supports the family. Milad is unaware of how he is mocked in the village until his nephew breaks it to him. Bread on Uncle Milad’s Table questions static ideas of gender and champions the individual in the face of destructive ideas adopted by the majority.
Mohamed Alnaas, is a short story writer and journalist from Libya, born in 1991. He obtained a BA in Electrical Engineering from the University of Tripoli in 2014, and his short story collection Blue Blood was published in 2020. Bread on Uncle Milad’s Table (2021) is his first novel and he wrote it in just six months during lockdown and whilst Tripoli was under bombardment. He says writing the book was his “refuge from insanity” amidst the news of Covid and war.
At 34, Alnaas is the second youngest writer to win the International Prize for Arabic Fiction and the first Libyan. Bread on Uncle Milad’s Table was published with support from the Libyan Arete Foundation.
Bread on Uncle Milad’s Table was chosen by the judges as the best work of fiction published in Arabic between 1st July 2020 and 30th June 2021. It was chosen from a shortlist of six novels by authors from Egypt, Kuwait, Libya, Morocco, Oman and, for the first time, the UAE. The shortlisted finalists — Khalid Al-Nassrallah, Tareq Imam, Reem al-Kamali, Bushra Khalfan and Mohsine Loukili — will each receive USD $10,000.
The panel of five judges was chaired by Tunisian novelist, academic and previous IPAF winner (The Italian, 2015) Shukri Mabkhout. Joining him on the judging panel were Libyan doctor, poet and translator Ashur Etwebi, Lebanese writer and PEN International board member Iman Humaydan, Kuwaiti poet and critic Saadiah Mufarreh and Bulgarian academic and translator Baian Rayhanova.
Once a creator of skyscrapers, the artist and activist has scaled-down his work – but not his ambitions – to enshrine the calamity in his homeland using elaborate models
The sound of a muezzin exhorting Muslim worshippers to hurry to salvation is not one that could often have been heard within the former Regency church of Holy Trinity in the seaside resort of Brighton.
Right on cue, though, the distinctive chant echoes out, filling every nook and cranny of the 200-year-old building, from the galleries to the arched stained-glass windows and timber-clad chancel at either end.
It comes as Mohamad Hafez is recounting the day he fell under the spell of his birthplace, Damascus, having returned to it as a teenager after a 14-year absence.
“Walking down the old city streets looking at mosques right next to churches, and synagogues next to secular galleries and nude sculptures … I went there from a very conservative culture in Saudi Arabia,” Hafez, 37, tells The National.
“Seeing the bustling city life, with merchants and calls to prayer,” he says, pausing to smile at the perfectly timed adhan issuing out of a loudspeaker hidden in one of his artworks, “and bells ringing together with children playing and the car horns, it was very hard not to fall in love with this collective celebration of diversity.”
The recording of the busy streetscape is clearly audible even over the hustle and hammering of the team assembling Hafez’s ‘Journeys from an Absent Present to a Lost Past’ exhibition in the historic residence of the visual arts organisation Fabrica.
Art handlers wearing blue surgical gloves have already carefully opened the dozen or so timber shipping crates to decant the series of miniature dioramas of his native Syria now hanging on the walls.
Each box was stencilled with FRAGILE in black lettering but the romantic snippets of memories and sounds of a bygone era contained within Framed Nostalgia #3 might arguably have warranted a more strongly worded warning.
It occupies an extra special place in the heart of Hafez — and that of his new wife, Luisa. “That’s the only piece I don’t own,” he says. “It’s owned by her, and I told the guys that if they damage it, they ruin my marriage. Anything else is fair game.”
His immersive process involves the study of photographs of Damascus from before and during the civil war, dimming the lights, brewing Arabic coffee, burning bakhour and incense, and putting on acoustic Middle Eastern music.
What emerges from the induced sentimental state as if, as Hafez puts it, he were a 3D printer are scenes of urban fabric that draw on his training as a corporate architect but come with a political charge.
“I really don’t remember much of the detail, how it comes together,” he says. “It’s a weird feeling. What I enjoy most is that I am discovering this detail as though I am a spectator seeing it for the first time, and that’s very, very fulfilling.”
Frustrated at prevailing narratives, Hafez took a sabbatical from architecture three years ago to focus fully on using his mix of street art, sculpture and activism to respond to thorny issues such as the atrocities in the ongoing conflict or dehumanisation of refugees.
“It is my foot in the door,” he says. “The more the sabbatical continues, the more I’m realising the urgency of the message and sense of agency because there are thousands of architects who can build skyscrapers , thousands.
“But how many of them are Syrian, Arab, Middle Eastern, practising Muslims, raised in Saudi Arabia, educated in the Midwest of the United States, and can talk the talk that will build bridges between people?”
Hafez says the crisis in his homeland has caused a spiritual awakening within him. Which may explain what he was doing on a three-week retreat in Malaysia when he heard news of a concert being held nearby in the capital by the ensemble Al Firdaus that he often listens to in his art studio while working.
Particularly captivated by the cellist Luisa Gutierrez, it wasn’t long before Hafez engineered a visit by Al Firdaus to Yale University, in New Haven, Connecticut, where he is a Silliman College Fellow.
He hosted the ensemble for dinner and invited them to his studio crammed full of paraphernalia, shelves and bins overflowing with scaled-down furniture and toys, dried plants and jewellery, Christmas ornaments and shells, electrical appliance innards and paints.
There, Hafez engaged all the musicians in conversation except for Luisa, who, overwhelmed by the atmosphere, was sitting on a chair staring at the artist’s latest labour of love — Framed Nostalgia #3 — and listening to the evocative audio with tears in her eyes.
“I think what happened is that she clicked into the street scene,” he says. “It’s common for people to come out crying from my exhibitions. Well, fast forward and that became her dowry for our wedding last year.”
Though Hafez was born in Syria, his own tale deviated early on when the family moved to a military compound in Al-Kharj in central Saudi Arabia, where he spent many happy hours supervising the construction of buildings out of whatever he and his playmates could lay their hands on.
Other than the lengthy commute to the elite Najd National School by bus 100 kilometres away in Riyadh, Mohamad never ventured outside the base where his father was head surgeon in the attached hospital.
“There was no need. It was a protected bubble in all respects, and really gave me a true childhood like building forts using found objects. I would boss my friends around, saying ‘No, no, this way, let’s put a window here, you see?’ Twenty years later, I’m going ‘You idiot, you’ve been doing architecture since you were 6 years old.’”
Hafez returned to his birthplace intermittently for holidays that were mostly whiled away in swimming pools, and only properly at the age of 15 when his father took early retirement.
Presided over by his sociable mother, the household became a “cultural salon” that inspired his latest architectural endeavour, Pistachio Cafe , below his studio on the northern shore of Long Island Sound.
It offers the experience of being hosted in what his domicile might have been like, transporting customers with mosaic tables and vintage radios, and bounty made by refugee chefs and cooks such as “the lady who makes shawarma for me from her kitchen at home”.
He is as entranced now with the world’s oldest continuously inhabited city as he was back then when his teenage self would wander its souqs and alleyways with sketch book in hand at any available opportunity.
But for a pupil hitherto accustomed to rubbing shoulders with the upper echelons of Saudi Arabian society, the move to a public school with military uniform and regular training exercises was shocking.
Consequently, Hafez has a deep connection to the words he has spray painted across a vast swathe of black plastic sheeting stretched around several pillars in his exhibition for the Brighton Festival.
This section of “Journeys” replicates the sense of exile felt by those in the refugee and migrant encampment known as the Calais Jungle. Above an evocative stanza borrowed from the Nairobi-born, Somali-British poet Warsan Shire — “No one leaves home unless home is the mouth of a shark” — he has put: I AM JUST A NUMBER.
“I think the whole experience at that school was so traumatic,” he recalls. “I had lost myself. No one cared about ‘What do you want to be?’ I think it’s a big part of me, who I am and why I like working with a lot of universities and high school kids, just to push that fire inside them and make them believe in their intuition.”
The result was that he undertook a course in electrical engineering at Damascus University before following his older siblings to study in the United States when it finally dawned that “every inch of my body was meant to be an architect”.
Hafez would go on to celebrate his first skyscraper at the precocious age of 30, becoming project head designer on an ambitious 48-storey glass and steel office tower in downtown Houston, Texas.
But throughout his studies, a single-entry visa precluded him from visiting Syria because of a travel ban imposed on the citizens of 27 countries after the 9/11 attacks, and later came the Arab uprisings.
Surrounded by the cornfields of Iowa, a homesick Hafez lapsed into depression and was wrought by anxiety. His way of dealing with it, as he explains in ‘A Broken House, the Jimmy Goldblum documentary about his life shortlisted for this year’s Oscars, was deciding that if he couldn’t go home then why not make home?
By night, for a long time, he modelled the destruction of Syria as a sanity-saving outlet to be able to get up and build glistening edifices in his day job with colleagues complaining about the coffee being cold. “‘This is your dilemma right now?’,” Hafez remembers thinking.
It is little wonder that he quotes with conviction the observation of Cesar Cruz, Dean of the Secondary Schools Programme at Harvard, that art should comfort the disturbed and disturb the comfortable.
“With skyscrapers, we design every last detail until the cows come home years before the building sees the light of day. With these,” he gestures around the gallery, “I can break free in my artistic expression. I don’t plan. I work on six or seven pieces at a time so as not to commit too much memory to any one piece, jumping from one to another.”
His store of memories of home is precious and finite. There is no portrait of the four siblings and parents together since 1999, the last time they were all under the same roof. He has been back to Damascus only once, just before the war began in earnest in 2011, when his architectural firm sent Hafez to pitch a project in neighbouring Lebanon.
There has been no other chance to experience the everyday occurrences or family occasions — the funeral of his beloved grandmother, the marriage of a sister, the births that made him an uncle — he has had to miss or risk enforced military service.
Yet, sustained by an inner peace, Hafez conveys hope in person and through the use of verses from the Quran in his art that are intended to counsel patience and raise spirits in dark times.
When asked to translate a particular bit of Arabic script he has incorporated into a scene, he looks gleeful. “Happiness Bakery this way 200 metres,” he explains, laughing. “People have no qualms whatsoever spray painting on a 2,000-year-old wall, putting the advertisement for their shop on a Roman column!”
The humour abounds with graffiti elsewhere saying “I love you”, “Where’s Dad?” and then there’s one in English. Again, it sets Hafez off. “It’s supposed to be ‘No parking’ but with the Arabic accent I’m making fun of our people with ‘No barking please’.”
Accents offer an endless source of amusement to him. One of the consequences of his childhood in the military compound in Saudi Arabia was picking up a multitude of Arabic dialects that Hafez employs on his travels.
“I engage people with their own native dialect, and they go, ‘Whoa, whoa, who are you?’ I love messing with Arabs because nobody can tell that I am Arab. I’m this weird object … I have this curly artist’s moustache, I have a beard, and a little [pony]tail. Then I wear a fancy shirt or a Malaysian garment, and they’re like, ‘Is he Italian? Pakistani? Bosnian? No, he’s Iranian.’”
As a master of misdirection, he concedes that he likes to sneak up on people in the same way that crises do. Audiences are lured in by the beauty of his work, such as Tower of Dreams that features intricate mosaics and floats above a tapestried rug, until the “hot moment when they realise that it looks like an RPG shooting people’s lives and memories into an abyss”.
Perhaps it is the habit of a lifelong outsider but he is also, be warned, a consummate eavesdropper, honing the skill during that side trip to Damascus from Lebanon 12 years ago.
Like a sponge, Hafez took to the streets once again, using his phone to record taxi journeys, calls to prayer, the chattering of locals in cafes that would eventually end up as the multimedia embedded in his works.
“My favourite, favourite, favourite part in everything I do is when I’m a fly on the wall,” he says. “If nobody recognises me around my exhibits, I can just eavesdrop to see how people are reacting. Or you’ll find me in Pistachio Cafe mopping floors, sweeping, putting myself at the service of people, and I observe them enjoying my product, my architectural creation.”
He ends the interview with a short guided tour of his dioramas, pointing out a pleasing crackle or patina here or some rust that has developed there, then stopping at a surveillance camera poking out of one of the facades.
“That’s Big Daddy watching always,” Hafez notes, without the slightest hint of recognition that it would be fair to say much the same of him.
‘Journeys from an Absent Present to a Lost Past’ by Mohamad Hafez is at Fabrica, Brighton, until May 29
http://www.mohamadhafez.com/
source/content : thenationalnews.com (edited)
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It has become an obsession in ‘undoubtedly xenophobic, divided times’ for Mohamad Hafez to use his mix of street art, sculpture and activism as a response to thorny issues such as the atrocities of the conflict in Syria or the dehumanisation of refugees. Photo: Fabrica
Saudi Arabia has been unanimously re-elected to chair the executive council of the Tunis-based Arab League Educational, Cultural and Scientific Organization until 2024.
The decision was made by members of ALECSO’s executive council after the 26th session of the general conference, which concluded its activities.
Council members expressed their appreciation for the positive results achieved and the complementary work of the executive council during the past 10 months.
The Arab ministers praised the initiative of the Saudi representative and chairman of ALECSO’s executive council, Hani Al-Moqbil, to develop the council’s road map, which was put together with a transparent methodology based on the involvement of countries in building a common Arab vision to support and enable the organization to achieve its goals.
Al-Moqbil extended his appreciation to King Salman and Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman for their constant support, empowerment, and care, which was reflected in the Saudi role and its presidency of the executive council to contribute to a beneficial impact and supportive action for the development of ALECSO.
He also thanked Culture Minister Prince Badr bin Abdullah bin Farhan, who is also the chairman of the National Committee for Education, Culture, and Science, for his support, guidance, supervision, and harnessing of capabilities which gave direct and significant support throughout the Saudi presidency which helped it in serving its goals with all Arab countries.
Al-Moqbil also thanked the Arab countries and members of the ALECSO executive council for their re-election of the Kingdom and for renewing their confidence in the results that had been achieved during the past 10 months.
Al-Moqbil said: “Saudi Arabia, in its presidency of the executive council, worked to oversee the interests of the countries by listening to their proposals, observations, and visions to ensure that they are reflected on the ground and implemented in stages. The countries will work with greater effort and higher interest in taking care of the organization’s interests.”
source/content: arabnews.com (edited)
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The decision to re-elect the Kingdom came after the appreciation of the general conference for the efforts made by the executive council under the Kingdom’s stewardship. (SPA)
In a partnership with the Arab Brazilian Chamber, the Immigration Museum held an event celebrating the Day of the Arab Community in Brazil on Saturday (26). The program featured a project and a survey presentation and short-film screenings, as well as many tales of immigration.
On Saturday (26) the Immigration Museum in São Paulo was the venue for Arab descendants to look back at the stories of their ancestors. The museum held in partnership with the Arab Brazilian Chamber of Commerce (ABCC) an event celebrating the Day of the Arab Community in Brazil, whose official date is March 25.
The program featured the launch of a link that provides access to records of the history of Arab immigration, the presentation of data from a survey on the Arab presence in Brazil, and the screening of short films. The focus of the event was the recollection of life stories of parents and grandparents. They were present both in documentaries and speeches by the leaders and members of the projects presented.
Unlike the Europeans, who came to Brazil with government subsidies to work in farms, the Arabs moved here on their own, especially in search of opportunities. Most of them worked with commerce. The date of the Day of the Arab Community in Brazil was chosen after the name of the 25 de Março Street in São Paulo, where they established their first shops.
In the event at the museum, ABCC president Osmar Chohfi told a brief story about his two grandfathers who came to Brazil from Syria, where they were peddlers. One of them opened a store, while the other first worked as a traveling salesman. “All of us Syrian and Lebanese and Palestinian descendants have stories similar to my families’,” he said.
ABCC cultural director Silvia Antibas also recalled facts from her own family. Her father’s suitcase from when he was a traveling salesman had been donated to the Immigration Museum. She said that upon arrival, an immigrant would receive instructions on the local currency and goods to sell. “My father did that when he was seven. He was told about the currency and set off to sell balloons. He had landed in Niterói,” she said.
The coordinator of the Digitization Project of the Memory of Arab Immigration in Brazil, Heloisa Dib, called the attendees to help keep the stories of immigration alive by preserving pictures, documents and journals. The materials contain information on how the immigrants traveled, how they lived in their countries of origin, what they did back there. “We only know what they told us, and that was not much,” she says.
The attendees got to learn the size of the Arab community in Brazil. ABCC and H2R Pesquisas Avançadas director Alessandra Frisso said they account for 6% of the Brazilian population and amount to 12 million people. The data comes from a survey carried out by H2R and research firm IBOPE Inteligência commissioned by the ABCC. The Arabs and descendants play a leading role in the Brazilian society, the survey says. Amongst the leaders of associations in Brazil, the Arabs account for 26%.
Launch of project
The event marked the official launch of the access to 100,000 pieces digitized by the Digitization Project of Arab Immigration in Brazil. They are pictures and journal pages created by the first Arab immigrants to Brazil that were digitized by the project. Researchers and interested parties can access the collection catalog on this link and request the materials by sending an email to reference@usek.edu.lb.
The initiative is part of a project by the Holy Spirit University of Kaslik (USEK) in Lebanon aimed at preserving the memory of Arab immigration in Latin America through the Latin American Studies and Cultures Center (CECAL) directed by historian Roberto Khatlab. In Brazil, USEK has partnered up with the ABCC to take the project forward. The access to the collection of materials from other countries in Latin America is open, too.
Films
In the short-film screenings the attendees got to know more about the history of Arab immigration in Brazil. The films brought stories about Arab ancestors and the history of immigration. The films were selected in a contest held by the ABCC. On Sunday, as part of the celebration, the play Cartas libanesas [Lebanese Letters] will stream on the YouTube channel of the Immigration Museum.
Immigration Museum
Immigration Museum executive director Alessandra Almeida said she hopes that the partnership with the ABCC in the celebrations of the Day of the Arab Community in Brazil goes on. “I hope that in the coming years we continue to host this event, given the celebration that the Arabs have given to the development of Brazil,” she said.
The Immigration Museum’s Research, Preservation and Reference Center manager Henrique Trindade Abreu said that the Arabs weren’t so present at the Immigrant Inn – a building in São Paulo that used to welcome the immigrants to São Paulo and now hosts the museum – but hundreds of them stayed there.
Translated by Guilherme Miranda
source/contents: anba.com.br (edited)
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Osmar Chohfi, President, ABCC (C) and representatives of the museum
The award saw a high turnout from authors around the world, with more than 3,000 applications submitted from more than 55 countries, including 20 Arab countries.
Sheikh Zayed Book Award (SZBA) announced on Monday the winners for its 16th edition across seven categories, selecting six literary figures, intellectuals and translators, along with Egypt’s Bibliotheca Alexandrina, for top honours.
Over the years, the Sheikh Zayed Book Award has managed to expand and become one of the most prestigious events in the Arab world, allowing for the development of cultural dialogue and the creation of new opportunities for authors and translators around the world.
This year’s winner in the young author category is Tunisian professor Mohamed al-Maztouri with his book Al Badawa fi al She’er al Arabi al Qadeem (Bedouinism in Ancient Arabic Poetry).
“The author of this book, Mohamed al-Maztouri, presents a serious academic study of bedouinism in ancient Arabic poetry,” the Zayed programme commented.
Adding that Maztouri “discusses its diverse concepts and many manifestations, describing it as a culture with special landmarks and a lifestyle inseparable from its place, environment, and geography.”
From pre-Islamic times the Arabian Peninsula has been home to world-class poetry that is deeply connected to values of bravery, nobility, eloquence and at times sensitivity.
Throughout the centuries, poetry’s popularity has only grown in the region, attracting new audiences in both the Arabian Peninsula and other Arab countries in North Africa and the Levant.
Today, the trend has been further boosted by Emirati initiatives and competitions.
The translation award went to Egyptian translator and author Ahmed Aladawi for his translation of the American author, George Makdisi, book “ The Rise of Humanism in Classical Islam and the Christian West” into Arabic.
Each winner receives a life-changing prize of AED 750,000 (USD 204,190/GBP165,220).
Winners will also be honoured in a ceremony at the Abu Dhabi International Book Fair later this year.
The Cultural Personality of the Year winner will be presented with a gold medal and a certificate of merit, as well as a Dh1 million prize.
source/content: thearabweekly.com
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Full list of winners of the Sheikh Zayed Book Award 2022:
Literature
Maq’ha Riche, Ain Ala Massr (Eye on Egypt: Cafe Riche) by Maisoon Saqer. Published by Nahdet Misr Publishing
Children’s Literature
Loghz al Kora al Zujajiya (The Mystery of the Glass Ball) by Maria Daadoush. Published by Dar Al-Saqi
Young Author
Al Badawa fi al She’er al Arabi al Qadeem (Bedouinism in Ancient Arabic Poetry) by Mohamed Al-Maztouri. Issued by the Faculty of Literature, Arts and Humanities at Manouba University and the GLD Foundation
Translation
Nash’at al Insaniyat Einda al Muslimeen wa fi al Gharb al Maseehi (The Rise of Humanism in Classical Islam and the Christian West) by Ahmed Aladawi. Published by Madarat for Research and Publishing.
Art and Literary Criticism
Al Sarid wa Taw’am al Rooh: Min al Tamtheel ila al Istinaa (The Narrator and the Soulmate: From Acting to Faking) by Mohamed Aldahi. Issued by Le Centre Culturel du Livre.
Arab Culture in Other Languages
The Arabian Nights in Contemporary World Cultures: Global Commodification, Translation, and the Culture Industry by Muhsin J. Al-Musawi. Cambridge University Press.
Vatican envoy to UN presents royal couple with 2022 Path to Peace award at gala event
Queen Rania praised for focus on education, prioritization of young people
The Vatican’s Path to Peace Foundation has presented Jordan’s King Abdullah and Queen Rania with the 2022 Path to Peace award for their promotion of interfaith harmony and dialogue.
Commending the royal couple for a “years-long effort” in promoting peace and interfaith cooperation in the Middle East, Vatican Ambassador to the UN Archbishop Gabriele Caccia made the presentation at the foundation’s 29th annual gala in New York.
The envoy singled out the queen’s focus on education and the prioritization of young people in her work.
He said: “She has long shown concern for the questions of education, connectivity, and cross-cultural dialogue, as well as sustainability, the environment, and migration, which places young people at the heart of solutions and is imbued with a sense of hope.”
King Abdullah said he accepted the award on behalf of “Jordanians, men and women, young people and elders, Muslims and Christians alike.”
Noting that Jerusalem was also home to many Arab Christians, part of the oldest Christian community in the world, he noted that “our journey to peace must travel through Jerusalem,” describing the city as “key to the future and stability that we all seek.”
He added: “Jerusalem should be an anchor for peace and coexistence, not for fear and violence.
“The (world’s most difficult challenges) will be met by drawing on our faith in God, our common humanity, and our will to jointly defeat poverty and despair, and end occupation and injustice.
“(Also), to help refugees everywhere return home, ready to rebuild shattered communities, and renew the hope that young people everywhere so desperately need.”
The monarch called on the international community to work toward a just and lasting peace in the Holy Land through a two-state solution with East Jerusalem as the capital of an “independent, sovereign, and viable Palestinian state … living side-by-side with Israel.”
source/content: arabnews.com (edited)
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Jordan’s King Abdullah and Queen Rania receive the Path to Peace Award in New York for their promotion of interfaith harmony and dialogue. (AFP)
Ghalia Benali is a Tunisian poet, writer, and songwriter best known for dabbling in multiple music genres, multiculturalism, and defining contemporary Arabic music. She is also an actress and a graphic designer, a talent that goes hand-in-hand with her literature works such as “Romeo and Leila.”
Although born in Brussels in 1968, Benali was raised in Zarzis, in southeastern Tunisia, where she got her early exposure to songs and dances, with her mother being her personal music teacher. Growing up, she was exposed to the world of Egyptian and Indian films, as well as the voices of Arab singers such as Adib AlDayikh, Oum Kalthoum, and Sabah Fakhri, all of which influenced her multicultural style of singing growing up.
By the age of 19, Benali returned to Belgium to study graphic design at the Institut Saint-Luc of Graphic Arts where she would begin to sing and perform professionally. Her early performances would include collaborations with live bands and fellow musicians in 1993, a tour in Portugal in 1994, and a live performance with the band “Timna,” in Brussels, in 1999.
From 2001, she released a number of loved albums such as “Wild Harissa,” “Nada,” and “Romeo and Leila.” However, the very album that put her on the map was “Ghalia Benali Sings Umm Kulthum.” In fact, it was a smashing hit, earning her the title Ambassador of Arab Culture in Europe in 2009. By the following year, Benali would be featured on television across several Arab countries.
Benali is also renowned for her poetry, some of which centered around works by famous poets, Sufism, and Persian mystics. She is also known for her acting, winning an award from Women for Africa Foundation for her role in “As I Open My Eyes” in 2016, and nominated by Les Magrittes du Cinema for “Best Hope Actress” in 2017. She had played recent roles in the films “Fatwa,” and “A Tale of Love and Desire.”
Finally, Benali is credited for launching the Brussels-based MWSOUL Art Foundation. Having had to deal with unorganized management, she took it upon herself to launch her very own platform, a non-profit organization that brings awareness through art. You can follow them on Instagram for featured artworks and photography.
“While people are proud of their achievements, we are proud of being the children of Sheikh Zayed, and while people talk of their history, we speak of the history of giving that began with the formation of the UAE,” said the late His Highness Sheikh Khalifa bin Zayed Al Nahyan, epitomising the nations’s approach from the first day it was established to its phase of empowerment, ushering in the birth of a powerful and successful nation.
On 4th November, 2004, Sheikh Khalifa assumed power and, up until his passing, helped the country, whose track record of achievements spans nearly 35 years, progress from the foundation phase to the empowerment stage.
Over this short period, the UAE has topped international competitiveness indexes and has become the second-largest economy in the Arab region, despite its small area and population.
Moreover, the UAE is the first Arab and Islamic nation to reach the planet Mars and one among few countries with significant achievements in the space sector.
The UAE’s achievements during the empowerment phase are reflected on the lives of its people and business community, making it the dream destination of anyone seeking success, stability, and wellbeing.
After assuming power, the late Sheikh Khalifa launched the first strategic plan of the UAE Government to achieve balanced and sustainable development and ensure the wellbeing of UAE residents.
In 2009, he was re-elected as the President of the country, and thanks to his wise leadership, the UAE overcame the financial crises and political issues facing the region due to his active foreign policy, which also enhanced the regional and international stature of the country.
How did the UAE manage to accomplish significant achievements during the empowerment phase? The Emirates News Agency (WAM) monitors these milestones and challenges in the following report:
1. The Health Sector.
The UAE’s leadership has prioritised the health sector and increased public spending on the sector, amounting at times to seven percent of the federal budget.
This fact is highlighted by the spending on the sector in 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019 and 2020, which amounted to AED3.83 billion, AED4.2 billion, AED4.5 billion, AED4.4 billion and AED4.84 billion, respectively.
This policy also proved successful when the sector faced the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic, demonstrating a high level of efficiency supported by the many well-equipped public and private hospitals.
The sector’s efficiency was further supported by the country’s efforts to establish media cities, including Khalifa City in Abu Dhabi, Dubai Medical City and Sharjah City.
Coinciding with these achievements, most Emirati hospitals are internationally accredited, and the country has become a leading medical destination, underpinned by the rising number of hospitals, which increased from 16 in 1975 to 169 in 2020.
These hospitals are managed by highly qualified medical staff, numbering 8,995 in 2020 in the government sector and 17,136 in the private sector, compared to 792 doctors in 1975.
The number of nurses also reached 56,045 working in the government sector in 2020, increasing 252 percent compared to 1975.
The country has prioritised health insurance and provided it to citizens for free, in addition to comprehensive medical coverage for all segments of society, especially the elderly and people of determination.
In 2017, the UAE established the first cancer treatment centre utilising proton technology in the Middle East and Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) region.
The Emirates was also one of the first countries to use robotics in the pharmaceutical sector.
Smart rooms were established to provide entertainment services to patients and link their medical files with hospitals to provide comprehensive and effective care.
The Ministry of Health and Prevention has been keen to integrate artificial intelligence (AI) in medical services, used in over 100 facilities nationwide.
The UAE ranks first in the world in the number of accredited facilities, and more than 85 percent of Emirati hospitals have international accreditation.
2. Education Sector.
The UAE’s spending on the health and education sectors underscores the leadership’s belief in the importance of these two sectors to achieving sustainable development, with spending from 2016 to 2020 accounting for between 20 percent and 22 percent respectively of the federal budget.
With the budget allocated to the national education sector standing at AED10.41 billion, AED10.46 billion, AED10.40 billion, AED10.2 billion and AED6.536 billion for 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019 and 2020, respectively, the average share of the federal budget is 15 percent.
The UAE believes that the education system is the driver of development and ensures the right to free education for all citizens. From 2012, education became mandatory for everyone over the age of six until secondary education, which was reinforced by issuing the Children’s Rights Law (Wadeema).
The UAE’s education strategy confirms the establishment of an educational system based on the skills of the 21st century. It aims to provide higher education that can compete with the world’s best universities.
The Mohammed bin Rashid Smart Learning Initiative, launched in 2012, is an ideal model covering all schools in the country and creates a new educational environment in schools that includes smart classes.
In 1973, the country had 110 schools with 40,000 students, while in 2007, the percentage of educated citizens reached 88.7 percent of the population.
The UAE Vision 2021 highlighted the need to advance education in the country to the highest in the world and adopt a smart system as a primary goal.
The vision also confirmed that the upcoming years would witness comprehensive transformations in learning and education, led by smart education.
The national education strategy aims to ensure equal education, maintain the quality and efficiency of institutional education, promote scientific research, encourage students to enrol in higher education, achieve innovation, and support smart education.
Subsequently, the National Strategy for Higher Education 2030 affirms the importance of improving the scientific and technical skills of students, to support the growth of the economy.
At the same time, the UAE has kept pace with the latest innovations in the health sector. The government has launched many initiatives that encourage innovation in general and innovation in the medical field in particular.
The UAE is one of the few countries that utilises medical robotics technology when conducting major surgeries.
President Khalifa bin Zayed passed away on Friday, May 13th, 2022
During the 72nd Berlin International Film Festival (Berlinale), Arab Cinema Center (ACC) granted Mouhamad Keblawi, Founder and Head of Malmö Arab Film Festival in Sweden, the Arab Cinema Personality of the year award.
This comes in recognition of his contribution and immense support to Arab Cinema through the festival, with an aim to promote Arab cinema in Sweden and Scandinavia.
Mohamed Keblawi is a Swedish-Palestinian director and producer, who has worked in television and documentary film production.
In 2011, he founded the Malmö Arab Film Festival in Sweden, which is set on encouraging Arab filmmakers to find more opportunities to tell their stories, and support Arab film projects.
The festival screened hundreds of Arab films since its establishment, including Oscar-nominated films; Director Naji Abu Nowar’s Jordanian film Theeb, Kaouther Ben Hania’s Tunisian film The Man Who Sold His Skin, and Palestinian short film The Present by Farah Nabulsi.
The festival also featured several award-winning Arab films that have been to numerous international festivals; Wajib by director Annemarie Jacir, EXT. Night by Ahmad Abdalla, A Son by Mehdi Barsaoui, Gaza Mon Amour by Arab and Tarzan Nasser, and Ali, the Goat and Ibrahim by Sherif Elbendary, among others.
Mohamed Keblawi also launched MAFF Market Forum as part of the festival with the aim of supporting Arab film projects and helping them come to light. During its latest edition, the Forum presented monetary prizes worth of $ 250,000. Ever since it was created, this annual prize supported almost 100 projects including Costa Brava, Lebanon by Mounia Akl, Beauty and the Dogs by Kaouther Ben Hania, Captains of Zaatari by Ali El Arabi, 200 Meters by Ameen Nayfeh,
Our River…Our Sky by Maysoon Pachachi, Communion by Nejib Belkadhi, Khartoum Offside by Marwa Zein, and Tiny Souls by Dina Naser.
Keblawi is also the founder of Arab Cinema in Sweden, a company that works on the distribution of Arab films in Sweden. These films include Mohamed Jabarah Al-Daradji’s Jordanian film The Journey, Sophie Boutros’ Lebanese film Solitaire, Mohamed Khan’s Egyptian film Factory Girl, and Khadija al-Salami’s Yemeni film I Am Nojoom, Age 10 and Divorced.
Most recently, Mohamed Keblawi received the City of Malmö’s Grant for Art and Culture for the year 2021. This is an annual grant allocated to twelve creators in the fields of music, theater, cinema and literature. From 2015 to 2017, he was a member of the documentary film nomination committee for the Guldbagge Awards, one that is considered as Sweden’s Oscars.“What Keblawi did by establishing a main venue for Arab cinema in Sweden, is certainly a first of its kind. Through which, thanks to his tireless efforts, he was able to develop a platform for filmmakers in Sweden and Europe, and so Arab filmmakers became quite familiar faces in Sweden. He was able to create an exceptional fan base for a festival that caters for Arab films in Europe. We are honored to grant him the prize, as he continues to expand his horizons each year, whether through the festival or through his distribution and production firms.” commented Alaa Karkouti and Maher Diab, the Co-founders of Arab Cinema Center.”The prize crowns many years of hard work to try to grant the Arab film a chance to be acknowledged in places that it has never been before,” Keblawi said after announcement of the prize. “Things like the release of an Arab picture in Swedish theaters or Sweden’s funding of an Arab film were fictitious at the beginning of the millennium, this is an achievement which I am proud of. I’d like to thank everyone who helped me reach my goal. I’d also like to thank the Arab Cinema Center for this award, which I’m very proud of.
The Arab Cinema Personality of The Year award is part of its strategy of promoting the Arab film industry internationally and supporting Arab filmmakers.
During the last years, Arab Cinema Center (ACC) presented the Arab Cinema Personality of The Year award to Chiraz Latiri, former Tunisian Minister of Cultural Affairs, Screenwriter and Producer Mohamed Hefzy, the President of the Cairo International Film Festival (CIFF), Abdulhamid Juma, Chairman of the Dubai International Film Festival (DIFF), and Masoud Amralla, Artistic Director of DIFF.
Arab Cinema Center (ACC), founded in 2015 by MAD Solutions, is a non-profit organization incorporated in Amsterdam. ACC also provides networking opportunities with representatives of companies and institutions specialized in co-production and international distribution, among others. ACC’s activities vary between film markets, stands,pavilions, networking sessions, one-on-one meetings bringing together Arab and foreign filmmakers, welcome parties, and meetings with international organizations and festivals.
Also, the activities include the issuance of Arab Cinema Magazine to be distributed at the leading international film festivals and markets. Furthermore, newsletter subscription is now available on ACC’s website, allowing users to obtain digital copies of Arab Cinema Magazine, as well as news on ACC’s activities, notifications of application dates for grants, festivals and offers from educational and training institutions, updates on Arab films participating at festivals, exclusive news on the Arab Cinema LAB, and highlights from ACC’s partners and their future projects.
Arab Cinema Center has launched the Arab Cinema Directory in English language on its website, which is a comprehensive cinema directory that provides multiple tools in one place for the first time in order to enhance easy access to information on cinema to film makers inside and outside the Arab world. It also aims to facilitate the connection between the Arab film and Filmmakers and the International market. It also helps International Filmmakers to easily identify the Arab Cinema Productions.
Egyptian film critic Ahmed Shawky was chosen last week to head the jury of the International Federation of Film Critics (FIPRESCI) competition at the 75th Cannes International Film Festival.
Though Egyptians have been part of the FIPRESCI jury panel competition in the past, this is the first time one will chair the panel.
Shawky will head a panel that includes a number of film critics from all across the world: Mariola Wiktor (Poland), Nathalie Chifflet (France), Emanuel Levy (USA), Simone Soranna (Italy), Jihane Bougrine (Morocco), Magali Van Reeth (France) Bidhan Rebeiro (Bangladesh) and Youssoufa Halidou Harouna (Niger).
Launched in the 1920s, the FIPRESCI committee is among the most influential film criticism committees internationally. The committee is responsible for awarding the best film at numerous festivals, including at Cannes since the festival’s launch in 1946.
The upcoming Cannes International Film Festival is scheduled to take place between 13 and 24 May 2022.
Shawky is an Egyptian film critic, programmer and screenwriting developer. He writes about film for numerous Egyptian and regional publications. He has also published six books about Egyptian cinema.
A FIPRESCI board member and the vice president of the African film critics’ federation (FAAC), Shawky is also as a programmer for many film festivals.
Shawky was appointed an acting artistic director of the Cairo International Film Festival in 2019, and a year later he was appointed its artistic director.
Shawky is also one of two Egyptian names to head the 75th festival’s juries, with the other being Yousry Nasrallah who will chair the Short Film Jury, a panel in charge of selecting one of nine films in competition for Short Film Palme d’Or.
