Translator: jonathan oleg Reviewer: Tanya Cushman
(Arabic) Peace be upon you.
(Audience) (Arabic) Peace be upon you.
I was 17 when I finally came back to Libya for good.
Growing up in Switzerland,
I believe the worst thing that I found really challenging as a kid
was how to spell the word "Switzerland."
Even now, decades later, as an assistant lecturer,
I still despise writing that word.
On my phone, I entered this word in shortcuts,
using the English transliteration of "Sweesra," which is the Arabic version,
and it would automatically write it for me,
so thank goodness for technology.
There's so many daunting words in almost all languages,
either because of their spelling or because of their meaning per se,
but still, that's not an excuse for us to not learn them.
Life is a school, they say,
and there are various elements
that contribute to the formation of knowledge.
Early on in life, we learn initially from our parents,
but for certain mundane reasons, they just can't give it all.
And that's perhaps why we need to go to school -
in order to learn from other individuals who specialize in this field or that.
Therefore, our language skills are established
by means of absorbing the words that float out of coarse materials
and the mouths of our teachers.
With words we speak,
and through speaking, we express ourselves and communicate with each other.
But not all of us are gifted speakers.
I for one am not an outspoken person,
especially when it comes to expressing my inner thoughts and true emotions.
As a child, I was a very shy person, especially with strangers,
and no sooner, I found comfort in writing.
In junior high school, I wrote a short composition about my childhood,
and at the end of that day,
I discovered that my teacher actually read that piece to almost half the school.
He later on told me
that my career would definitely have something to do with writing,
and even at that time, I had a pretty good feeling that it would.
In high school is when I actually started to read full-length novels.
My first classic novel was written by Louisa May Alcott,
"Little Women,"
followed by contemporary works, namely Mills & Boon's.
When I was 14, I was obsessed by comic books,
like almost any other teenager.
I used to read Nabil Farouk.
He's the writer of "Adham Sabri: The Man of the Impossible."
I also used to read the Archie comics.
I was inspired by the character of Betty Cooper to write diary entries,
and I still do so till now.
When I started college,
I discovered that there was a sort of lacking in my writing techniques,
namely in organization,
sentence structure and also focus.
Now at that point, I thought I had been an avid reader,
and that shouldn't be a problem for me.
But that actually urged me to change my approach towards reading.
I started reading as a student,
which means not just reading for pleasure
but also learning the tricks of the trade from the masters.
With further motivation by my late colleague and mentor,
Mrs. Sabah Kareem - God bless her soul -
I decided to do my masters degree in writing,
and by the end of 2010,
I received my degree in writing for performance and publication
from Leeds University.
I had the greatest chance there
of exploring my ability in writing short stories
as well as writing for stage and screen.
Creative writing honors imagination,
so why does it seem like a secluded area or zone
that we hardly delve into
in order to give it the space to thrive and to flourish?
Allow me now to talk about my experience teaching creative writing here, in Libya.
And I say Libya as a whole
because I believe
this is an issue that prevails in almost all regions here in Libya:
the problem of learning a foreign language and actually using it.
In early 2010,
shortly after I came back from the UK,
I introduced creative writing for the first time in Misurata University.
I was so excited about the whole thing,
but apparently, the students weren't.
Only one student enrolled for that semester.
And therefore the course had to be canceled.
But the next semester was quite promising;
I had 11 students - not bad -
followed by 50,
and then a whopping 80 at one semester.
Now, for creative writing, the number of students can be problematic,
especially if they are crammed in a classroom of 35 students or so.
The real difficulty, however, is when you realize
that they actually don't get it.
So how's that?
Regardless of the many occasions in which they come to me
quite frankly and say, "We hate writing."
I believe the dominant reasons behind this hatred, in their opinion,
is because "I don't know how to write,"
and "Why should I? I don't have to."
So "How do I write?" versus "Why should I write?"
Now, with regards to the first question, I will not touch upon illiteracy,
because definitely,
anybody who has been through a considerable amount of schooling
would definitely know how to put pen to paper.
With creative writing, I am dealing with writing short stories.
And for that, you will need to come up with ideas.
Normally, ideas come from inspiration,
and the thing that seems to hinder my students is limited muse.
They have confined, or limited, themselves
into a very limited, basically,
range of topics and themes,
let alone a list of inadequate words to choose from.
Now, personally,
I'm not very talented in creating or conducting surveys,
but according to my experience teaching creative writing for three years,
I believe the dominant topics and themes that I have come across are as follows:
So we have five columns.
We'll start with poverty,
poverty as a means to actually lead the main character
to take up jobs that are quite demeaning.
For example, he has to cook in a kitchen,
or he has to be a house cleaner,
or maybe he becomes a thug.
The second one -
which is quite popular by the girls, by the way -
marriage.
The main character has to leave the one she loves
in order to, you know, marry someone else
who is either richer or has some kind of higher influence in society.
Cancer seems to be the winning ailment
whenever there is a chance
for them to talk about someone who gets ill and later on dies.
So this is the easiest way, the easiest route, towards death.
And then car accident.
This is quite surprising to me
because every time they want to kill the parents,
they have them killed in a car accident.
Social disputes are namely inheritance,
the ever-evil uncle
and the love triangles that happen at school.
Now, some of you might think that this is actually fine
given the students' background.
It actually is fine
because people tend to write about things that they know truly well.
But the problem is when they write about things or stories
they believe is what other people expect from them.
This is where the limitation lies.
Now, imagine, if we go back to this box,
imagine this is the structure of our culture - these five columns -
incredibly limited,
and at the same time, it really gets tiring
when you're subject to it every semester.
There was this one semester when I firmly announced to my students,
"Please don't kill the parents in a car accident.
If you don't want them in the story, then just keep them home, safe and sound,
and then move on to something worthy of telling."
We need to think outside this cultural box.
A foreign colleague of mine once said,
"We're dealing with students who haven't really experienced life."
And he was right.
How can we expect creativity from students
whose experience range is probably three out of five of these columns?
That is when we need to put a book in one's hand.
Reading not only makes you become a better writer:
Through living the lives of fictitious characters,
we learn from how they deal with abnormal circumstances
and learn from their mishaps.
We also delve into the various cultures of life, of the world,
and there's our free ticket:
we have successfully broadened our minds,
and we're practically ready for the extraordinary.
So if we go back to this box
and imagine that we have students
who have read books that actually relate to these topics and themes,
What are the possibilities,
what are the creative possibilities that they will be able to present?
So here we have the five topics that I mentioned earlier,
the five things that seem to be on repeat,
and examples of novels that deal with these themes.
"The Hunger Games" is a very good example that talks about poverty,
by Suzanne Collins.
The main character is forced to enter a tournament
where contestants actually kill each other in order to win.
There's an idea.
The second one,
"Pride and Prejudice," by Jane Austen.
Now, this is a novel that's been written almost 200 years ago,
two centuries ago.
The thing that makes it long lasting and still alive is because -
I mean for this specific topic of marriage -
is because the main character, Elizabeth Bennet,
actually opposed social code.
Imagine that happening back then.
"My Sister's Keeper"
has brilliant issues or cases of health issues,
by Jodi Picoult.
We have more than one, which is cancer.
We have acute promyelocytic leukemia,
which is blood and bone marrow cancer.
We also have drug abuse in this novel and a case of epilepsy.
I will not comment on the car accident: please don't kill the parents.
So, moving on to social disputes, the last one,
"In the Country of Men," written by our very own Hisham Matar.
Here we have a story about political chaos
that actually affected a domestic life
as a result to what was going on here in Libya back in the '70s.
So, before I move on,
I'd like to quickly acknowledge some of the previous works of my students
who have been able to come up with extremely creative stories.
One student wrote a story about an American who converted to Islam
after living among a group of Tuaregs here in Libya.
A second good example is - one of the students wrote about
the struggle of a man who's trying to flee the Rwandan Civil War in the early '90s.
The third example I'd like to present to you
is about a creature who's created from mist,
and he's the last of his kind
and the only one who's able to stand in the face of evil.
This was written by the translator that's translating to you, by the way.
So, going back to those two questions.
How do I write now that we've read,
now that we've broadened our minds?
Well, of course,
you need to start reading books that might be of interest to you
and for authors who are actually -
whose style of writing you find interesting.
And then you start putting pen to paper.
You scribble.
You draft.
You redraft, maybe 100 times.
And then you're done.
The second question - why should I?
Well, actually you don't have to write
unless you're one of my students -
then you just have to do it.
Storytelling is an art;
it allows you to translate your inner thoughts
and perhaps your philosophy in life.
And that's actually why people enjoy reading.
There's a literature that needs to be conveyed
for generations to coexist and intertwine.
I'd like to conclude with a quote by Elif Shafak,
the author of "The Forty Rules of Love."
Okay.
"Isn't connecting people to distant lands and countries and cultures
one of the great strengths of good literature?"
Indeed, it is.
So let's start thinking outside that box.
Thank you.
(Applause)